And when we woke there were the eggs—and pain grillé. It was about the time when certain people that I know are usually on the way over to the Vestiaire, and we hugged ourselves and each other, I can tell you, to think that we were off in Fontainebleau in an elegant boudoir with trees whispering outside the window and boiled eggs before us.
We had luncheon in the forest. We decided to leave the palais and grounds until another day when there wouldn’t be such a crowd and the sun would not be so hot.
Moret is the cutest place ever. A cobbled main street, with little stores and tiny streets leading off of it, and old stone towers over the city gates. It is on the Loire, and we crossed the bridge and sat down in the long grass at the water’s edge and looked back at the town through the trees; cunning little houses with window-boxes leaning out over the river, children and ducks playing in the water; and topping the town, the tower of the lovely old twelfth-century church.
We went up to the church, and really it is the most romantic, irregular, moth-eaten, ancient of days that you can imagine. The inside is lovely in outline and general construction, but here and there it has been whitewashed and generally renovated in a deplorable way. Some one evidently died—as Marje remarked—and left to the church three brilliant cut-glass chandeliers, which give the most bizarre effect, hanging in the main aisle. We wandered around all alone—not a person in the place, not even a priest or choir-boy was to be seen.
We started home and went to Barbizon for tea. That is another cute place. Lovely villas, and tablets outside saying what artist lived there. There are several fine hotels. One was really very snappy, and we had tea there outdoors under a yellow-and-white striped awning. The country all about is lovely and just shrieks Millet. If it hadn’t turned cold suddenly I should have wanted to get out and sketch and let Marje work on the car awhile. She always can find something to do, and if there’s nothing in sight for me to draw, I always can draw her doing it.
I have just been playing over the easier of the Symphonic Études—if there are such—and here I am writing away and it’s bedtime. Think of how wonderful it was to have that car, and find that lovely place to stay, and to have each other to go with, and then to come home to our salon and my darling piano!
I am waiting impatiently for the letter telling me what I’m to do in Switzerland. I am afraid you are quite unnecessarily worried about me. There was a time when I was pretty ill and tired, but I am much better now. Mrs. Shurtleff has given both Marje and me every other Monday off. I haven’t written to you yet about our salon, but it makes all the difference in the world to our health and happiness.
Good-bye for now. I will write you a sensible letter soon, full of information and untouched by frivolity. I understand that one boat has skipped. I know I didn’t get any mail. Heaven know when you’ll get this.
Much love, Mother dear, from
Esther.