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story. She and Alice were motoring down through southern France, and they had lunch at Belignin. There was a big Army post nearby. They were looking for a place to buy, and somebody showed them this chateau. It was perfect, but they were told, “You can forget this one. It's not on the market, because some Army captain owns it, quite a wealthy Army captain. He has kept himself stationed here by refusing promotion.”

Gertrude decided, “I've got to have this house.” So she went back to Paris and began raising hell because this fellow had been neglected. He was promoted to a colonel, transferred--and Miss Stein got his house!

She was fairly crafty, wasn't she?

Was she!

Alice did the cooking--she was a great cook--and we had a wonderful week-end there. You go upstairs to my study and you'll find a little sketch that Jo Davidson drew of me while I was sitting in a deck chair out in the garden at Belignin with Gertrude's poodle, “Basket,” at my feet.

One memorable thing happened while we were there. Picasso walked in unannounced! He had written some poetry, and he wanted Gertrude's opinion of it. She sat him down in a rocking chair, and went inside to read the poetry. This left Jo and me to talk to Picasso in French. Now, if possible, his French was worse than ours. So the conversation, to put it mildly, was a bit halting, because nobody could understand