Part 18

Presently the roaring ceases, the fresh coals are flattened down, and into a skillet, with a handle five feet long, is dropped the butter, which melts almost instantly. A fat little red-faced boy pushes the skillet back and forth to keep the butter from burning. The frantic beating of eggs comes nearer and nearer. The shrill voice of Madame Poularde screams voluble French at her assistants. She boxes somebody’s ears, snatches the eggs, gives them one final puffy beating, which causes them to foam up and overflow, and at that exciting moment out they bubble into the smoking skillet, the handle of which she seizes at the identical moment that she lets go of the empty bowl with one hand and pushes the red-faced boy over backward with the other. It is legerdemain! But then, how she manages that skillet! How her red cheeks flush, her black eyes sparkle, and her plump hands guide that ship of state!

We are all so excited that we get horribly in her way and almost fall into the fire in our anxiety. She stirs and coaxes and coquettes with the lovely foamy mass until it becomes as light as the yellow down on a fledgling’s wings. She calls it an omelette, but she is scrambling those eggs! Then when it is almost done she screams at us to take our places. The red-faced boy rings a huge bell, and we all tumble madly up the narrow stairs to the dining-room, where a score of assorted tourists are seated. They get that first omelette because they behaved better than we did, and were more orderly. There are half a dozen little maids who attend us. They give us bread and bring our wine and get our plates all ready, for, behold, we can hear below the beating of the eggs and the sizzling of the butter, and presently Madame Poularde’s scream and slap, and we know that our omelette is on the way!

There were scores of bridal parties there when we were, for Mont St. Michel seems to be the Niagara of France, and really one could hardly imagine a more charming place for a honeymoon. Indeed, for a newly married couple, for boy and girl, for spinsters and bachelors, ay, even for Darby and Joan, Mont St. Michel has attractions. All sorts and conditions of men here find the most romantic and interesting spot to be found in the whole of France.

While here we got telegrams telling us of the assembling of our friends at a house-party at a château in the south of France which once had belonged to Charles VII. So without waiting for anything more we wired a joyful acceptance and set out. We did, however, stop over a few hours at Blois, in order to see the château there. We really did Blois in a spirit of Baedeker, for we were crazy to see Velor, in order not to miss an inch of the good times which we knew would riot there. But virtue was its own reward, for as we were looking into the depths of the first real oubliette which I ever had seen, and I was just shivering with the vision of that fiendish Catharine de’ Medici who used to drop people into these holes every morning before breakfast, just as an appetizer, we heard a most blood-curdling shriek, and there stood that wretched Jimmie watching us from an open door, waving his Baedeker at us, with Mrs. Jimmie’s lovely Madonna smile seen over his shoulder.

No one who has not felt the awful pangs of homesickness abroad has any idea of the joy with which one greets intimate friends in Europe. I believe that travel in Europe has done more toward the riveting of lukewarm American friendships than any other thing in the world.

The Jimmies have often appeared upon my pathway like angels of light, and at Blois we simply loved them, for Blois is not only gloomy, but it has a most ghastly history. The murder of the Duc de Guise and his brother, by order of King Henry III., took place here. They show one the rooms where the murder was committed, the door through which the murderer entered, and the private cabinet de travail where the king waited for the news.

Here, also, Margaret of Valois married Henry of Navarre, and Charles, Duc d’Alençon, married Margaret of Anjou. But one hardly ever thinks of the weddings which occurred here for the horrors which overshadow them. How fitting that Marie de’ Medici should have been imprisoned here, and my ancient enemy, Catharine, that queen-mother who perched her children on thrones as carelessly and as easily as did Napoleon and Queen Louise of Denmark—that Catharine should have died here, “unregretted and unlamented,” was too lovely!

Then we left the magnificent old castle and took the train for Port-Boulet, where the Marquise met us with her little private omnibus, holding eight, drawn by handsome American horses. They were new horses and young, and the Marquise said that Charles found them quite unmanageable. Jimmie watched him drive them around a moment or two before they could be made to stand, then he broke out laughing. The Marquise was so disgusted at the way they see-sawed that she said she was going to sell them.

