Odette: A Fairy Tale
for Weary People
I
IN the long summer evenings, when the shadows crept slowly over the lawn, and the distant towers of the cathedral turned purple in the setting sun, little Odette d’Antrevernes would steal out from the old grey chateau to listen to the birds murmuring “good-night” to one another amongst the trees.
Far away, at the end of the long avenue of fragrant limes, wound the Loire, all amongst the flowery meadows and emerald vineyards, like a wonderful looking-glass reflecting all the sky; and across the river, like an ogre’s castle in a fairy tale, frowned the chateau of Luynes, with its round grey turrets and its long, thin windows, so narrow, that scarcely could a princess in distress put forth her little white hand to wave to the true knight that should rescue her from her terrible fate.
Just until the sun disappeared behind the trees, veiled in a crimson cloud, little Odette would remain in the shadowy garden, then quickly and mysteriously she would slip back into the old grey chateau; where, in the long, dim drawing-room, before two wax candles, she would find her Aunt Valerie d’Antrevernes embroidering an altar cloth for the homely lichened village church, that one could see across the rose garden from the castle windows.
“Where have you been, my child?” her aunt would ask her, glancing up from the lace altar cloth that fell around her in a snowy cloud.
And Odette, in her pretty baby voice, would reply: “I have been listening to the birds saying their evening prayers,” and then silently she would sit on a low hassock at her aunt’s feet, and tell herself fairy stories until Fortune, her Creole nurse, should come and carry her off to bed.
Sometimes of an evening the old Curé of Bois-Fleuri would come to visit Madame d’Antrevernes, and little Odette would watch them as they talked, wondering all the while if Monsieur le Curé had really seen God. She had never dared ask.
Her aunt always sat in a high armchair of faded blue tapestry, embroidered in gold, with the family arms on a background of fleur-de-lys, and her pale, beautiful face, as it bent over the lace altar cloth, made little Odette think of angels and Holy Saints.