by yells from the postilions.  If the horses did not go far enough to one side, there would be a terrible collision, and a volley of oaths, together with a clashing of lanterns and a clatter of broken windows.  If the horses got too far out of the way, the carriage would first of all tilt towards the sideway, slope more and more, and frequently end by turning over gently into the ditch.  Then a clamour would rise from the menagerie, everybody first feeling themselves all over, and then laughing, while the great machine was being lifted up, preparatory to a fresh start.  A little farther on, it might be, another accident would occur.  We would be passing through a village, and, to create a sensation, the postboys would begin cracking their whips in concert.  The horses would get excited, and the pace would increase.  It was all very well if the village street was a straight one, but if there was an angle in it the horses would take it too short, and there would be a violent collision with the kerbstone at the corner.  Then all the wheelwrights and all the innkeepers, ever on the watch for such mishaps, would hurry up.  The repairs would take four hours perhaps, whereat the GRANDSPARENTS would storm, but we children were jubilant.  Confusion reigned supreme, and we could write to our little friends, “We were upset at such and such a place; we broke down at such another.”  We got lots of copy out of it.

There was no great interest about our visits to Randan.  We used to leave the high-road at Aigueperse.  Six or eight pairs of oxen were harnessed to the carriage, and Auvergnats in their costumes and broad-brimmed hats (there were still costumes there, in those days), with goads in their hands, drove the team, the carriage swinging backwards and forwards on the muddy roads, up hill and down dale; it was hard work getting there, but we did get there at last.  The great entertainment of the visit was to go and see Madame la Dauphine, who went through a cure at Vichy every year.

It was far pleasanter to stay at Eu.  The old castle of the Guises was a mere tumbledown barrack at the time I speak of.  The passages had waves in them like the sea.  When there was a storm the whole house shook, and the smaller children used to feel quite frightened, when, after listening to Anatole de Montesquiou’s ghost stories, of an evening, they had to go through the Guise Gallery, with all its dreadful portraits which seemed to step out of their frames to the dreary whistle of the sea-wind.  But all the same we loved the old place.  It was quite out of the common run.  Just as we used to go and see Madame la Dauphine at Vichy from Randan, we used to go from Eu to see Madame la Duchesse de Berri, at Dieppe, which she had made her summer residence.  We accompanied her once to the lighthouse at Ailly under the escort of her guard of honour, a squadron of Cauchoise women on horseback.  In illo tempore—­those days; all Norman women, and those of the Caux district