It has been warm these last days.  There is a bit of road absolutely without shade of any kind we have to pass every time we go to the etablissement, which is very trying.  I love the early morning walk, everything is so fresh and the air singularly light and pure.  It seems wicked to go into that atmosphere of hot air and suffering humanity, which greets one on the threshold of the bathhouse.  To-day I have been driving with the princess.  She does not like the automobile when she is making a cure—­says it shakes her too much.

We had a pretty drive, past the chateau of Couterne, which is most picturesque.  A beautiful beech avenue leads up to the house, which is built of brick, with round towers and a large pond or lake which comes right up to the walls.  It is of the sixteenth century, and has been inhabited ever since by the same family.  One of the ancestors was “chevalier et poete” of Queen Marguerite of Navarre.  I had a nice talk with the princess about everything and everybody.  I asked her if she had ever read “The Lightning Conductor.”  As her own auto is a Napier, I thought it would interest her.  I told her all the potins (little gossip) of the hotel—­that people said her youngest daughter was going to marry the King of Spain, and the general verdict was that the princess would make “a beautiful queen.”  Every one is horror-struck at the murder of the Russian Minister of the Interior, and I suppose it is only a beginning.

This afternoon I have been walking in the lovely woods at the back of the etablissement.  It is rather a steep climb to get to the point de vue and troublesome walking, as the paths are dry and slippery and the roots of the pine-trees that spread out over the paths catch one’s heels sometimes.  Some people spend all their day high up in the pines—­take up books, seats, work, and gouter, and only come down after six, when the air gets cooler.  We saw parties seated about in all directions and had glimpses of the white dresses, which are a uniform this year, flitting through the trees.  It was very pretty, but not like the walls of Marienbad, with the splendid black pine forest all around and every now and then a glimpse of a green Alm (high field on the top of a mountain), with the peasant girl in her high Tyrolean hat and clean white chemisette standing on the edge, with her cows all behind her and the bells tinkling in the distance.

[Illustration:  Chateau de Lassay.]

It was so warm this evening that we sat out until ten o’clock.  We had a visit from Comte de G., son-in-law of our friend Mrs. L.S.  He lives at Deauville, and had announced himself for Monday morning for breakfast at twelve.  He did come for breakfast, but on Tuesday morning, having been en route since Monday morning at seven o’clock.  He was in an automobile and everything happened to him that can happen to an automobile except an absolute smash.  He punctured his tires, had a big hole in his reservoir, his steering gear bent, his bougies