builds himself a new and vulgar chateau, puts on his cards a coronet, and passes, when in the country, as le Marquis de Neufchâtel. So that Mr. Russell was quite in the fashion in raising himself to the rank of a Count.
Most of the old landed noblesse have sunk to a low stage, but not all; some have grappled with the difficulties of their position, adapted themselves to the times, and have raised their fortunes.
A friend of mine in the district of Périgord inherited a very poor remnant of his ancestral estate, which had all been taken from his grandfather, condemned to support himself by breaking stones for the roads. This gentleman belonged to a family whose possessions on the Causses de Languedoc extended from one hué to another, that is to say, the bounds to which a shout would reach. On the remnant of the recovered estate he planted oaks, and now does a flourishing business in truffles, and is in specially easy circumstances.
In Brittany and Normandy, the landed noblesse have taken to keep huge dairy farms, or to growing many acres of vegetables for the London and Paris markets, mainly the former.
Another resident at Pau was Mr. Nugent, of the family of the Earl of Westmeath, with his wife. He came to marry her in rather an odd way. He was staying in a house in Ireland, when, one evening the young folk were playing boisterous games, one of which consisted in their running after and trying to catch one another. The girl of the house was flying from Mr. Nugent, and as he pursued, she dashed through a doorway and flung the door to behind her. Mr. Nugent had his head down, and the doorknob struck him on the skull and fractured it, so that it had to be trepanned, and a silver plate let in over the hole thus made, and the skin drawn across it. When he recovered, he proposed to her. "Sure," said he, "you broke my head, and ye won't be so blood-thirsty as to break my heart as well." The plea was irresistible. She married him and wore the bone extracted from his skull in a brooch ever after.
Another gentleman, whose name I forgot, lost his wife at Pau. He had the body sealed up in a lead coffin, which he kept in the dining-room under the sideboard, upon which stood the whisky-bottle. In the cemetery he had a double-walled grave constructed,
