Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
”When did I deny you anything?” reproachfully replied de Breze.
”Never; nor will you now, though it is a great slice of property that I require. Will the best of men humour my new fancy? Yes? Well, then, know that I am tired of Paris and its tinsel, and would fain retire to the country.”
”You--leave the gaieties of Paris?”
”Yes. The good air and quiet will brace my nerves, untuned by racket, and that explosion of presumptuous wickedness that sacrificed so many lives.”
”The storming of the Bastile?” returned the marechal. ”Pshaw! By and bye we will terribly avenge de Launay and his intrepid garrison. What on earth will you do in the country? In a week you'll be petrified with ennui.”
”Not at Lorge. Its grimness suits my humour. The children are less strong than I would have them. Freedom in pure air will bring back the roses to their cheeks, and in them you know I am engrossed. My children, oh! my children! What should I have become without them.”
The involuntary bitter cry, so eloquent of pain, and so speedily suppressed, clove the bosom of the marechal.
”She will not tell me or have confidence,” he groaned inwardly, ”and yet her suffering is great. She must have her way in this as in other things, and G.o.d be with her in her travail.”
With the delicate tact of a gentleman he let pa.s.s the cry unnoticed, and simply said, ”What do you wish, my dearest?”
”Lorge,” she replied, ”no less. What a rapacious greedy soul I must be to rob you of the home of your ancestors!”
”It shall be yours,” the marechal replied, delighted to be able to do something. ”I understand that for some reason you desire to take possession and hold the place without interference? Is that so? At my death, it will be yours with all the rest. Meanwhile, I lend it, to do with as you will.”
It was an odd fancy. What could be the meaning of the freak? Presently he enquired, ”What will your husband do?”
”It was his idea,” was the eager rejoinder. ”He wishes it, and I am--oh--so very glad! I long to get him away from Paris and its evil influences. Do you know, father?” Gabrielle continued in a grave whisper, ”that there are secret meetings he attends, to come home at dawn in a fever. And there are forbidding men who come to see him, whom he evidently does not want to see; such coa.r.s.e and common men. I don't know what it all is, but it has something to do with that mystical groping after the unattainable which is so weariful, and can only end in madness. To a Christian, such impious presumption is horrible!”
”Then I hold the clue?” cried the old man, much relieved. ”It is the prophet who is in your way? You would wean Clovis from Mesmer, turn him from Cagliostro, and carry him to Ma.s.s on Sundays?”
The idea was so comically innocent, that de Breze wheezed with delight. ”Sweet pet!” he said, tapping his daughter's cheek archly, ”you are earnest if not clever.”
And then he went off into a shout of laughter, as he beheld in imagination the daily scene at Lorge. _Tete-a-tete_ in the dreary chateau among the bats and owls, she would drone out Bossuet's sermons to put animal magnetism to flight; perhaps call in the village cure to a.s.sist. What a delightful prospect for the husband! How ghastly tiresome is the wife who preaches at her other half; drones out to him sc.r.a.ps out of good books. Well, well. We must not place our finger twixt bark and tree; but if any form of desperation was likely to awake the entranced Clovis (as Toinon had it), a system of moral lecturing on the part of a well-meaning but narrow-minded spouse was about the thing to perform the miracle.
The marechal trotted home quite pleased, and straightway informed by letter those whom it concerned that henceforth, the Marquise de Gange was to be considered the proprietress of Lorge. Both M. and Madame de Breze equally loathed the place. If Gabrielle was possessed by the strange fancy of playing chatelaine, in its cobwebbed corridors, let her do so by all means, and convert her husband if she might.
The good marechal was mistaken. Gabrielle knew better than to worry her husband with importunate readings, but trusted rather for the working of a change to the renewed intimacy which retirement must produce. She never would have dared to propose a hermitage to Clovis, but when he himself suggested a temporary flitting, she thanked heaven as if a prayer had been answered. She could not guess that he was afraid to stop in Paris, and that he was revolving an embryo scheme of closer union with Mesmer. The prophet having been ejected from the land with Maranatha, could not unfortunately bestow his presence or personal a.s.sistance. But why should he not send to his pupil some learned adept, well versed in mystic lore who, in sylvan solitude would further instruct the neophyte? Removed from the frivolous court, and secure against being mixed in the treasonable doings of political philanthropists, his mind would be in a condition of receptivity, and his studies would make giant strides.