“Sell them!” cried Jimmie. “Why, all in the world that’s the matter with those poor brutes is that they don’t speak French! Let me drive them!”

So the Marquise saved Charles’s vanity by saying that monsieur wished to try the new horses. Jimmie climbed upon the box, and gathered up the reins, saying, “So, old boy, you don’t like the dratted language any better than I do. Steady now, boy! Giddap!” Whereat the pretty creatures pricked up their ears, pranced a little, then sprang into their collars, and we were off along the lovely river road at a spanking pace and with as smooth and even a gait as the most experienced roadsters.

We could hear Charles’s polite compliments to Jimmie on his driving, and Jimmie’s awful French, as he assured Charles that the horses were all right, “très gentils” and “très jolis.” “Ne dites jamais ‘doucement’ aux chevaux américains. Dites ‘whoa,’ et ils arrêteront, et quand vous dites ‘Giddap,’ ils marcheront bien. Savez?” At which Charles obediently practised “Whoa!” and “Giddap!” while we felt ourselves pulled up and started off, as the object-lesson demanded, but amid shrieks of laughter which quite upset Charles’s dignity.

Finally, we whirled in across the moat and under the great gate to the château, and found ourselves in the billiard-room of Velor, with a big open fire, in front of which lay a pile of dogs and around which we all gathered shiveringly, for the day was chilly.

That charming billiard-room at Velor! It is not so grand as the rest of the château, but everybody loves it best of all. It is on the ground floor, and it has a writing-desk and two or three little work-tables and several sofas and heaps of easy-chairs, and here everybody came to read or write or sew or play billiards. And as to afternoon tea! Not one of us could have been hired to drink it in the salons up-stairs. In fact, so many of us insisted upon being in the billiard-room that there never was room for a free play of one’s cue, for somebody was always in the way, and it was rather discouraging to hear a woman doing embroidery say, “Don’t hit this ball. Take some other stroke, can’t you? Your cue will strike me in the eye.”

Dunham, the eighteen-year-old son of the Marquise, was teaching me billiards, but his manners were so beautiful that he always pretended that to stick to one’s own ball was a mere arbitrary rule of the game, so he permitted me to play with either ball, which made it easiest for me, or which caused least discomfort to those sitting uncomfortably near the table. A dear boy, that Dunham! He had but one fault, and that was that he would wear cerise and scarlet cravats, and his hair was red—so uncompromisingly red, of such an obstinate and determined red, that his mother often said, “Come here, Dunham, dear, and light up this corner of the room with your sunny locks. It is too dark to see how to thread my needle!” Such was his amiability that I am sure he enjoyed it, for he always went promptly, and called her “Mon amour,” and slyly kissed her when he thought we were not looking.

All our remarks upon his red ties fell upon unheeding ears, until one day I bribed his man to bring me every one of them. These I distributed among the women guests, and when, the next morning, Dunham came in complaining that he couldn’t find any of his red ties, lo! every woman in the room was wearing one; and to our credit be it spoken that he failed to get any of them back, and never, to my knowledge at least, wore a scarlet tie again.

Velor is historic. After it passed out of the hands of Charles VII.—I have slept in his room, but I must say that he was unpleasantly short if that bed fitted him!—it was bought by the old miser Nivelau, whose daughter, Eugénie Belmaison, was the girl Balzac wished to marry. In a rage at being rejected by her father he wrote Eugénie Grandet, and several of the articles, such as her work-box, of which Balzac makes mention, are in the possession of the Marquise.

Every available room in the Velor was filled with our party. Each day we drove in the brake to visit some ancient château, such as Azay-le-Rideau, Islette, Chinon, or the Abbey of Fontevreault, finding the roads and scenery in Touraine the most delightful one can imagine.

Fontevreault was originally an abbey, and a most powerful one, being presided over by daughters of kings or women of none but the highest rank, and these noble women held the power of life and death over all the country which was fief to Fontevreault.

