At the station we found an omnibus which conveyed us to the Hôtel du Bon Laboureur, the Mecca of all hungry pilgrims, where a substantial luncheon was soon spread before us, enlivened, as Walter puts it, by a generous supply of the light wine of the country. Looking over my shoulder, as I write, he declares that I am gilding that luncheon at the Bon Laboureur with all the romance and glamour of Chenonceaux, and that it was not substantial at all; but on the contrary pitifully light. Perhaps I am idealizing the luncheon, as Walter says, but as part and parcel of a day of unallayed happiness it stands out in my mind as a feast of the gods, despite all adverse criticism. Being a mere man, as Lydia expresses it, Walter feels the discomforts of travel more than we women folk. He says that he is heartily tired of luncheons made up of flimflams, omelettes, entrées, and the like, and when the inevitable salad and fowl appeared he quite shocked us by saying that he would like to see some real chicken, the sort that we have at home broiled by Mandy, who knows how to cook chicken far and away better than these Johnny Crapauds with all their boasted culinary skill.
Lydia and I were congratulating ourselves that no one could understand this rude diatribe when we noticed, at the next table, our acquaintance of Langeais, Lydia's aphoristic Frenchman, if I may coin a word. This did not seem a good time to renew civilities, especially as he was evidently laughing behind his napkin. I motioned to Walter to keep quiet and gave him a look that was intended to be very severe, and then Miss Cassandra, with her usual friendly desire to pour oil upon the troubled waters, stirred them up more effectually by adding: "Yes, Walter, but in travelling one must take the bad with the good; we have no buildings like these at home and I for one am quite willing to give up American social pleasures and luxuries for the sake of all that we see here and all that we learn."
Can you imagine anything more bewildering to a Frenchman than Miss Cassandra's philosophy, especially her allusion to American social pleasures and luxuries, which to the average and untravelled French mind would be represented, I fancy, by a native Indian picnic with a menu of wild turkey and quail? It was a very good luncheon, I insisted, even if not quite according to American ideas, and variety is one of the pleasures of foreign travel,—this last in my most instructive manner and to Lydia's great amusement. She alone grasped the situation, as Walter and Miss Cassandra were seated with their backs to the stranger. In order to prevent further criticisms upon French living I changed the subject by asking Walter for our Joanne guidebook, and succeeded in silencing the party, after Artemus Ward's plan with his daughter's suitors, by reading aloud to them, during which the stranger finished his luncheon and after the manner of the suitors quietly took his departure.
"We shall never see him again," I exclaimed, "and he will always remember us as those rude and unappreciative Americans!"
"And what have we done to deserve such an opinion?" asked Walter.
"Attacked them on their most sensitive point. A Frenchman prides himself, above everything else, upon the cuisine of his country, and considers American living altogether crude and uncivilized."
"And is that all, Zelphine, and don't you think it about time that they should learn better; and who is the he in question, anyhow?"
When I explained about the Frenchman, who was seated behind him and understood every invidious word, Walter, instead of being contrite, said airily that he regretted that he had not spoken French as that would probably have been beyond Mr. Crapaud's comprehension.
A number of coaches were standing in front of the little inn, one of which Miss Cassandra and Lydia engaged in order to save their strength for the many steps to be taken in and around the château; but they did not save much, after all, as the coaches all stop at the end of the first avenue of plane trees at a railroad crossing and after this another long avenue leads to the grounds. Walter and I thought that we decidedly had the best of it, as we strolled through the picturesque little village, and having our kodaks with us we were able to get some pretty bits by the way, among other things a photograph of a sixteenth century house in which the pages of Francis I are said to have been lodged.