Every room being occupied, and every nook in the garden too, we are accommodated with a rustic table in the “Grand Salon,” part of which is screened off as a kind of bar.  The “Grand Salon” is also full of quaint pictures and eccentric curiosities; it is cool and airy, bright flowers are in the windows, and the floor is sanded.  We had stopped here to refresh the horses, intending to breakfast at Etretat.  But so delighted were we, a party of “deux couverts,” with this good hotel, and still more with the famille Aubourg, that, though we had driven away, and were a mile further on our road to Etretat, we decided—­and Counsellor Hunger was our adviser too—­on returning to this house where we had noticed breakfast-table tastefully laid out for some expected visitors, and had been in the kitchen, and with our own eyes had seen, and with our own noses had smelt the appetising preparation for the parties already in possession.  So we drove back again rapidly, much to the delight of our coachman, who had become very melancholy, and was evidently forming a very poor opinion of persons who could lose the chance of a breakfast chez Aubourg.

[Illustration:  “Le vrai dernier!”]

How pleased Mlle. AUBOURG, the waitress, appeared to be when we returned!  All the family prepared to kill the fatted calf figuratively, as it took the shape of the sweetest and freshest shrimps as hors d’oeuvre, and then it became an omelette au lard ("O La!”) absolutely unsurpassable, and a poulet saute, which was about the best that ever we tasted.  A good bottle of the ordinary generous, fruit, and then a cup of recently roasted and freshly ground coffee with a thimbleful of some special Normandy cognac,—­in which our cheery host joined us, and we all drank one another’s healths,—­completed as good a dejeuner as any man or woman of simple tastes could possibly desire.

[Illustration:  M. Aubourg fils comes out for a blow.  The Son and Air.]

Then the cheery son of the house, dressed in a cook’s cap and apron, pauses in his work to join in our conversation.  He tells us how he has been in London, and can speak English, and is enthusiastic about the satiric journal which Mr. Punch publishes weekly.  M. AUBOURG fils who is a truthful likeness, on a large scale, of M. DAUBRAY, of the Palais Royal, informs me that he can play the horn after the manner of the guards on the coaches starting from the “White Horse,” Piccadilly; and so, when we start for Etretat, he produces a big cor de chasse, and, while he sounds the farewell upon it, a maid rushes out and rings the parting bell, and M. AUBOURG pere waves his cap, and Madame her hand, and Mlle. her serviette, and we respond with hat and handkerchief until we turn the corner, and hear the last flourish of the French “horn of the hunter,” and see the last flourish of pretty Mademoiselle’s snow-white serviette.  Then we go on our way to Etretat, rejoicing.  But, after this excitement, Etretat palls upon us.  After a couple of hours of Etretat, we are glad to drive up, and up, and up, and get far away and above Etretat, where we can breathe again.