"I am heartily glad to see you so well equipped," replied I; "although your imprudence, joined to my own, had very nearly procured me a journey to the Bastile, and has actually caused me to be stripped of a thousand crowns." I then related to the ci-devant printer all that had occurred to me since we last met, and I was glad to find that he sincerely felt for all the inconveniences I had suffered, and pressed me to take back again the sum of five crowns, which was all that he had remaining of the thirty I had given him. He declared at the same time that he himself could do very well without, for that the contents of his box, assisted by a fluent tongue and the gullibility of the peasantry, had proved quite sufficient, since he began his new trade, to maintain him as well as he could desire, though, to say the truth, his taste for the good things of life was not the most moderate.
I refused to accept his offer, of course, telling him that money was quite unnecessary to me, as I counted upon reaching the castle of Monsieur de Villardin in less than an hour.
"You are quite mistaken, my son," he replied; "whether you mean his castle of the Prés Vallée, or that of Dumont; the first being at the distance of at least twenty, and the latter nearly forty miles from the place where we now stand."
This intelligence surprised me a good deal, as I found that I had entirely miscalculated my situation, and had mistaken my road. Jacques Marlot, however, who, as well as his uncle, good Jerome Laborde, was a native of the country, and acquainted with every rood of ground round about, undertook to guide me on my way, and, walking my horse by his side as he trudged on, we arrived within a few miles of Rennes that night. The next morning, after sleeping in one of the neighbouring villages, we separated, he intending to proceed to St. Malo, to carry on his traffic with any of the seamen arriving from foreign ports, and I turned my steps in the direction of the Prés Vallée, to which he pointed out the road.
No farther accident or adventure occurred to delay my arrival, and, about ten o'clock in the morning, I reached the place of my destination. Here I was received with all due deference by the domestics who tenanted the house, and delivered all the letters which I bore to the farmers and receivers of Monsieur de Villardin.
Nothing could be more beautiful, though nothing could be more solemn, than the aspect of the castle, and the scene that surrounded it. It was a fortified house, of no great military strength, situated on a slight eminence, rising above the vast rich meadows that stretch for many miles along the borders of the Vilaine. These meadows were broken--for I cannot call it separated--by large belts of magnificent forest trees, which seemed to owe their planting to the hand of nature rather than to that of man, but which, nevertheless, had been so skilfully thinned, that the boughs of one never interfered with the boughs of another; and each grew up in liberty, protecting, as it were, under its branches, its own particular domain, without infringing upon the bounds of its neighbour. Each of these belts varied in shape and distribution; but each left from fifty to sixty acres of pasture ground clear and open within its circuit, with the river generally forming the boundary on one side, and the trees sweeping round on every other, so that each meadow seemed to be a spot of rich ground which had been cleared and cultivated ages ago, in the midst of a vast forest, the trees of which were still standing around. In fact, a person placed in the centre of any of these open spaces, saw nothing but wood beyond the meadow that surrounded him, till, walking on for a minute or two, under the shade of gigantic elms and oaks, he entered another wide pasture field like that he had just left.
The effect of the whole would have been gloomy, had it not been enlivened by the frequent turns of the river, and the sight of cattle and sheep feeding in the various savannahs, under the charge of their several herds, who most frequently were found cheering their occupation with a song. There was something calm, and simple, and patriarchal in the whole scene, which struck me greatly as I passed through it; and I could have fancied myself removed by thousands of years and thousands of miles from the countries and the times through which I had lately been moving.
The castle itself, built of cold grey stone, and covered in several parts with ivy, was in perfect harmony with everything around it; and the good taste of Monsieur de Villardin, who entered fully into the peculiar character of the scene, had left all the furniture and decorations of the house--which were rich and good, though in antique style and form--exactly as they had come into his possession.
As I propose to write down in this book the changes of my disposition and character as I advanced through life, as well as the various turns of fortune that attended me in my progress through the world, I must pause for a moment to speak of that which was passing within my own heart, while the events which I have described were working out my general fate.
A new spirit was about this time beginning to spring up in my bosom, and a taste for things that I never before enjoyed was every day developing itself more and more. Whether it was that Lord Masterton had first called my attention to the beauties of nature, or whether it was that before my acquaintance with him I never had time to think of them, I cannot tell; but certainly I began to feel a delight in the aspect of such scenes as the Prés Vallée, which formerly I had never experienced; and during the first two or three days, I fancied that I could remain there alone for ever.