"The park can't be seen except on Sunday," he said; "take the trouble to come again Sunday."
Emile handed him his card, and the old man, slowly taking his spectacles from his pocket, without leaving his subterranean air-hole, slowly examined it; after which he disappeared to reappear at a door just above his hole.
"Very good, monsieur," he said; "monsieur le marquis ordered me to admit the person who came from Monsieur Cardonnet; Monsieur Cardonnet of Gargilesse, isn't it?"
Emile bowed in assent.
"Very good, monsieur," continued the old servant, bowing courteously, evidently very glad of an opportunity to be polite and hospitable without violating his orders. "Monsieur le marquis did not think that you would come so soon; he did not expect you before to-morrow at the earliest. He is in his park, I will run and tell him. But first I shall have the honor to escort you to the salon."
When he talked of running, the old man uttered a strange boast; he had the gait and the agility of a centenarian. He led Emile to the low, narrow doorway of a stairway turret, and slowly selecting a key from his bunch preceded him upstairs to another door studded with great nails and locked like the first. Another key; and, after passing through a long corridor, a third key to open the apartments. Emile was taken through several rooms, where the contrast to the bright sunlight was so great that he seemed to be in utter darkness. At last he entered a vast salon and the valet waved him to a chair, saying:
"Does monsieur wish me to open the blinds?"
Emile made him understand by signs that it was useless, and the old man left him alone.
When his eyes became accustomed to the dim grayish light that crept into that room, he was struck by the sumptuous character of the furniture. Everything dated from the time of Louis XIII. and one would have said that a connoisseur had guided the selection of even the least important articles. Nothing was lacking; from the frames of the mirrors to the tiniest nail in the hangings, there was not the slightest departure from the prevailing style. And it was all authentic, partly worn, still in good condition, although somewhat tarnished, at once rich and simple. Emile admired Monsieur de Boisguilbault's good taste and knowledge. He learned later that the disinclination to move and the horror of change, which seemed hereditary in that family, were alone responsible for the marvellous preservation and transmission from father to son of these treasures, which it is the present fashion to collect at great expense in bric-à-brac shops, which are to-day the most sumptuous and interesting places imaginable.
But the pleasure which the young man experienced in examining these curiosities was succeeded by a feeling of extraordinary frigidity and depression. In addition to the icy atmosphere of a house closed at all seasons to the generous rays of the sun, in addition to the silence without, there was something funereal in the regularity of that interior arrangement, which no one ever disturbed, and in that artistic and noble luxury which no one was invited to enjoy. It was evident from those tight-locked doors of which the servant kept the keys, from the cleanliness unmarred by the slightest speck of dust, from the heavy closed curtains, that the master never entered the salon, and that the only constant visitors were a broom and a duster. Emile thought with horror of the life that the dead and gone Marquise de Boisguilbault, young and lovely as she was, must have led in that house, dumb and dead for centuries, and he forgave her with all his heart for having gone elsewhere for a breath of fresh air before she died. "Who knows," he thought, "that she did not contract in this tomb one of those slow, deep-seated maladies which cannot be cured when the remedy is sought too late?"