Poor Gabrielle! She had said to herself with a choking heart-leap that, removed from pernicious influences, she and the cherubs would wind fond webs about him, and win him from indifference to love. Alas!
Poor simple yearning wife!
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHATEAU OF ”LORGE.”
In Touraine, midway between Tours and Blois, the venerable chateau of Lorge stands out from a wooded background, bathing its feet in the swiftly flowing Loire, morosely contemplating the details of its grim reflection. Profoundly interesting from an archaeological point of view, the historic pile is not a lively dwelling, and it is no wonder that the jolly old marechal should have ungrudgingly pa.s.sed it to his daughter. Privileged to occupy a place in one of the most smiling provinces of France, it is within a drive of Amboise on one side and Chinon on the other, dignified castles both; and not very far away is Diane de Poictier's Chenonceaux, whimsically spanning a river, a specimen of elfin architecture straight from fairyland. Lorge dates from the iron period; not the time of prehistoric man, who had recently blossomed out of monkeydom, but of the early mediaeval barons, who slept in their armour--as they still do on their tombs--whose pet pastimes were the cleaving of pates and the quaffing of usquebaugh.
With the march of centuries Amboise, Chinon, and the rest found it advisable to polish themselves up, and modify their native harshness to be in touch with less rugged epochs; but no coaxing ingenuity of architect or landscape gardener could ever smooth the frown from the frowning face of Lorge. It seemed to say with pride, ”The darkest and most cruel deeds have been perpetrated within my walls. Down below I have smothered the cries for mercy of weak women outraged, and children brutally maltreated. My favourite music is the clank of steel. I was baptised with blood, whose reek may never fade, whose stain may never be effaced.”
You cannot make a junketting house out of a fortress, and Lorge, despite changes, is a fortress still. On the facade, defended by the river, are the stately reception rooms, opening one into the other in a string; a long suite which occupies the first floor, whose heavily mullioned cas.e.m.e.nts are large enough to permit the sun to gild the antique hangings. Each of these windows is adorned by a ponderous stone balcony, which can be used for purposes of defence. The other sides of the edifice seem blank and blind, the high enclosing walls being unbroken, save by a dentilated series of merlons and crenels, with cruciform embrasures below, The chambers on these sides are particularly depressing to the spirits, since they afford no prospect, save a bare paved court with the enclosing wall beyond.
Courageous chatelaines, striving after cheerfulness, have made efforts from time to time to brighten Lorge. The drawbridge and portcullis, which jealously barred the entrance, have been removed from the double archway and replaced by wooden doors. The moat which guarded the three sides landward, with a defensive wall along the outer bank, has become a garden with trim green slopes, and a wealth of glorious roses. The ends that used to join the river have been walled up, and adorned with flights of steps which lead to decaying boat-houses. Private posterns, drilled in the masonry, afford easy access from the courtyard to the moat-pleasaunce for such as may possess the keys; but in spite of every effort, the flowering hedges and rose-bushes only serve by contrast to make Lorge more dreary--a skull bedecked with flowers. One specially brave lady had the hardihood once to plan great gardens in the Dutch style beyond the moat, on the other side of the road. There were long alleys of clipped yew and beech; _tonelles_ or arched bowers to give grateful shade; a procession of weird animals, fas.h.i.+oned of holly, that cast fantastic shadows on the sward; oblong tanks where swans serenely sailed, steering among isles of water-lily. But no subsequent chatelaine was st.u.r.dy enough to carry on the hopeless war.
The alleys were soon choked, the _tonelles_ grew into thickets, the mimic menagerie degenerated into ragged rows of bushes. By the time the marechal inherited, there was no place devoted to flowers except the moat-pleasaunce, and even that was sadly neglected.