“Oh, no,” said my friend. “He will be here in a few days. He always spends the month of November here. He comes before All Saints’ Day, on account of my daughter.”
“Of your daughter?”
The steward looked at me in some surprise.
“Did you not know that he married my daughter, and that we have lost her?”
There was no ostentation in the reminder, only a deep sadness. I told him of my visit to the graveyard.
“Could you find her grave? It is hidden among the others.”
“Yes, only an ivy covered stone. But there is so much of youth in the inscription that it goes to the heart.”
“My wife would have liked a different monument. But it is enough.”
The cloister surrounding the chateau, with the purity of its arches, over which vines and clematis clambered at will, was a joy to see.
“It is all that remains of the ancient nunnery,” my guide explained. “The nunnery was abandoned in the seventeenth century for another religious house, larger and more severe, that of Saint Hugo, and the family of the Count d’Alligny took possession. The present Count sold the estate to M. Cernay. I had been steward in his day. He lost all his money at the gaming table; he cared for nothing so much as play. He was an excellent man.”