THE CHATEAU DE SAINTE AULAIRE.
"Mark yon old mansion frowning through the trees,
Whose hollow turret wooes the whistling breeze."
My acquaintance with Mademoiselle Josephine progressed rapidly; although, to confess the truth, I soon found myself much less deeply in love than I had at first supposed. For this disenchantment, fate and myself were alone to blame. It was not her fault if I had invested her with a thousand imaginary perfections; nor mine if the spell was broken as soon as I discovered my mistake.
Too impatient to wait till Sunday, I made my way on Saturday afternoon to Rue Aubry-le-Boucher. I persuaded myself that I was bound to call on her, in order to conclude our arrangements for the following day. At all events, I argued, she might forget the engagement, or believe that I had forgotten it. So I went, taking with me a magnificent bouquet, and an embroidered satin bag full of marrons glacés.
My divinity lived, as she had told me, sous les toits--and sous les toits, up seven flights of very steep and dirty stairs, I found her. It was a large attic with a sloping roof, overlooking a bristling expanse of chimney-pots, and commanding the twin towers of Notre Dame. There were some colored prints of battles and shipwrecks wafered to the walls; a couple of flower-pots in the narrow space between the window-ledge and the coping outside; a dingy canary in a wire cage; a rival mechanical cuckoo in a Dutch clock in the corner; a little bed with striped hangings; a rush-bottomed prie-dieu chair in front of a plain black crucifix, over which drooped a faded branch of consecrated palm; and some few articles of household furniture of the humblest description. In all this there was nothing vulgar. Under other circumstances I might, perhaps, have even elicited somewhat of grace and poetry from these simple materials. But conceive what it was to see them through an atmosphere of warm white steam that left an objectionable clamminess on the backs of the chairs and caused even the door-handle to burst into a tepid perspiration. Conceive what it was to behold my adored one standing in the middle of the room, up to her elbows in soap-suds, washing out the very dress in which she was to appear on the morrow.... Good taste defend us! Could anything be more cruelly calculated to disturb the tender tenor of a lover's dreams? Fancy what Leander would have felt, if, after swimming across the Hellespont, he had surprised Hero at the washing-tub! Imagine Romeo's feelings, if he had scaled the orchard-walls only to find Juliet helping to hang out the family linen!
The worst of it was that my lovely Josephine was not in the least embarrassed. She evidently regarded the washing-tub as a desirable piece of furniture, and was not even conscious that the act of "soaping in," was an unromantic occupation!
Such was the severity of this first blow that I pleaded an engagement, presented my offerings (how dreadfully inappropriate they seemed!), and hurried away to a lecture on materia medica at the École Pratique; that being a good, congenial, dismal entertainment for the evening!
Sunday came with the sunrise, and at midday, true as the clock of St. Eustache, I knocked once more at the door of the mansarde where my Josephine dwelt. This time, my visit being anticipated, I found her dressed to receive me. She looked more fresh and charming than ever; and the lilac muslin which I had seen in the washing-tub some eighteen or twenty hours before, became her to perfection. So did her pretty green shawl, pinned closely at the throat and worn as only a French-woman would have known how to wear it. So did the white camellia and the moss-rose buds which she had taken out of my bouquet, and fastened at her waist.
What I was not prepared for, however, was her cap. I had forgotten that your Parisian grisette[1] would no more dream of wearing a bonnet than of crowning her head with feathers and adorning her countenance with war-paint. It had totally escaped me that I, a bashful Englishman of twenty-one, nervously sensitive to ridicule and gifted by nature with but little of the spirit of social defiance, must in broad daylight make my appearance in the streets of Paris, accompanied by a bonnetless grisette! What should I do, if I met Dr. Chéron? or Madame de Courcelles? or, worse than all, Madame de Marignan? My obvious resource was to take her in whatever direction we should be least likely to meet any of my acquaintances. Where, oh fate! might that obscurity be found which had suddenly become the dearest object of my desires?
[1] The grisette of twenty years ago, bien entendu. I am writing, be it remembered, of "The days of my youth."
"Eh bien, Monsieur Basil," said Josephine, when my first compliments had been paid. "I am quite ready. Where are we going?"
"We shall dine, mon cher ange," said I, absently, "at--let me see--at...."
"At the Moulin Rouge," interrupted she. "But that is six hours to come. In the meantime--"
"In the meantime? Ay, in the meantime...what a delightful day for the time of year!"
"Shall it be Versailles?" suggested Josephine.
