You ask me how it happens that I wandered in this direction, into a part of the country about which you do not remember to have ever heard me talk, when there were so many places that would have seemed to you to be more interesting.  Well, this is more interesting than you think.  You must not fancy that a place is not interesting because you can’t find it in Hare, and because Henry James never talked about it.  That was James’s misfortune and not his fault.

The truth is I did look in many more familiar directions before fortunate accident led me here.  I had an idea that I wanted to live on the heights of Montmorency, in the Jean Jacques Rousseau country.  But it was terribly expensive—­too near to Enghien and its Casino and baccarat tables.  Then I came near to taking a house near Viroflay, within walking distance of Versailles.  But at the very mention of that all my French friends simply howled.  “It was too near to Paris”; “it was the chosen route of the Apaches”; and so on and so forth.  I did not so much care for the situation.  It was too familiar, and it was not really country, it was only suburbs.  But the house attracted me.  It was old and quaint, and the garden was pretty, and it was high.  Still it was too expensive.  After that I found a house well within my means at Poigny, about an hour, by diligence, from Rambouillet.  That did attract me.  It was real country, but it had no view and the house was very small.  Still I had got so tired of hunting that I was actually on the point of taking it when one of my friends accidentally found this place.  If it had been made to order it could not have suited me better—­situation, age, price, all just to my taste.  I put over a year and a half into the search.  Did I keep it to myself well?

Besides, the country here had a certain novelty to me.  I know the country on the other side of the Petit Morin, but all this is new to me except Meaux.  At first the house did not look habitable to me.  It was easily made so, however, and it has great possibilities, which will keep me busy for years.

Although you do not know this part of the country, it has, for me, every sort of attraction—­historical as well as picturesque.  Its historical interest is rather for the student than the tourist, and I love it none the less for that.

If ever you relent and come to see me, I can take you for some lovely walks.  I can, on a Sunday afternoon, in good weather, even take you to the theater—­what is more, to the theater to see the players of the Comedie Francaise.  It is only half an hour’s walk from my house to Pont-aux-Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison de retraite for aged actors, and where he died and is buried.  In the old park, where the du Barry used to walk in the days when Louis XVI clapped her in prison on a warrant wrung from the dying old king, her royal lover, there is an open-air theater, and there, on Sundays, the actors of the Theatre Francais play, within sight of the tomb of the founder of the retreat, under the very trees—­and they are stately and noble—­where the du Barry walked.