Wilhelm directed his steps at once to this churchyard, where, beside the modern iron crosses, there were marble headstones showing dates that went back to the seventeenth century.  In the oldest as well as the newest inscriptions the same name occurred over and over again, speaking well for the settled habits of the population.  And, according to the inscriptions, most of those buried here had lived to be eighty or ninety years of age.  Had Ault been a professedly fashionable bathing place, one might have been tempted to think that this churchyard, with its cheering records in stone and iron of the longevity of the natives, had been set down in the very center of the town to encourage the visitors.

The Hotel de France recommended itself by extreme cleanliness, but otherwise it was very simple.  The rooms contained only such furniture as was absolutely necessary, the dining-room was bare of decoration, and therefore happily free of those gruesome colored prints which the commercial traveller delights to sow broadcast over the unsuspecting country towns.  Only the so-called salon boasted the luxury of a cottage piano, a polished table, a few cane chairs, and a looking-glass over the chimneypiece, on which lay a box of dominoes and a backgammon board, eloquently suggestive of mine host’s ideas as to the most suitable occupation for his guests.

The hotel proprietors were as simple and homely as their house.  The man wore a seaman’s cap and a blue coat with brass anchor buttons, and was more than delighted if you took him for a seafaring man.  He had, in fact, been to sea once, as ship’s cook, or steward, or something of the sort.  Now he sat most of the time in the cafe of the hotel, supplied the neighbors with little drams of cognac, and told the visitors endless stories of the buying and selling of property in the little town.  His wife was the soul of the establishment.  She possessed the gift of omnipresence.  At one and the same moment you might see her in the kitchen and in the outhouses, in the hotel and in the cafe.  The servants, of whom there was a considerable number, answered to a look, a bock of her finger.  You could hear her clear voice from morning till night in the courtyard or on the stairs.  Everywhere she lent a helping hand, and her busy fingers accomplished as much as all the men and maids put together.  With it all she was never out of temper, always had a word or a smile for every passer-by, took a personal interest in each of her guests, took instant notice of a diminished appetite or a pale cheek, and always sent up lime-flower tea to anybody who happened to come rather later than usual to breakfast.