A residence at some mild seaside place having been prescribed for my wife, who was in a delicate state of health, I found that the coast of Brittany offered the most sheltered spot within an eight hours' journey of Paris, and late in the summer of 1868 my family went to reside at St. Servan, a Breton watering-place adjacent to St. Malo. The house I rented there was known as “La Petite Amélia”—a name which perplexed and amused my English friends, some of whom used jocularly to address their letters to me “chez la petite Amélia,” suggesting that I was residing with a petite dame so-named. Adjoining was “La Grande Amélia,” a somewhat pretentious pavilion of red brick which like my own house had been christened after the Princess Amelia, George III.'s favourite daughter, who, according to the traditions of the place, once resided there. Fanny Burney tells us much about the princess in her “Diary” and Thackeray in his “Georges” speaks of her as “pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, her early death, and the extreme passionate tenderness with which her father loved her.”

In addition to the tribe of English tourists who visited St. Servan during the bathing season, I discovered to my surprise that a regular British colony, attracted to the place by its phenomenal cheapness, was permanently installed there. Some of the settlers had come direct from England on the favourable report of friends already living in the town, but the majority had migrated from Jersey, whither they had at first betaken themselves in search of some favoured spot, where they might eke out their slender incomes to the best advantage.