“It will do,” father finally pronounced.
It would do? Yes, in two or three years, when I had grown a great deal more. Mother was cautious about speaking too approvingly. My brothers kept silence, but I perceived that they were smothering their laughter, a self-denial which Louise by no means exercised. Aunt Deen saved the situation which was becoming painful. She arrived late upon the scene, for she had been putting to rights in the tower chamber when notified of the arrival of M. Plumeau. We heard her on the stairs before we saw her. Hope at once revived. Her coming was like the arrival of fresh troops upon the field of battle—she decided the fortunes of the day.
Hardly had she perceived me, lost in my new suit, when she cried:
“It’s admirable, Francis; I won’t keep it from you; never have I seen any one so becomingly dressed.”
Every one drew a long breath and I was comforted; so greatly, indeed, that, unwilling to part with my fine garments, I put them on for our next walk. Grandfather did not notice. But at the gate Aunt Deen overtook us all out of breath.
“Naughty boy!” she exclaimed, “putting on your best clothes for a walk!”
She almost undressed me with her own hands in the street; I must needs go back to the house under her escort, to exchange my costume for less distinguished raiment, and the walk that day was spoiled. But those that came afterward made it up to me.
There was the forest and there was the lake....
The forest, with certain farms and vineyards, made part of a historic domain, the château of which, after enduring sieges and entertaining great personages of the army or the church, was half in ruins and no longer habitable. The whole property belonged to a retired colonel of cavalry, son of a Baron of the Empire, whose fortune not being sufficient to keep it up decently, he was permitting it to fall into decay. He lived alone and spent the whole day riding about on one or another of his old horses, without ever going beyond his estate. Though it was entirely surrounded with a wall grandfather and I used to find our way in by breaches which we had discovered.
He led me about among the trees, taught me to distinguish their characteristics, and encouraged me to sit down under their shade, on the moss and not on the treacherous benches which we perceived sparsely scattered here and there, the woodwork of which was rotten with damp. Grass was growing in the alleys, which under over-arching trees guided the gaze to portals of light, that seemed on one side to be blue, because of the lake which they framed in.