* * * * *

Our cousins, Comte and Comtesse d’Y——­, have a pretty little old place not very far from Villers-sur-Mer, where we went sometimes for sea-bathing.  The house is an ordinary square white stone building, a fine terrace with a flight of steps leading down to the garden on one side.  The park is delightful—­many splendid old trees.  Until a few years ago there were still some that dated since Louis XIV.  The last one of that age—­a fine oak, with wide spreading branches—­died about two years ago, but they cannot make up their minds to cut it down.  I advised them to leave the trunk standing—­(I think, by degrees, the branches will fall as they are quite dead)—­cover it with ivy or a vine of some kind, and put a notice on it of the age of the tree.

The house stands high, and they have splendid views—­on one side, from the terrace, a great expanse of green valley looking toward Falaise—­on the other, the sea—­a beautiful, blue summer sea, when we were there the other day.

We went over from Villers to breakfast.  It was late in the season, the end of September—­one of those bright days one sometimes has in September, when summer still lingers and the sun gives beautiful mellow tints to everything without being strong enough to make one feel the heat.  The road was lovely all the way, particularly after we turned off the high road at the top of the Houlgate Hill.  We went through countless little Norman lanes, quite narrow, sometimes—­between high green banks with a hedge on top, and the trees meeting over our heads—­so narrow that I wondered what would happen if we met another auto.  We left the sea behind us, and plunged into the lovely green valley that runs along back of the coast line.  We came suddenly on the gates of the chateau, rather a sharp turn.  There was a broad avenue with fine trees leading up to the house—­on one side, meadows fenced off with white wooden palings where horses and cows were grazing—­a pretty lawn before the house with beds of begonias, and all along the front, high raised borders of red geranium which looked very well against the grey stone.

We found a family party, Comte and Comtesse d’Y——­, their daughter and a governess.  We went upstairs (a nice wooden staircase with broad shallow steps) to an end room, with a beautiful view over the park, where we got out of all the wraps, veils, and glasses that one must have in an open auto if one wishes to look respectable when one arrives, and went down at once to the hall where the family was waiting.

The dining-room was large and light, high, wide windows and beautiful trees wherever one looked.  The decoration of the room was rather curious.  The d’Y——­s descend—­like many Norman families—­from William the Conqueror, and there are English coats-of-arms on some of the shields on the walls.  A band which looks like fresco, but is really painted on linen—­very cleverly arranged with some composition which makes