Stop at the Hôtel de Vieux Plats at Gonneville for breakfast. Never
will you have seen a house so full of curiosities of all sorts; the
walls are covered with clever sketches and paintings by more or less
well-known artists, and the service of the house is carried on by M.
and Mme. AUBOURG, their son and daughter, who, with the assistance
of a few neat-handed Phyllises, do everything themselves for their
customers, and are at once the best of cooks, _somméliers_, and
waiters. So cheery, so full of life and fun, so quick, so attentive,
serving you as if you were the only visitor in the place, though
the little inn is as full as it can be crammed, and there are fifty
persons breakfasting there at the same moment.

[Illustration: Mademoiselle qui sait attendre.]

Every room being occupied, and every nook in the garden too, we are
accommodated with a rustic table in the "Grand Salon," part of which
is screened off as a kind of bar. The "Grand Salon" is also full of
quaint pictures and eccentric curiosities; it is cool and airy, bright
flowers are in the windows, and the floor is sanded. We had stopped
here to refresh the horses, intending to breakfast at Etretat. But so
delighted were we, a party of "_deux couverts_," with this good hotel,
and still more with the _famille Aubourg_, that, though we had driven
away, and were a mile further on our road to Etretat, we decided--and
Counsellor Hunger was our adviser too--on returning to this house
where we had noticed breakfast-table tastefully laid out for some
expected visitors, and had been in the kitchen, and with our own eyes
had seen, and with our own noses had smelt the appetising preparation
for the parties already in possession. So we drove back again rapidly,
much to the delight of our coachman, who had become very melancholy,
and was evidently forming a very poor opinion of persons who could