"Heaven forbid!"
Josephine opened her large eyes.
"Mon Dieu!" said she. "What is there so very dreadful in Versailles?"
I made no reply. I was passing all the suburbs in review before my mind's eye,--Bellevue, Enghien, Fontenay-aux-Roses, St. Germains, Sceaux; even Fontainebleau and Compiègne.
The grisette pouted, and glanced at the clock.
"If Monsieur is as slow to start as he is to answer," said she, "we shall not get beyond the barriers to-day."
At this moment, I remembered to have heard of Montlhéry as a place where there was a forest and a feudal ruin; also, which was more to the purpose, as lying at least six-and-twenty miles south of Paris.
"My dear Mademoiselle Josephine," I said, "forgive me. I have planned an excursion which I am sure will please you infinitely better than a mere common-place trip to Versailles. Versailles, on Sunday, is vulgar. You have heard, of course, of Montlhéry--one of the most interesting places near Paris."
"I have read a romance called The Tower of Montlhéry" said Josephine.
"And that tower--that historical and interesting tower--is still standing! How delightful to wander among the ruins--to recall the stirring events which caused it to be besieged in the reign of--of either Louis the Eleventh, or Louis the Fourteenth; I don't remember which, and it doesn't signify--to explore the picturesque village, and ramble through the adjoining woods of St. Geneviève--to visit..."
"I wonder if we shall find any donkeys to ride," interrupted Josephine, upon whom my eloquence was taking the desired effect.
"Donkeys!" I exclaimed, drawing, I am ashamed to say, upon my imagination. "Of course--hundreds of them!"
"Ah, ça! Then the sooner we go the better. Stay, I must just lock my door, and leave word with my neighbor on the next floor that I am gone out for the day,"
So she locked the door and left the message, and we started. I was fortunate enough to find a close cab at the corner of the marché--she would have preferred an open one, but I overruled that objection on the score of time--and before very long we were seated in the cushioned fauteuils of a first-class compartment on the Orleans Railway, and speeding away towards Montlhéry.
It was with no trifling sense of relief that I found the place really picturesque, when we arrived. We had, it is true, to put up with a comfortless drive of three or four miles in a primitive, jolting, yellow omnibus, which crawled at stated hours of the day between the town and the station; but that was a minor evil, and we made the best of it. First of all, we strolled through the village--the clean, white, sunny village, where the people were sitting outside their doors playing at dominoes, and the cocks and hens were walking about like privileged inhabitants of the market-place. Then we had luncheon at the auberge of the "Lion d'Or." Then we looked in at the little church (still smelling of incense from the last service) with its curious old altar-piece and monumental brasses. Then we peeped through the iron gate of the melancholy cimetière, which was full of black crosses and wreaths of immortelles. Last of all, we went to see the ruin, which stood on the summit of a steep and solitary rock in the midst of a vast level plain. It proved to be a round keep of gigantic strength and height, approached by two courtyards and surrounded by the weed-grown and fragmentary traces of an extensive stronghold, nothing of which now remained save a few broken walls, three or four embrasured loopholes, an ancient well of incalculable depth, and the rusted teeth of a formidable portcullis. Here we paused awhile to rest and admire the view; while Josephine, pleased as a child on a holiday, flung pebbles into the well, ate sugar-plums, and amused herself with my pocket-telescope.
"Regardez!" she cried, "there is the dome of the Panthéon. I am sure it is the Panthéon--and to the right, far away, I see a town!--little white houses, and a steeple. And there goes a steamer on the river--and there is the railway and the railway station, and the long road by which we came in the omnibus. Oh, how nice it is, Monsieur Basil, to look through a telescope!"
"Do me the favor, ma belle, to accept it--for my sake," said I, thankful to find her so easily entertained. I was lying in a shady angle of old wall, puffing away at a cigar, with my hat over my eyes, and the soles of my boots levelled at the view. It is difficult to smoke and make love at the same time; and I preferred the tobacco.
Josephine was enchanted, and thanked me in a thousand pretty, foolish phrases. She declared she saw ever so much farther and clearer with the glass, now that it was her own. She looked at me through it, and insisted that I should look at her. She picked out all sorts of marvellous objects, at all sorts of incredible distances. In short, she prattled and chattered till I forgot all about the washing-tub, and again began to think her quite charming. Presently we heard wandering sounds of music among the trees at the foot of the hill--sounds as of a violin and bagpipes; now coming with the wind from the west, now dying away to the north, now bursting out afresh more merrily than ever, and leading off towards the village.
