Before long the carriage, under the young chief's directions, left the highway and took a road cut between banks planted with apple-trees, more like a ditch than a roadway, which led to La Vivetiere.The carriage now advanced rapidly, leaving the escort to follow slowly towards the manor-house, the gray roofs of which appeared and disappeared among the trees.Some of the men lingered on the way to knock the stiff clay of the road-bed from their shoes.
"This is devilishly like the road to Paradise," remarked Beau-Pied.
Thanks to the impatience of the postilion, Mademoiselle de Verneuil soon saw the chateau of La Vivetiere.This house, standing at the end of a sort of promontory, was protected and surrounded by two deep lakelets, and could be reached only by a narrow causeway.That part of the little peninsula on which the house and gardens were placed was still further protected by a moat filled with water from the two lakes which it connected.The house really stood on an island that was well-nigh impregnable,--an invaluable retreat for a chieftain, who could be surprised there only by treachery.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil put her head out of the carriage as she heard the rusty hinges of the great gates open to give entrance to an arched portal which had been much injured during the late war.The gloomy colors of the scene which met her eyes almost extinguished the thoughts of love and coquetry in which she had been indulging.The carriage entered a large courtyard that was nearly square, bordered on each side by the steep banks of the lakelets.Those sterile shores, washed by water, which was covered with large green patches, had no other ornament than aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted trunks and hoary heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes, gave them a certain grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets.These ugly growths seemed to waken and talk to each other when the frogs deserted them with much croaking, and the water-fowl, startled by the sound of the wheels, flew low upon the surface of the pools.The courtyard, full of rank and seeded grasses, reeds, and shrubs, either dwarf or parasite, excluded all impression of order or of splendor.
The house appeared to have been long abandoned.The roof seemed to bend beneath the weight of the various vegetations which grew upon it.
The walls, though built of the smooth, slaty stone which abounds in that region, showed many rifts and chinks where ivy had fastened its rootlets.Two main buildings, joined at the angle by a tall tower which faced the lake, formed the whole of the chateau, the doors and swinging, rotten shutters, rusty balustrades, and broken windows of which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest.The north wind whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her indefinite light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre.But the colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and tawny schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly a spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the building.Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, the battered tower and broken roofs gave it the aspect of a skeleton; the birds of prey which flew from it, shrieking, added another feature to this vague resemblance.A few tall pine-trees standing behind the house waved their dark foliage above the roof, and several yews cut into formal shapes at the angles of the building, festooned it gloomily like the ornaments on a hearse.The style of the doors, the coarseness of the decorations, the want of harmony in the architecture, were all characteristic of the feudal manors of which Brittany was proud;perhaps justly proud, for they maintained upon that Gaelic ground a species of monumental history of the nebulous period which preceded the establishment of the French monarchy.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, to whose imagination the word "chateau"brought none but its conventional ideas, was affected by the funereal aspect of the scene.She sprang from the carriage and stood apart gazing at in terror, and debating within herself what action she ought to take.Francine heard Madame du Gua give a sigh of relief as she felt herself in safety beyond reach of the Blues; an exclamation escaped her when the gates were closed, and she saw the carriage and its occupants within the walls of this natural fortress.
The Marquis de Montauran turned hastily to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, divining the thoughts that crowded in her mind.
"This chateau," he said, rather sadly, "was ruined by the war, just as my plans for our happiness have been ruined by you.""How ruined?" she asked in surprise.
"Are you indeed 'beautiful, brilliant, and of noble birth'?" he asked ironically, repeating the words she had herself used in their former conversation.
"Who has told you to the contrary?"
"Friends, in whom I put faith; who care for my safety and are on the watch against treachery.""Treachery!" she exclaimed, in a sarcastic tone."Have you forgotten Hulot and Alencon already? You have no memory,--a dangerous defect in the leader of a party.But if friends," she added, with increased sarca**, "are so all-powerful in your heart, keep your friends.
Nothing is comparable to the joys of friendship.Adieu; neither I nor the soldiers of the Republic will stop here."She turned towards the gateway with a look of wounded pride and scorn, and her motions as she did so displayed a dignity and also a despair which changed in an instant the thoughts of the young man; he felt that the cost of relinquishing his desires was too great, and he gave himself up deliberately to imprudence and credulity.He loved; and the lovers had no desire now to quarrel with each other.
"Say but one word and I will believe you," he said, in a supplicating voice.