Of course I shall only take you there if you insist. I have outgrown
the playhouse. I fancy that I am much more likely to sit out on the
lawn and preach to you on how the theater has missed its mission than I
am--unless you insist--to take you down to the hill to listen to Moliere
or Racine.
If, however, that bores you,--it would me,--you can sit under the trees
and close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard lecture without the
slides. I shall tell you about the little walled town of Crecy, still
surrounded by its moat, where the tiny little houses stand in gardens
with their backs on the moat, each with its tiny footbridge, that pulls
up, just to remind you that it was once a royal city, with drawbridge
and portcullis, a city in which kings used to stay, and in which Jeanne
d'Arc slept one night on her way back from crowning her king at Rheims:
a city that once boasted ninety-nine towers. Half a dozen of these
towers still stand. Their thick walls are now pierced with windows, in
which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to say that to-day they are the
humble homes of simple people, and to remind you of what warfare was in
the days when such towers were a defense.
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