"Tiens! that must be a wedding!" said Josephine, drumming with her little feet against the side of the old well on which she was sitting.
"A wedding! what connection subsists, pray, between the bonds of matrimony, and a tune on the bagpipes?"
"I don't know what you mean by bagpipes--I only know that when people get married in the country, they go about with the musicians playing before them. What you hear yonder is a violin and a cornemuse."
"A cornemuse!" I repeated. "What's that?"
"Oh, country music. A thing you blow into with your mouth, and play upon with your fingers, and squeeze under your arm--like this."
"Then it's the same thing, ma chère," said I. "A bagpipes and a cornemuse--a cornemuse and bagpipes. Both of them national, popular, and frightful."
"I'm so fond of music," said Josephine.
Not wishing to object to her tastes, and believing that this observation related to the music then audible, I made no reply.
"And I have never been to an opera," added she.
I was still silent, though from another motive.
"You will take me one night to the Italiens, or the Opéra Comique, will you not, Monsieur Basil?" pursued she, determined not to lose her opportunity.
I had now no resource but to promise; which I did, very reluctantly.
"You would enjoy the Opéra Comique far more than the Italiens," said I, remembering that Madame de Marignan had a box at the Italiens, and rapidly weighing the chances for and against the possibility of recognition. "At the first they sing in French--at the last, in Italian,"
"Ah, bah! I should prefer the French," replied she, falling at once into the snare. "When shall it be--this week?"
"Ye--es; one evening this week."
"What evening?"
"Well, let me see--we had better wait, and consult the advertisements."
"Dame! never mind the advertisements. Let it be Tuesday."
"Why Tuesday?"
"Because it is soon; and because I can get away early on Tuesdays if I ask leave."
I had, plainly, no chance of escape.
"You would not prefer to see the great military piece at the Porte St. Martin?" I suggested. "There are three hundred real soldiers in it, and they fire real cannon."
"Not I! I have been to the Porte St. Martin, over and over again. Emile knew one of the scene-painter's assistants, and used to get tickets two or three times a month."
"Then it shall be the Opera Comique," said I, with a sigh.
"And on Tuesday evening next."
"On Tuesday evening next."
At this moment the piping and fiddling broke out afresh, and Josephine, who had scarcely taken the little telescope from her eye all the time, exclaimed that she saw the wedding party going through the market-place of the town.
"There they are--the musicians first; the bride and bridegroom next; and eight friends, all two and two! There will be a dance, depend on it! Let us go down to the town, and hear all about it! Perhaps they might invite us to join them--who knows?"
"But you would not dance before dinner?"
"Eh, mon Dieu! I would dance before breakfast, if I had the chance. Come along. If we do not make haste, we may miss them."
I rose, feeling, and I daresay, looking, like a martyr; and we went down again into the town.
There we inquired of the first person who seemed likely to know--he was a dapper hairdresser, standing at his shop-door with his hands in his apron pockets and a comb behind his ear--and were told that the wedding-party had just passed through the village, on their way to the Chateau of Saint Aulaire.
"The Chateau of St. Aulaire!" said Josephine. "What are they going to do there? What is there to see?"
"It is an ancient mansion, Mademoiselle, much visited by strangers," replied the hairdresser with exceeding politeness. "Worthy of Mademoiselle's distinguished attention--and Monsieur's. Contains old furniture, old paintings, old china--stands in an extensive park--one of the lions of this neighborhood, Mademoiselle--also Monsieur."
"To whom does it belong?" I asked, somewhat interested in this account.
"That, Monsieur, is a question difficult to answer," replied the fluent hairdresser, running his fingers through his locks and dispersing a gentle odor of rose-oil. "It was formerly the property of the ancient family of Saint Aulaire. The last Marquis de Saint Aulaire, with his wife and family, were guillotined in 1793. Some say that the young heir was saved; and an individual asserting himself to be that heir did actually put forward a claim to the estate, some twenty, or five-and-twenty years ago, but lost his cause for want of sufficient proof. In the meantime, it had passed into the hands of a wealthy republican family, descended, it is said, from General Dumouriez. This family held it till within the last four years, when two or three fresh claimants came forward; so that it is now the object of a lawsuit which may last till every brick of it falls to ruin, and every tree about it withers away. At present, a man and his wife have charge of the place, and visitors are permitted to see it any day between twelve and four."
"I should like to see the old place," said I.
