We went back through the entrance-hall, then through a library, through the long Gothic-windowed gallery, which was filled with pictures, sculptures, and curiosities of every sort, and thus arrived at the tower, which communicated with the gallery by a short flight of steps.
I entered. This time the abbé accompanied me resolutely, though I could see that from time to time he wiped with his hand his eyes, which were moist with tears. In this vast circular hall, everything revealed studious and reflective tastes.
It was furnished in a severe style; there were many valuable arms, and four large family portraits, which seemed to include five centuries, with an interval of a hundred and fifty years; for the oldest portrait recalled the costume of a warrior of the end of the fourteenth century, whereas the costumes of the others belonged to the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the most recent representing a man who wore the dress of a general of the Empire, with the cordon rouge across his breast.
I noticed, also, many maps and topographical plans, all marked with abridged and hieroglyphical notes; but what I saw first of all was a woman's portrait, placed on an easel, exactly like the one I had already seen, only it had no crown carved on its summit, there being simply the interlaced initials M and V. By a happy idea of the painter, this portrait, painted on a gold ground, recalled, by its naïve expression, one of the adorable heads of the Virgin, which belong to the Italian school of the end of the sixteenth century. All that Raphaël had ever dreamed of candour and purity in the expression of his Madonnas, beamed from this divine face.
The smooth and shining brown hair was parted simply over a charming forehead, where it was encircled by a little golden chain; then following the line of the temples, which were so dazzlingly clear one could almost see the blue veins, it fell in soft masses below the delicately rosy cheeks.
Her large blue eyes, which were serenely pensive and almost melancholy, seemed to follow me with a gaze that was calm, noble, and good. Her rosy lips were not smiling, but they had an expression of serious graciousness impossible to describe, while their form, as well as that of the straight and thin nose, was exquisitely beautiful and of an antique purity of line.
A tunic of very pale blue, which barely showed the snowy whiteness of the shoulders, and was fastened around the well-shaped form by a circlet of dull gold, completed this portrait, which was a model of elevated simplicity, charm, and poesy.
After examining a long time this ideally perfect face, I found in the eyes an expression which reminded me of the child's face, for the eyes of that angel were also of a deep and clear blue, but the lower part of its face and the broad forehead recalled the man's portrait which had so much interested me.
I know not why I should have imagined that the child belonged to these parents. But where was he? Where were now the father and mother? The father with his proud and resolute beauty; the mother so sweet and pure? Had he, had she, had both, or all three, perhaps, been overtaken by a frightful misfortune?
"Ah," said I, "if looks are not deceptive, in what an Eden these noble beings must have lived!" What could one desire more than to live thus with a beloved child in the midst of this delicious and profound solitude, embellished by all the treasures of nature and art?