A Hilltop on the Marne

When it is all done I feel as I used to in my strenuous working days, when, after midnight, all the rest of the world--my little world--being calmly asleep, I cuddled down in the corner of my couch to read;--the world is mine!

Never in my life--anywhere, under any circumstances--have I been so well taken care of. I have a femme de menage--a sort of cross between a housekeeper and a maid-of-all-work. She is a married woman, the wife of a farmer whose house is three minutes away from mine. My dressing-room window and my dining-room door look across a field of currant bushes to her house. I have only to blow on the dog's whistle and she can hear. Her name is Amelie, and she is a character, a nice one, but not half as much of a character as her husband--her second. She is a Parisian. Her first husband was a jockey, half Breton, half English. He died years ago when she was young: broke his neck in a big race at Auteuil.

She has had a checkered care