While his eyes are still on the village, he falls into a hamlet, at the end of whose one street is a high wall and gate. It is Le Clos. Shut in by high yellow walls,—one might almost say fortifications, they are so long and so high,—the quaint country house, dating from the first of the last century, is a tranquil, sheltered spot which gives one the feeling of complete seclusion from the world. On one side of the house lies the court, with its broad grass-plot, its low wall, its long rows of stone farm, and vintage buildings; on the other, lies an English garden, planted thickly with maples, sycamores, and hemlocks, with lilac clumps and shrubs, with roses and vines. Enclosing this garden on two sides is a stone terrace, forming a beautiful promenade. From here all the panorama of the Beaujolais hills, mountains, and valleys opens, with their vineyards, yellow houses, forests, and here and there a tower—the bellevue of some rich nineteenth-century proprietor or the relic of some ancient château. Far beyond the farthest, faintest mountain outline rises, on clear nights, the opal crest of Mont Blanc.
To the left of garden and house are vines and fruit trees; to the right, a long lane and vegetable garden; and everywhere beyond are vines, vines, vines, to the very brook in Beauvallon at the foot of the hillside.
In Madame Roland’s time the country about Le Clos was much more heavily wooded than now. There was less of vine raising and more of grain, but many features are unchanged. These trees are of her time no doubt, these vines, these walls, and she doubtlessly gathered blossoms, as one does to-day, from the long hedge of roses panachés, the wonderful striped roses of Provence now almost unknown in France, though still rioting the full length of one of the walls of Le Clos,—fanciful, sweet things which by their infinite variety set one, in spite of himself, at the endless search of finding two alike, as in the play of his childhood with the striped grass of his grandmother’s yard.
LE CLOS DE LA PLATIÈRE.
From the terrace she saw, as we do, in the valley at the right, the château of Brossette, the friend of Boileau; and on the hillside in front, the curious little chapel of Saint Hippolyte; and she must often have heard the story the country folk still tell of the place, how centuries ago the Saracens ravaged all the country as far as this valley, but here were driven back. The Franks, in honor of their victory, raised a chapel to Saint Hippolyte and many miracles were performed there, and the people came to the shrine in pilgrimage from long distances. Now, certain neighbors, wishing to possess this miracle-working statue of Saint Hippolyte, had it carried off, but at the moment that the person carrying the saint attempted to cross the brook in Beauvallon, the holy image jumped from his shoulder and ran at full speed back to the chapel. The pious thieves, seeing the preference of the saint, like good Christians, gave up their project.
The mountains of Beaujolais changed from faintest violet to darkest purple for her as for us, and the crest of Mont Pilate, or the Cat Mountain as the Lyonnais peasants call Mont Blanc, startled and thrilled her by its mysterious opalescent beauty when now and then it appeared on the horizon suddenly, like some celestial thing.
The house, a white, square structure, with pavilions at the corners of the court side, and red tiled roof, is unchanged without, though rearranged somewhat within. Nevertheless, there are many things to recall the Rolands and their immediate friends; the ancient well; the brass water-fountain; now and then a book, with Roland de la Platière on the fly-leaf, in the well-filled cases which one finds in every room; a terra-cotta bust of Roland himself (by Chinard, dated 1777); portraits of the family, including one called Madame Roland, which nobody supposes to be she; photographs of the beautiful La Tour pastels of M. and Madame Phlipon, now in the museum of Lyons; an oil of the chanoine; a few fine old arms in the collection which decorates the billiard room; a table whose top is made of squares of variegated marbles brought from Italy by Roland.
There is now and then a sign about the house of what it suffered in the Revolution; for Le Clos was pillaged then and stripped of its contents at the same time that the château above had its towers razed. On several of the heavy doors is still clinging the red wax of the official seal placed by the revolutionary officers. The chanoine’s crucifix is there, a graceful silver affair darkly oxidized from long burying, he having hid it in the garden. In the raids on the property nearly all the furniture was taken, and for many years the peasants were said to account for new pieces of furniture in their neighbors’ houses by saying, “Oh, it came from Le Clos.” Some time after the Revolution, M. Champagneux, who married Eudora, the daughter of Madame Roland, received a notice from the curé at Theizé that a sum of “conscience money” had been given him for the family.
Life must have been then at Le Clos—a hundred years ago—much what it is now,—a busy, peaceful round of usefulness and kindliness, of generous hospitality, of unaffected intelligence. Madame Roland entered it with sentiments kindled by Rousseau. Her imagination had never been more actively at work than it had over the prospect of this country retirement. She had shed tears over the prospect of their future Clarens, its bucolic pleasures, the delicious meditations, the sweet effusions of friendship, the healthy duties. And Le Clos realized many of her dreams; largely because she took hold of the practical life of the house and farm with good-will and intelligence. She was no woman to allow work to master her,—she managed it. Nor was she weak enough to fret under it or to regard it as “beneath her.” She respected this most dignified and useful of woman’s employments and gave it intelligence and good-will. This acceptance of and cheerfulness over common duties is one of the really strong things about Madame Roland.