THE FÊTES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.
In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the historic châteaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled façade on a hillside, pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now but the sky,—monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days of the Crusades or of Courts of Love, without a trace of man among their stones, where even the ivy has ceased to climb, and the acanthus, but where the dried lavender and the férigoule perfume the air. Amid all these ruins the château de Saint-Romans stands forth a glorious exception. If you have travelled in the South you have seen it, and you shall see it again in a moment. It is between Valence and Montélimart, in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, at the base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the whole glowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vines growing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to the eye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river, as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bâle, but with such a flood of sunshine as the Rhine never had. Saint-Romans is opposite, on the other bank; and, notwithstanding the swiftness of the vision, the headlong rush of the railway carriages, which seem determined at every curve to plunge madly into the Rhone, the château is so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seems to follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever the memory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italian architecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with little pillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking the sloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to the river, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges of great height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined against the blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glass window. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies the blazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses of green foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,—an exotic figure, which makes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of a farmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying a courtier's umbrella.
From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone, Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuine fairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis of verdure and of lovely, gushing water.
"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans de Bellaigue."
And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the Thousand and One Nights, as all his wishes were gratified, even the most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shape before him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he had purchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newly furnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed since then, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificent establishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dear Bernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." As a matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself in the steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of the main buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants' quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with their rustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great château she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when, considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the Turs, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.
Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.
In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse, husky voice:
"Olivier—Peyrol—Audibert—Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand, held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years, verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns, uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking, leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.