Our dinner was rather pleasant that evening.  We had the Prefet, M. Sebline; Senator of the Aisne, Jusserand, present Ambassador to Washington; Mme. Thenard, of the Comedie Francaise, and several young people.  Jusserand is always a brilliant talker—­so easy—­no pose of any kind, and Sebline was interesting, telling about all sorts of old customs in the country.

Though we were so near Paris, hardly two hours by the express, the people had remained extraordinarily primitive.  There were no manufacturing towns anywhere near us, nothing but big farms, forests and small far-apart villages.  The modern socialist-radical ideas were penetrating very slowly into the heads of the people—­they were quite content to be humble tillers of the soil, as their fathers had been before them.  The men had worked all their lives on the farms, the women too; beginning quite young, taking care of cows and geese, picking beet-root, etc.

What absolutely changed the men was the three years military service.  After knocking about in garrison towns, living with a great many people always, having all sorts of amusements easily at hand and a certain independence, once the service of the day was over, they found the dull regular routine of the farm very irksome.  In the summer it was well enough—­harvest time was gay, everyone in the fields, but in the short, cold winter days, with the frozen ground making all the work doubly hard, just enough food and no distraction of any kind but a pipe in the kitchen after supper, the young men grew terribly restive and discontented.  Very few of them remain, and the old traditions handed down from father to son for three or four generations are disappearing.  After dinner we had music and some charming recitations by Mme. Thenard.  Her first one was a comic monologue which always had the wildest success in London, “Je suis veuve,” beginning it with a ringing peal of laughter which was curiously contagious—­everyone in the room joined in.  I like her better in some of her serious things.  When she said “le bon gite” and “le petit clairon,” by Paul Deroulede, in her beautiful deep voice, I had a decided choke in my throat.

We often had music at the chateau.  Many of our artist friends came down—­glad to have two or three days rest in the quiet old house.  We had an amusing experience once with the young organist from La Ferte—­almost turned his hair gray.  He had taught himself entirely and managed his old organ very well.  He had heard vaguely of Wagner and we had always promised him we would try and play some of his music with two pianos—­eight hands.  Four hands are really not enough for such complicated music.  Mlle. Dubois, premier prix du conservatoire—­a beautiful musician—­was staying with us one year and we arranged a concert for one evening, asking the organist to come to dinner.  The poor man was rather terrified at dining at the chateau—­had evidently taken great pains