"And I should like to see how the bride is dressed," said Josephine, "and if the bridegroom is handsome."
"Well, let us go--not forgetting to thank Monsieur le Perruquier for his polite information."
Monsieur le Perruquier fell into what dancing-masters call the first position, and bowed elaborately.
"Most welcome, Mademoiselle--and Monsieur," said he. "Straight up the road--past the orchard about a quarter of a mile--old iron gates--can't miss it. Good-afternoon, Mademoiselle--also Monsieur."
Following his directions, we came presently to the gates, which were rusty and broken-hinged, with traces of old gilding still showing faintly here and there upon their battered scrolls and bosses. One of them was standing open, and had evidently been standing so for years; while the other had as evidently been long closed, so that the deep grass had grown rankly all about it, and the very bolt was crusted over with a yellow lichen. Between the two, an ordinary wooden hurdle had been put up, and this hurdle was opened for us by a little blue-bloused urchin in a pair of huge sabots, who, thinking we belonged to the bridal party, pointed up the dusky avenue, and said, with a grin:--
"Tout droit, M'sieur--ils sont passés par là!"
Par là, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," we went accordingly. Far away on either side stretched dim vistas of neglected park-land, deep with coarse grass and weeds and, where the trees stood thickest, all choked with a brambly undergrowth. After about a quarter of a mile of this dreary avenue, we came to a broad area of several acres laid out in the Italian style with fountains and terraces, at the upper end of which stood the house--a feudal, moyen-âge French chateau, with irregular wings, steep slated roofings, innumerable windows, and fantastic steeple-topped turrets sheeted with lead and capped with grotesque gilded weathercocks. The principal front had been repaired in the style of the Renaissance and decorated with little foliated entablatures above the doors and windows; whilst a double flight of steps leading up to a grand entrance on the level of the first story, like the famous double staircase of Fontainebleau, had been patched on in the very centre, to the manifest disfigurement of the building. Most of the windows were shuttered up, and as we drew nearer, the general evidences of desolation became more apparent. The steps of the terraces were covered with patches of brown and golden moss. The stone urns were some of them fallen in the deep grass, and some broken. There were gaps in the rich balustrade here and there; and the two great fountains on either side of the lower terrace had long since ceased to fling up their feathery columns towards the sun. In the middle of one a broken Pan, noseless and armless, turned up a stony face of mute appeal, as if imploring us to free him from the parasitic jungle of aquatic plants which flourished rankly round him in the basin. In the other, a stalwart river-god with his finger on his lip, seemed listening for the music of those waters which now scarcely stirred amid the tangled weeds that clustered at his feet.
Passing all these, passing also the flower-beds choked with brambles and long waving grasses, and the once quaintly-clipped myrtle and box-trees, all flinging out fantastic arms of later growth, we came to the upper terrace, which was paved in curious patterns of stars and arabesques, with stones alternately round and flat. Here a good-humored, cleanly peasant woman came clattering out in her sabots from a side-door, key in hand, preceded us up the double flight of steps, unlocked the great door, and admitted us.
The interior, like the front, had been modernized about a hundred and fifty years before, and resembled a little formal Versailles or miniature Fontainebleau. Dismantled halls paved with white marble; panelled ante-chambers an inch deep in dust; dismal salons adorned with Renaissance arabesques and huge looking-glasses, cracked and mildewed, and mended with pasted seams of blue paper; boudoirs with faded Watteau panellings; corridors with painted ceilings where mythological divinities, marvellously foreshortened on a sky-blue ground, were seen surrounded by rose-colored Cupids and garlanded with ribbons and flowers; innumerable bed-rooms, some containing grim catafalques of beds with gilded cornices and funereal plumes, some empty, some full of stored-up furniture fast going to decay--all these in endless number we traversed, conducted by the good-tempered concierge, whose heavy sabots awakened ghostly echoes from floor to floor.
At length, through an ante-chamber lined with a double file of grim old family portraits--some so blackened with age and dust as to be totally indistinguishable, and others bulging hideously out of their frames--we came to the library, a really noble room, lofty, panelled with walnut wood, floored with polished oak, and looking over a wide expanse of level country. Long ranges of empty book-shelves fenced in with broken wire-work ran round the walls. The painted ceiling represented, as usual, the heavens and some pagan divinities. A dumb old time-piece, originally constructed to tell the months, the days of the year, and the hours, stood on a massive corner bracket near the door. Long antique mirrors in heavy black frames reached from floor to ceiling between each of the windows; and in the centre of the room, piled all together and festooned with a thick drapery of cobwebs, stood a dozen or so of old carved chairs, screens, and foot-stools, rich with velvet, brocade, and gilded leather, but now looking as if a touch would crumble them to dust. Over the great carved fireplace, however, hung a painting upon which my attention became riveted as soon as I entered the room--a painting yellow with age; covered with those minute cracks which are like wrinkles on the face of antique art, coated with dust, and yet so singularly attractive that, having once noticed it, I looked at nothing else.
