Walter and I were inclined to give Shakespeare and Pope the credit of these familiar sayings; but we were all wrong, as Lydia, after puzzling us for some time, exclaimed triumphantly:
"No, further back than either Shakespeare or Pope; these wise sayings, and many more like them, were written by a Tourangeau, one Monsieur Rabelais."
"And where did you come across them?" we asked, quite put out with Lydia for knowing so much more than the rest of us.
Then Lydia, who appears upon the surface to be a guileless and undesigning young person, confessed that she had extracted this information from a Frenchman with whom we all had some pleasant conversation on the way to Langeais, and she has been treasuring it up ever since to spring it upon us in an unguarded moment when we were far from the haunts of Rabelais. This gentleman, whose name is one of the things we shall probably never know, with the cheerfully appropriating spirit of the French, was ready to claim most of Shakespeare's aphorisms for Rabelais. We are willing to forgive him, however, because he introduced us to a phrase coined by the creator of Pantagruel, in slow-going sixteenth century days, which so exactly fits the situation to-day that it seems to have been made for such travellers as ourselves: "Nothing is so dear and precious as time," wrote M. Rabelais, long before tourists from all over the world were trying to live here on twenty-four hours a day and yet see all the châteaux and castles upon their lists.
My brother Archie has been talking of coming over to join us either here or in Paris. As he is a rather sudden person in his movements, it would not surprise me to have him appear any day. I only hope that he may come while we are in Touraine. He is so fond of everything in the agricultural line that he would delight in this fertile, well-cultivated country.
VIII
A BATTLE ROYAL OF DAMES
Pension B——, Tours, September 6th.