I remember quite clearly the day when I first heard it; quite clearly, though it was more—oh, more than five-and-twenty years ago, and the days that went before and came after it have entirely lost their outlines, and merged into a vague golden blur. That day, too, as I look backwards, glows in the distance with a golden light; and if I were to speak upon my impulse, I should vow it was a smiling day of June, clothed in sunshine and crowned with roses. But then, if I were to speak upon my impulse, I should vow that it was June at Saint-Graal the whole year round. When I stop to think, I remember that it was a rainy day, and that the ground was sprinkled with dead leaves. I remember standing at a window in my grandmother’s room, and gazing out with rueful eyes. It rained doggedly, relentlessly—even, it seemed to me, defiantly, spitefully, as if it took a malicious pleasure in penning me up within doors. The mountains, the Pyrenees, a few miles to the south, were completely hidden by the veil of waters. The sodden leaves, brown patches on the lawn and in the pathways, struggled convulsively, like wounded birds, to fly from the gusts of wind, but fell back fluttering heavily. One could almost have touched the clouds, they hung so low, big ragged tufts of sad-coloured cotton-wool, blown rapidly through the air, just above the writhing tree-tops. Everywhere in the house there was a faint fragrance of burning wood: fires had been lighted to keep the dampness out.
Indeed, if it had been a fair day, my adventure could scarcely have befallen. I should have been abroad, in the garden or the forest, playing with André, our farmer’s son; angling, with a bit of red worsted as bait, for frogs in the pond; trying to catch lizards on the terrace; lying under a tree with Don Quixote or Le Capitaine Fracasse; visiting Manuela in her cottage; or perhaps, best of all, spending the afternoon with Hélène, at Granjolaye. It was because the rain interdicted these methods of amusement that I betook myself for solace to Constantinople.
I don’t know why—I don’t think any one knew why—that part of our house was called Constantinople; but it had been called so from time immemorial, and we all accepted it as a matter of course. It was the topmost story of the East Wing—three rooms: one little room, by way of ante-chamber, into which you entered from a corkscrew staircase; then another little room at your left; and then a big room, a long dim room, with only two windows, one at either end. And these rooms served as a sort of Hades for departed household gods. They were crowded, crowded to overflowing, with such wonderful old things! Old furniture—old straight-backed chairs, old card-tables, with green cloth tops, and brass claws for feet, old desks and cabinets, the dismembered relics of old four-post bedsteads; old clothes—old hats, boots, cloaks—green silk calashes, like bonnets meant for the ladies of Brobdingnag—and old hoop-petticoats, the skeletons of dead toilets; old books, newspapers, pictures; old lamps and candlesticks, clocks, fire-irons, vases; an old sedan-chair; old spurs, old swords, old guns and pistols; generations upon generations of superannuated utilities and vanities, slumbering in one another’s shadows, under a common sheet of dust, and giving off a thin, penetrating, ancient smell.
When it rained, Constantinople was my ever-present refuge. It was a land of penumbra and mystery, a realm of perpetual wonderment, a mine of inexhaustible surprises. I never visited it without finding something new, without getting a sensation. One day, when André was there with me, we both saw a ghost—yes, as plainly as at this moment I see the paper I’m writing on; but I won’t turn aside now to speak of that. And as for my finds, on two or three occasions, at least, they had more than a subjective metaphysical importance. The first was a chest filled with jewellery and trinkets, an iron chest, studded with nails, in size and shape like a small trunk, with a rounded lid. I dragged it out of a dark corner, from amidst a quantity of rubbish, and (it wasn’t even locked!) fancy the eyes I made when I beheld its contents: half-a-dozen elaborately carved, high-back tortoise-shell combs, ranged in a morocco case; a beautiful old-fashioned watch, in the form of a miniature guitar; an enamelled snuff-box; and then no end of rings, brooches, buckles, seals, and watch-keys, set with precious stones—not very precious stones, perhaps—only garnets, amethysts, carnelians; but mercy, how they glittered! I ran off in great excitement to call my grandmother; and she called my uncle Edmond; and he, alas, applied the laws of seigniory to the transaction, and I saw my trover appropriated. My other important finds were appropriated also, but about them I did not care so much—they were only papers. One was a certificate, dated in the Year III, and attesting that my grandfather’s father had taken the oath of allegiance to the Republic. As I was a fierce Legitimist, this document afforded me but moderate satisfaction. The other was a Map of the World, covering a sheet of cardboard nearly a yard square, executed in pen-and-ink, but with such a complexity of hair-lines, delicate shading, and ornate lettering, that, until you had examined it closely, you would have thought it a carefully finished steel-engraving. It was signed “Herminie de Pontacq, 1818”; that is to say, by my grandmother herself, who in 1818 had been twelve years old; dear me, only twelve years old! It was delightful and marvellous to think that my own grandmother, in 1818, had been so industrious, and painstaking, and accomplished a little girl. I assure you, I felt almost as proud as if I had done it myself.
The small room at the left of the ante-chamber was consecrated to the roba of an uncle of my grandfather’s, who had been a sugar-planter in the province of New Orleans, in the reign of Louis XVI. He had also been a colonel, and so the room was called the Colonel’s room. Here were numberless mementos of the South: great palm-leaf fans, conch-shells, and branches of coral, broad-brimmed hats of straw, monstrous white umbrellas, and, in a corner, a collection of long slender wands, ending in thick plumes of red and yellow feathers. These, I was informed, the sugar-planter’s slaves, standing behind his chair, would flourish about his head, to warn off the importunate winged insects that abound là-bas. He had died at Paris in 1793, and of nothing more romantic than a malignant fever, foolish person, when he might so easily have been guillotined! (It was a matter of permanent regret with me that none of our family had been guillotined.) But his widow had survived him for more than forty years, and her my grandmother remembered perfectly. A fat old Spanish Créole lady, fat and very lazy—oh, but very lazy indeed. At any rate, she used to demand the queerest services of the negress who was in constant attendance upon her. “Nanette, Nanette, tourne tête à moi. Veux”—summon your fortitude—“veux cracher!” Ah, well, we are told, they made less case of such details in those robust old times. How would she have fared, poor soul, had she fallen amongst us squeamish decadents?
It was into the Colonel’s room that I turned to-day. There was a cupboard in its wall that I had never thoroughly examined. The lower shelves, indeed, I knew by heart; they held, for the most part, empty medicine bottles. But the upper ones?