It was the half-length portrait of a young lady in the costume of the reign of Louis XVI. One hand rested on a stone urn; the other was raised to her bosom, holding a thin blue scarf that seemed to flutter in the wind. Her dress was of white satin, cut low and square, with a stomacher of lace and pearls. She also wore pearls in her hair, on her white arms, and on her whiter neck. Thus much for the mere adjuncts; as for the face--ah, how can I ever describe that pale, perfect, tender face, with its waving brown hair and soft brown eyes, and that steadfast perpetual smile that seemed to light the eyes from within, and to dwell in the corners of the lips without parting or moving them? It was like a face seen in a dream, or the imperfect image which seems to come between us and the page when we read of Imogen asleep.
"Who was this lady?" I asked, eagerly.
The concierge nodded and rubbed her hands.
"Aha! M'sieur," said she, "'tis the best painting in the chateau, as folks tell me. M'sieur is a connoisseur."
"But do you know whose portrait it is?"
"To be sure I do, M'sieur. It's the portrait of the last Marquise--the one who was guillotined, poor soul, with her husband, in--let me see--in 1793!"
"What an exquisite creature! Look, Josephine, did you ever see anything so beautiful?"
"Beautiful!" repeated the grisette, with a sidelong glance at one of the mirrors. "Beautiful, with such a coiffure and such a bodice! Ciel! how tastes differ!"
"But her face, Josephine!"
"What of her face? I'm sure it's plain enough."
"Plain! Good heavens! what..."
But it was not worth while to argue upon it. I pulled out one of the old chairs, and so climbed near enough to dust the surface of the painting with my handkerchief.
"I wish I could buy it!" I exclaimed.
Josephine burst into a loud laugh.
"Grand Dieu!" said she, half pettishly, "if you are so much in love with it as all that, I dare say it would not be difficult!"
The concierge shook her head.
"Everything on this estate is locked up," said she. "Nothing can be sold, nothing given away, nothing even repaired, till the procès is ended."
I sighed, and came down reluctantly from my perch. Josephine was visibly impatient. She had seen the wedding-party going down one of the walks at the back of the house; and the concierge was waiting to let us out. I drew her aside, and slipped a liberal gratuity into her hand.
"If I were to come down here some day with a friend of mine who is a painter," I whispered, "would you have any objection, Madame, to allow him to make a little sketch of that portrait?"
The concierge looked into her palm, and seeing the value of the coin, smiled, hesitated, put her finger to her lip, and said:--
"Ma foi, M'sieur, I believe I have no business to allow it; but--to oblige a gentleman like you--if there was nobody about--"
I nodded. We understood each other sufficiently, and no more was needed.
Once out of the house, Medemoiselle Josephine pouted, and took upon herself to be sulky--a disposition which was by no means lessened when, after traversing the park in various directions in search of the bridal company, we found that they had gone out long ago by a gate at the other side of the estate, and were by this time piping, most probably, in the adjoining parish.
It was now five o'clock; so we hastened back through the village, cast a last glance at the grim old tower on its steep solitude, consigned ourselves to the yellow omnibus, and in due time were once more flying along the iron road towards Paris. The rapid motion, the dignity of occupying a first-class seat, and, above all, the prospects of an excellent dinner, soon brought my fair companion round again, and by the time we reached the Moulin Rouge, she was all vivacity and good temper. The less I say about that dinner the better. I am humiliated when I recall all that I suffered, and all that she did. I blush even now when I remember how she blew upon her soup, put her knife in her mouth, and picked her teeth with her shawl-pin. What possessed her that she would persist in calling the waiter "Monsieur?" And why, in Heaven's name, need she have clapped her hands when I ordered the champagne? To say that I had no appetite--that I wished myself at the antipodes--that I longed to sink into my boots, to smother the waiter, or to do anything equally desperate and unreasonable, is to express but a tithe of the anguish I endured. I bore it, however, in silence, little dreaming what a much heavier trial was yet in store for me.