We finished the evening with music and dumb crambo—­that particularly English form of amusement, which I have never seen well done except by English people.  It always fills me with astonishment whenever I see it.  It is so at variance with the English character.  They are usually so very shy and self-conscious.  One would never believe they could throw themselves into this really childish game with so much entrain.  The performance is simple enough.  Some of the company retire from the drawing-room; those who remain choose a word—­chair, hat, cat, etc.  This evening the word was “mat.”  We told the two actors—­Mrs. P. and the son of the house—­they must act (nothing spoken) a word which rhymed with hat.  I will say they found it very quickly, but some of their attempts were funny enough—­really very cleverly done.  It amused me perfectly, though I must frankly confess I should have been incapable of either acting or guessing the word.  The only one I made out was fat, when they both came in so stuffed out with pillows and bolsters as to be almost unrecognizable.  The two dogs—­a beautiful little fox-terrier and a fine collie—­went nearly mad, barking and yapping every time the couple appeared—­their excitement reaching a climax when the actors came in and stretched themselves out on each side of the door, having finally divined the word mat.  The dogs made such frantic dashes at them that M. and Mme. de Lasteyrie had to carry them off bodily.

The next morning I went for a walk with M. de Lasteyrie.  We strolled up and down the “Allee des Soupirs,” so called in remembrance of one of the early chatelaines who trailed her mourning robes and widow’s veil over the fallen leaves, bemoaning her solitude until a favoured suitor appeared on the scene and carried her away to his distant home—­but the Allee still retains its name.

The park is small, but very well laid out.  Many of the memoirs of the time speak of walks and talks with Lafayette under the beautiful trees.

During the last years of Lafayette’s life, La Grange was a cosmopolitan centre.  Distinguished people from all countries came there, anxious to see the great champion of liberty; among them many Americans, who always found a gracious, cordial welcome; one silent guest—­a most curious episode which I will give in the words of the Marquis de Lasteyrie: 

“One American, however, in Lafayette’s own time, came on a lonely pilgrimage to La Grange; he was greeted with respect, but of that greeting he took no heed.  He was a silent guest, nor has he left any record of his impressions; in fact, he was dead before starting on his journey.  He arrived quite simply one fine autumn morning, in his coffin, accompanied by a letter which said:  ’William Summerville, having the greatest admiration for the General Lafayette, begs he will bury him in his land at La Grange.’  This, being against the law, could not be done, but Lafayette bought the whole of the small cemetery of the neighbouring village and laid the traveller from over the sea to rest in his ground indeed, though not under one of the many American trees at La Grange itself, of which the enthusiastic wanderer had probably dreamed.”