Velor was once fief to Fontevreault, but the abbey is now turned into a prison.

They took away our cameras before they allowed us to enter, but we saw some of the prisoners, of whom there were one thousand. The real object of our visit, however, was to see the tombs of Henry II. and of my beloved Richard the Lion-hearted, who are both buried at Fontevreault. To go to Fontevreault, we were obliged to cross the river Vienne on the most curious little old ferry, which was only a raft with the edges turned up. Charles drove the brake on to this raft, but we preferred, after one look into the eyes of the American horses, to climb down and trust to our own two feet.

We gave and attended breakfasts with the owners of neighboring châteaux, drove into Saumur to the theatre or to dine with the officers of the regiment stationed there, and had altogether a perfect visit. I have made many visits and have been the guest of many hostesses, most of them charming ones, hence it is no discourtesy to them and but a higher compliment to the Marquise when I assert that she is one of the most perfect hostesses I ever met.

A thorough woman of the world, having been presented at three courts and speaking five languages, yet her heart is as untouched by the taint of worldliness, her nature as unembittered by her sorrows, as if she were a child just opening her eyes to society. One of the cleverest of women, she is both humorous and witty, with a gift of mimicry which would have made her a fortune on the stage.

Her servants idolize her, manage the château to suit themselves, which fortunately means to perfection, and look upon her as a beloved child who must be protected from all the minor trials of life. She has rescued the most of them from some sort of discomfort, and their gratitude is boundless. Like the majority of the nobility, the peasants of France are royalists. The middle class, the bourgeoisie, are the backbone of the republic.

The servants are stanch Catholics and long for a monarchy again. The Marquise apologized to them for our being heretics, and told them that while we were not Christians (Catholics), yet we tried to be good, and in the main turned out a fair article, but she entreated their clemency and their prayers for her guests. So we had the satisfaction of being ardently prayed for all the time we were there, and of being complimented occasionally by her maid, Marie, an old Normandie peasant seventy years old, for an act on our part now and then which savored of real Christianity. And once when we had private theatricals, and I dressed as a nun, Marie never found out for half the evening that I was not one of the Sisters who frequently came to the château, but kept crossing herself whenever she saw me; and when she discovered me she told me, with tears in her eyes, it really was a thousand pities that I would not renounce the world and become a Christian, because I looked so much like a “religieuse.”

We went in oftenest to Chinon—always on market day; some of us on horseback, some on wheels, while the rest drove. Chinon is the fortress château where Jeanne d’Arc came to see Charles VII. to try to interest him in her plans. Its ruins stand high up on a bluff overlooking the town, and beneath it in an open square is the very finest and most spirited equestrian statue I ever saw. It is of Jeanne d’Arc, and I only regret that the photograph I took of it is too small to show its fire and spirit and the mad rush of the horse, and the glorious, generous pose of the noble martyr’s outstretched arms, as she seems to be in the act of sacrificing her life to her country. There is the divinest patriotism in every line of it.

We saw it on a beautiful crisp day in November. It was our Thanksgiving day at home. We drove along the lovely river-road from Chinon to Velor, and upon our arrival we discovered that the Marquise had arranged an American Thanksgiving dinner for us, sending even to America for certain delicacies appropriate to the season. It was a most gorgeous Thanksgiving dinner, for, aside from the turkey, lo! there appeared a peacock in all its magnificent plumage, sitting there looking so dressy with all his feathers on that we quite blushed for the state of the turkey.

A month of Paris, and then I long for fresh fields and pastures new. Of course there is nowhere like Paris for clothes or to eat. But when one has got all the clothes one can afford and is no longer hungry, having acquired a chronic indigestion from too intimate a knowledge of Marguery’s and Ledoyen’s, what is there to do but to leave?

Paris is essentially a holiday town, but I get horribly tired of too long a holiday, and after the newness is worn off one discovers that it is the superficiality of it all that palls. The people are superficial; their amusements are feathery—even the beauty of it all is “only skin deep.”