CONTENTS . I . . E C T E A D U E BEAU-RIVAG . E . . . . PAB 1 E I1 . THE UNITEDK INGDOM . . . . . . 22 I11 . MOONLIGHT . . . . . . . . . 5 1 IV . IL usIoas . . . . . . . . . 95 V . IN THE DRAWING. RO . OM . . . . . . 11 4 VI. AN TUDEOFBERTI I . S . . . . . 144 V11 . CROSSR OADS . . . . . . . . . 16 9 V111 . SUNSHINE . . . . . . . . . 2 03 IX . INDOORS . . . . . . . . . . 24 0 X . NARGARE . T . . . . . . . . 2 80 XI . THE UNDISCOVER C E O D U NTRY . . . . . 306 XI1 . AN UNUSUALH ONEYMO . ON . . . . . 331 XIII . Tm QREATR EPUBLIC . . . . . . . 388 JOHN PERCYFIELD CHAPTER I IT is with no little satisfaction, I confess, that for the past four months I have been writing Chiteau de Beau-Rivage at the top of my letters to Charlotte. Charlotte, you must know, is my younger sister, to whom I mite about everything that happens to me. She is altogether the most charming little sister that ever a man had, a very proper and sedate young lady when occasion demands but at heart a jolly youngster, a camarade of the first order. I suppose that S what Frederic thought, the villain, when he came along and married her. The Chkteau is delightful. It is not that the establishment is elegant. On the contrary, it is a great, bare place that might almost be considered uncomfortable by those who love pholstery. But it has a charm about it that you dont get with newer buildings. The charm has been gathering at the Chgteau for upwards of four hundred years. Things that do improve with age seem to improve prodigiously. I wonder how it was with Methuselah. If he got better and better J . c . . TE XCYFIELD each year, he must have been uncommonly civil before the end came. But it is nt that way with my aunt Percyfield. Perhaps she has nt started yet. I often feel grateful to the old duke of Savoy who took it upon himself to build the ChSteau, and selected this particular spot for the building of it. I can fancy that in his day the immediate neighborhood was somethillg quite different from what it is now. Where I see fields and vineyards, rambling granges and stiff new villas, the old duke probably saw an almost uninterrupted forest. I would give him all the villas and welcome. In place of the hard, macadamized road, where the Chiitelaine and I go spinning along on our wheels, there was probably a rough forest path, where the dukes horse had to pick careful way of a dark night, and where he himself had to grasp both sword and reins. I like to fancy that the old garden was also planned by the duke, and that the stately Lombardy poplars which are now our special pride and delight - or, perhaps, their ancestors - may have been set out at his bidding. I picture them as sheltering a suitable promenade for the morning walk of the dukes young wife, the lovely Margherita. But however different the immediate surroundings may have been, the peat features remain the same. There was the same turquoise-blue lake the same range of Juras opposite the same bold Voirons and Saleve the same eternal vhiteness of Mont Blanc the same deep blue sky, and the same possible heaven beyond it. These things have not changed, though I 2 THE CHATEAU DE BEAU-RIVAGE dare say we look at them all with such modern eyes, such enlightened eyes, that we gather a totally dif ferent impression from the one made on the old duke when he first settled upon this site for his Ch8teau and mine...