Part 21

“Nothing, now that you are leaving it; and monsieur,” she added, smiling at Grossetete, who was bidding her adieu, “will seldom be there.”

The bishop accompanied Madame Graslin as far as Montegnac.

“I ought to walk this road in sackcloth and ashes,” she said in her mother’s ear as they went on foot up the steep slope of Saint-Leonard.

The old woman put her finger on her lips and glanced at the bishop, who was looking at the child with terrible attention. This gesture, and the luminous look in the prelate’s eyes, sent a shudder through Veronique’s body. At the aspect of the vast plains stretching their gray expanse before Montegnac the fire died out of her eyes, and an infinite sadness overcame her. Presently she saw the village rector coming to meet her, and together they returned to the carriage.

“There is your domain, madame,” said Monsieur Bonnet, extending his hand toward the barren plain.

A few moments more, and the village of Montegnac, with its hill, on which the newly erected buildings struck the eye, came in sight, gilded by the setting sun, and full of the poesy born of the contrast between the beautiful spot and the surrounding barrenness, in which it lay like an oasis in the desert. Madame Graslin’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. The rector called her attention to a broad white line like a gash on the mountain side.

“See what my parishioners have done to testify their gratitude to the lady of the manor,” he said, pointing to the line, which was really a road; “we can now drive up to the chateau. This piece of road has been made by them without costing you a penny, and two months hence we shall plant it with trees. Monseigneur will understand what trouble and care and devotion were needed to accomplish such a change.”

“Is it possible they have done that?” said the bishop.

“Without accepting any payment for their work, Monseigneur. The poorest put their hands into it, knowing that it would bring a mother among them.”

At the foot of the hill the travellers saw the whole population of the neighborhood, who were lighting fire-boxes and discharging a few guns; then two of the prettiest of the village girls, dressed in white, came forward to offer Madame Graslin flowers and fruit.

“To be thus received in this village!” she exclaimed, grasping the rector’s hand as if she stood on the brink of a precipice.

The crowd accompanied the carriage to the iron gates of the avenue. From there Madame Graslin could see her chateau, of which as yet she had only caught glimpses, and she was thunderstruck at the magnificence of the building. Stone is rare in those parts, the granite of the mountains being difficult to quarry. The architect employed by Graslin to restore the house had used brick as the chief substance of this vast construction. This was rendered less costly by the fact that the forest of Montegnac furnished all the necessary wood and clay for its fabrication. The framework of wood and the stone for the foundations also came from the forest; otherwise the cost of the restorations would have been ruinous. The chief expenses had been those of transportation, labor, and salaries. Thus the money laid out was kept in the village, and greatly benefited it.

At first sight, and from a distance, the chateau presents an enormous red mass, threaded by black lines produced by the pointing, and edged with gray; for the window and door casings, the entablatures, corner stones, and courses between the stories, are of granite, cut in facets like a diamond. The courtyard, which forms a sloping oval like that of the Chateau de Versailles, is surrounded by brick walls divided into panels by projecting buttresses. At the foot of these walls are groups of rare shrubs, remarkable for the varied color of their greens. Two fine iron gates placed opposite to each other lead on one side to a terrace which overlooks Montegnac, on the other to the offices and a farm-house.

The grand entrance-gate, to which the road just constructed led, is flanked by two pretty lodges in the style of the sixteenth century. The facade on the courtyard looking east has three towers,--one in the centre, separated from the two others by the main building of the house. The facade on the gardens, which is absolutely the same as the others, looks westward. The towers have but one window on the facade; the main building has three on either side of the middle tower. The latter, which is square like a campanile, the corners being vermiculated, is noticeable for the elegance of a few carvings sparsely distributed. Art is timid in the provinces, and though, since 1829, ornamentation has made some progress at the instigation of certain writers, landowners were at that period afraid of expenses which the lack of competition and skilled workmen rendered serious.

The corner towers, which have three stories with a single window in each, looking to the side, are covered with very high-pitched roofs surrounded by granite balustrades, and on each pyramidal slope of these roofs crowned at the top with the sharp ridge of a platform surrounded with a wrought iron railing, is another window carved like the rest. On each floor the corbels of the doors and windows are adorned with carvings copied from those of the Genoese mansions. The corner tower with three windows to the south looks down on Montegnac; the other, to the north, faces the forest. From the garden front the eye takes in that part of Montegnac which is still called Les Tascherons, and follows the high-road leading through the village to the chief town of the department. The facade on the courtyard has a view of the vast plains semicircled by the mountains of the Correze, on the side toward Montegnac, but ending in the far distance on a low horizon. The main building has only one floor above the ground-floor, covered with a mansarde roof in the olden style. The towers at each end are three stories in height. The middle tower has a stunted dome something like that on the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the palace of the Tuileries, and in it is a single room forming a belvedere and containing the clock. As a matter of economy the roofs had all been made of gutter-tiles, the enormous weight of which was easily supported by the stout beams and uprights of the framework cut in the forest.

Before his death Graslin had laid out the road which the peasantry had just built out of gratitude; for these restorations (which Graslin called his folly) had distributed several hundred thousand francs among the people; in consequence of which Montegnac had considerably increased. Graslin had also begun, before his death, behind the offices on the slope of the hill leading down to the plain, a number of farm buildings, proving his intention to draw some profit from the hitherto uncultivated soil of the plains. Six journeyman-gardeners, who were lodged in the offices, were now at work under orders of a head gardener, planting and completing certain works which Monsieur Bonnet had considered indispensable.

The ground-floor apartments of the chateau, intended only for reception-rooms, had been sumptuously furnished; the upper floor was rather bare, Monsieur Graslin having stopped for a time the work of furnishing it.

“Ah, Monseigneur!” said Madame Graslin to the bishop, after going the rounds of the house, “I who expected to live in a cottage! Poor Monsieur Graslin was extravagant indeed!”

“And you,” said the bishop, adding after a pause, as he noticed the shudder than ran through her frame at his first words, “you will be extravagant in charity?”

She took the arm of her mother, who was leading Francis by the hand, and went to the long terrace at the foot of which are the church and the parsonage, and from which the houses of the village can be seen in tiers. The rector carried off Monseigneur Dutheil to show him the different sides of the landscape. Before long the two priests came round to the farther end of the terrace, where they found Madame Graslin and her mother motionless as statues. The old woman was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, and her daughter stood with both hands stretched beyond the balustrade as though she were pointing to the church below.

“What is the matter, madame?” said the rector to Madame Sauviat.

“Nothing,” replied Madame Graslin, turning round and advancing a few steps to meet the priests; “I did not know that I should have the cemetery under my eyes.”

“You can put it elsewhere; the law gives you that right.”

“The law!” she exclaimed with almost a cry.

Again the bishop looked fixedly at Veronique. Disturbed by the dark glance with which the priest had penetrated the veil of flesh that covered her soul, dragging thence a secret hidden in the grave of that cemetery, she said to him suddenly:--

“Well, yes!”

The priest laid his hand over his eyes and was silent for a moment as if stunned.

“Help my daughter,” cried the old mother; “she is fainting.”