“Babache, I am weary of this town of Paris, and there is a duchess or two that I would as lief were somewhere else. But as they will not go, I have bethought me of our errand to Brussels. We can travel slowly through the pleasant French country in this month of May; we can stop at the château of Capello and see that matchless Francezka, and for a little while we can live like men, instead of courtiers. What do you think of this?”
I thought it well; my heart leaped at the mention of the château of Capello. It was arranged that we should not give the least hint where we were going. In fact, I was instructed to say that we were going to the Pyrenees, and the story took so well that both the duchesses sent their private spies to Spain to find out what my master was doing there. Meanwhile we were on the high road to Brabant.
No one was with Count Saxe except myself and Beauvais. We left Paris on a spring morning, very like the one so many years before when I had been led out to be shot. We traveled briskly, and at every step that we left the duchesses behind my master’s spirits rose. As 314 we had given out that this journey was to the Pyrenees, the ladies sent their couriers with their love-letters in the wrong direction, and Count Saxe did not get a single love-letter between Paris and Brussels, and his health and spirits visibly improved. Trust a woman of rank for hounding a man to death.
We sent word ahead to the château of Capello of our coming, and planned to arrive about sunset. The country of Brabant is everywhere beautiful, rich and well tilled, but the estate of Capello was the most beautiful, the richest and the best tilled of any we saw. Francezka had not increased the park land, rightly thinking she had no right to reduce the arable land of the peasants, but she had made them keep their cottages like the cottages of a theater scene, and she had planted most charming hedges of roses and of lilacs, and other beautiful plants and trees. I think I never saw anything lovelier than the rich meadow, where cows were grazing, almost encircled by a lilac hedge, with occasional rose trees; and the cows had sense enough to prefer the rich grass to the thorny roses or tough lilac foliage. This was characteristic of Francezka. She loved beauty, as a Spaniard does, but this love was tempered by that stern Scotch sense which does not lose sight of what is useful.
Count Saxe had not seen the château since 1732, and he, too, was lost in admiration at the beauty, order and fruitfulness of it all. The windows of the château blazed in the sinking sun when we crossed the stone bridge, dismounted, and walked up the steps of the terrace. Francezka met us on the highest terrace. She wore, as when I had last seen her, a rich Spanish costume 315 of black, but not of mourning. She was then in her twenty-seventh year, and was in the full perfection of her charms. She received us joyfully, gave Count Saxe her cheek to kiss and me her hand, and thanked us for coming to see her. Bold was still her inseparable companion, and barked a joyful welcome to me.
As I had noted in her, after she had married Gaston Cheverny, a new and sweet humility, so I now saw a new development of gentle patience and quiet courage. She had taken up at last the burden of anxiety which is a part of every creature’s burden on this earth, and she bore it more sweetly than would have been thought possible by one who knew how dazzlingly happy and brilliant her path had been heretofore. Unlike most persons whose lives and fortunes are dedicated to a single pursuit, Francezka had not become ill balanced or fanciful. I thought I had never seen her more dignified or sensible than when she presided at supper that night.
She was perfectly informed on public affairs in Europe, being naturally a great reader, and the retired life she led inclining her the more to reading. She blushed with pleasure at Count Saxe’s compliments upon her acquirements. But Francezka, in spite of all changes, was still Francezka. She knew perfectly well how to entertain a great man like Count Saxe. While we supped she had musicians in the gallery, who sang a song recounting Count Saxe’s triumphs in war. My master listened with pleasure, the greater when Francezka admitted that she was the author of both the words and the music. In her voluntary retirement she had cultivated gifts that would have lain fallow had she kept her place in the world.
Old Peter waited on us, as usual, at supper. There was something in his response to my inquiry after his health which was more cheerful than I had seen in him for years. I was not surprised, therefore, when Francezka whispered to me, during Peter’s absence from the room, that poor little Lisa had returned.
Madame Chambellan was still of Francezka’s household, but being, as I think, incurably lazy, she kept her room and asked to be excused to us, which we cheerfully granted.