We indulge in very simple morning toilettes here, as we have no gentleman guests for whom to dress, nor ladies to criticise us; consequently a few brief moments before the mirror suffice to make us presentable.  A black print wrapper made Gabrielle-fashion, with our hair brushed off plain from our faces, and flowing loosely a la belle sauvage, or in cool braids, is the order of the day.  Even Marguerite, who is the most conventional of our quartette, has conformed to the fashion reigning here, and no longer coiffed in the stylish Imperatrice mode, her sunny brown hair floats over her shoulders unconfined by hair-pins, cushions, or rats.  Truly we live in Arcadian simplicity, for under our roof there are neither curling nor crimping irons, nor even a soupcon of the most innocent poudre de riz.

At half-past eight a little hand-bell, silver in material and tone, summons us to the breakfast-room.  This room is on the ground floor, and is one of the prettiest in the house.  Four windows give us an extended view of our Dame Chatelaine’s sloping meadows and wooded hills, and the carriage road winding off towards the pine grove and the house in the woods.  We have several pictures on the walls—­first a portrait of my dear uncle; a boyish face with fair hair, deep blue eyes, and an expression angelic in sweetness.  No one would imagine it to be the face of a married man, but it was painted, mamma says, when he was thirty years old.  Two large and admirable photographs, taken early last summer, hang opposite it.  A striking contrast they are to the pensive, fragile, blonde boy; these are impressed with the vigor and mental and physical activity of his busy life, but the broad intellectual brow, and the almost divine expression that plays about the mouth, are the same in each.

An engraving from a picture by Paul Delaroche, the Archangel Gabriel—­the “patron,” in Catholic parlance, of our little Gabrielle—­hangs between the windows, and over the comfortable sofa is a copy of Liotard’s celebrated pastel “la belle Chocolatiere” in the Dresden Gallery.  This copy Aunt Mary bought in that city when there some years ago, and it is considered wonderfully fine.  Very pretty and coquettish she looks in her picturesque Vienna dress, with the small, neatly-fitting cap, ample apron, and tiny Louis Quinze shoes.  In her case

  “My face is my fortune,”

was exemplified, and so pretty and modest is her demeanor that it is no wonder that Count Dietrichstein, haughty nobleman though he was, married her.  She is very different, however, from the chocolate vendors whom I have seen in the streets of Paris.  I don’t think a nobleman would ever raise one of them from their original station, for they are as a rule past fifty, and ugly and withered as only a Frenchwoman of that age can be.

Breakfast is followed by a turn upon the piazza, a little stroll to the spring, near which delicious wild strawberries nestle in a background of sweet clover, bright buttercups, and field daisies, or a game of croquet under the grand old oak-trees