Nothing occurred to stimulate his memory during supper. The stout patronne chatted to him of her inn, which had been the Seigneur's chateau till thirty years before, when the last owner died in great poverty. Had Monsieur seen and admired the beautiful crèche in the church? The little figures were the dolls which once belonged to Mademoiselle de Clerissac. The patronne was not old enough to remember it very distinctly, but she believed Mademoiselle had met with trouble, which was why she went away. After all, it was natural, she had red blood in her, both the old Seigneur and his father having married peasant girls. If Monsieur was interested in such things old Marie, who had been Mademoiselle de Clerissac's nurse, still lived in a room in the chateau. She was fabulously old, and had to be tended like a baby by her granddaughter, and it was true she had long wandered in her wits, but undoubtedly she could see visions, both of the past and future. No, Bernardy not only felt no interest in the actual history of the place, but even shrank from knowledge. It seemed to make his dream-city less dream-like and less his.
Once in the dim passage leading to his room, he found he had forgotten which was his door. Carrying his lighted candle head-high, he explored the far end of the passage, and came on a rather smaller door than the rest, studded with nail-heads set in a peculiar pattern. It flashed on Bernardy that it led to the room he had never been allowed to enter—he even remembered the scar where one nail was missing. Pushing up the latch, he opened the door and passed through, the light of the candle he carried shining full on his face, so that he was plainly visible to anyone in the room, while he himself was too dazzled to see. There was a table at his left hand, and he put the candle down on it before advancing into the room.
There was a fire of smouldering logs on the hearth, and beside it sat an old, old woman. Her hands, with their knotted and discoloured veins, hung over the arms of her chair, under her chin a hollow cut up sharply. She stared at Bernardy from red-rimmed, rheumy eye-sockets, mumbling her mouth with a sucking movement grotesquely suggestive of a baby. Behind her, wrapped in the soft shadow, with fugitive gleams of firelight bringing out now a cheekbone, now the curve of chin, or of breast, stood a much younger woman—she seemed about thirty or perhaps a little more. They gazed at Bernardy in a calm silence for several seconds, while he stared at them. Then the younger woman stepped forward into the light, and Bernardy saw how big and strong she was, deep-chested and long-flanked, with a wide forehead and heavily folded lids. Against the white of her apron her hands and wrists showed coarse and reddened, but the big neck, where it disappeared into the kerchief, was white as milk.
"Monsieur mistakes the room," she said, in a deep voice whose Provençal twang was blurred into softness. "My grandmother is very old, and Monsieur will excuse her not wishing him good evening."
Bernardy, confused and bewildered, hesitated a moment, and it was the old woman who broke the silence. She seemed to be staring not so much at Bernardy as at some mental vision of him.
"Candide, he has come at last," she said, slowly and clearly, "you must give him the letters."
The woman called Candide dropped her heavy lids for a moment, while, to Bernardy's wonder a blush mounted to the roots of her pale, smoothly banded hair. Then she went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a packet of letters and a small, paper-covered book, which she handed to him in silence. The old woman had closed her reddish lids, thickly woven over with small, raised veins, and there was nothing left for Bernardy but to take the packet and go to his own room. He found it easily, for the door stood open now, and he sat himself by the fire and began to read. In spite of the instinct which had led him, he still had not guessed what he should find. The breath of dawn was stirring the curtains before he put the papers down.
The entries in the journal were very brief, and the first bore a date of some thirty-five years earlier:
"It is now two years since I left school," said the journal, "and I think I have improved in my hand-writing, also my crewel stitch. Papa was vexed with me to-day because the soup was too thin. It was the second straining from the same fowl, but we could not afford to kill another. I hear there is a stranger, an Englishman, in the town. He is voyaging for his education. I wish that was how they educated women."
The next entry was written the following night: