Chapter 5

The next morning was lovely. I went to my maid's room, just across the corridor to see the motors start. All our rooms looked out on the park, and on the other side of the corridor was a succession of small rooms giving on the court-yard, which were always kept for the maids and valets of the guests. It was an excellent arrangement, for in some of the big châteaux, where the servants were at the top of the house, or far off in another wing, communications were difficult. There were two carriages and a sort of tapissière following with guns, servants, and cartridges. I had a message from Mme. A. asking if I had slept well, and sending me the paper; and a visit from Comtesse de B. who, I think, was rather anxious about my garments. She had told me the night before that the ploughed fields were something awful, and hoped I had brought short skirts and thick boots. I think the sight of my short Scotch homespun skirt and high boots reassured her. We started about 11.30 in an open carriage with plenty of furs and wraps. It wasn't really very cold--just a nice nip in the air, and no wind. We drove straight into the woods from the park. There is a beautiful green alley which faces one just going out of the gate, but it was too steep to mount in a carriage. The woods are very extensive, the roads not too bad--considering the season, extremely well kept. Every now and then through an opening in the trees we had a pretty view over the plains. As we got near the pavilion we heard shots not very far off--evidently the shooters were getting hungry and coming our way. It was a pretty rustic scene as we arrived. The pavilion, a log house, standing in a clearing, alleys branching off in every direction, a horse and cart which had brought the provisions from the château tied to one of the trees. It was shut in on three sides, wide open in front, a bright fire burning and a most appetizing table spread. Just outside another big fire was burning, the cook waiting for the first sportsman to appear to begin his classic dishes, omelette au lard and ragoât de mouton. I was rather hungry and asked for a piece of the pain de ménage they had for the traqueurs (beaters). I like the brown country bread so much better than the little rolls and crisp loaves most people ask for in France. Besides our own breakfast there was an enormous pot on the fire with what looked like an excellent substantial soup for the men. In a few minutes the party arrived; first the shooters, each man carrying his gun; then the game cart, which looked very well garnished, an army of beaters bringing up the rear. They made quite a picturesque group, all dressed in white. There have been so many accidents in some of the big shoots, people imprudently firing at something moving in the bushes, which proved to be a man and not a roebuck, that M. A. dresses all his men in white. The gentlemen were very cheerful, said they had had capital sport, and were quite ready for their breakfast. We didn't linger very long at table, as the days were shortening fast, and we wanted to follow some of the battues. The beaters had their breakfast while we were having ours--were all seated on the ground around a big kettle of soup, with huge hunks of brown bread on their tin plates.

We started off with the shooters. Some walking, some driving, and had one pretty battue of rabbits; after that two of pheasants, which were most amusing. There were plenty of birds, and they came rocketing over our heads in fine style. I found that Comtesse de B. was quite right about the necessity for short skirts and thick boots. We stood on the edge of a ploughed field, which we had to cross afterward on our way home, and I didn't think it was possible to have such cakes of mud as we had on our boots. We scraped off some with sticks, but our boots were so heavy with what remained that the walk home was tiring.

Mme. A. was standing at the hall-door when we arrived, and requested us not to come into the hall, but to go in by the lingerie entrance and up the back stairs, so I fancy we hadn't got much dirt off. I had a nice rest until 4.30, when I went down to the salon for tea. We had all changed our outdoor garments and got into rather smart day dresses (none of those ladies wore tea-gowns). The men appeared about five; some of them came into the salon notwithstanding their muddy boots, and then came the livre de chasse and the recapitulation of the game, which is always most amusing. Everyman counted more pieces than his beater had found.

The dinner and evening were pleasant, the guests changing a little. Two of the original party went off before dinner, two others arrived, one of them a Cabinet minister (Finances). He was very clever and defended himself well when his policy was freely criticised. While we women were alone after dinner, Mme. A. showed me how to make crochet petticoats. She gave me a crochet-needle and some wool and had wonderful patience, for it seemed a most arduous undertaking to me, and all my rows were always crooked; however, I did learn, and have made hundreds since. All the children in our village pull up their little frocks and show me their crochet petticoats whenever we meet them. They are delighted to have them, for those we make are of good wool (not laine de bienfaisance, which is stiff and coarse), and last much longer than those one buys.

The second day was quite different. There was no shooting. We were left to our own devices until twelve o'clock breakfast. W. and I went for a short stroll in the park. We met M. A., who took us over the farm, all so well ordered and prosperous. After breakfast we had about an hour of salon before starting for the regular tournée de propriétaire through park and gardens. The three ladies--Mme. A., her daughter, and daughter-in-law--had beautiful work. Mme. A. was making portières for her daughter's room, a most elaborate pattern, reeds and high plants, a very large piece of work; the other two had also very complicated work--one a table-cover, velvet, heavily embroidered, the other a church ornament (almost all the Frenchwomen of a certain monde turn their wedding dresses, usually of white satin, into a priest's vêtement). The Catholic priests have all sorts of vestments which they wear on different occasions; purple in Lent, red on any martyr's fête, white for all the fêtes of the Virgin. Some of the churches are very rich with chasubles and altar-cloths trimmed with fine old lace, which have been given to them. It looks funny sometimes to see a very ordinary country curé, a farmer's son, with a heavy peasant face, wearing one of those delicate white-satin chasubles.

Before starting to join the shooters at breakfast Mme. A. took me all over the house. It is really a beautiful establishment, very large, and most comfortable. Quantities of pictures and engravings, and beautiful Empire furniture. There is quite a large chapel at the end of the corridor on the ground-floor, where they have mass every Sunday. The young couple have a charming installation, really a small house, in one of the wings--bedrooms, dressing-rooms, boudoir, cabinet de travail, and a separate entrance--so that M. A. can receive any one who comes to see him on business without having them pass through the château. Mme. A. has her rooms on the ground-floor at the other end of the house. Her sitting-room with glass door opens into a winter garden filled with plants, which gives on the park; her bedroom is on the other side, looking on the court-yard; a large library next it, light and space everywhere, plenty of servants, everything admirably arranged.

The evening mail goes out at 7.30, and every evening at seven exactly the letter-carrier came down the corridor knocking at all the doors and asking for letters. He had stamps, too, at least _French_ stamps. I could never get a foreign stamp (twenty-five centimes)--had to put one of fifteen and two of five when I had a foreign letter. I don't really think there were any in the country. I don't believe they had a foreign correspondent of any description. It was a thoroughly French establishment of the best kind.

We walked about the small park and gardens in the afternoon. The gardens are enormous; one can drive through them. Mme. A. drove in her pony carriage. They still had some lovely late roses which filled me with envy--ours were quite finished.

The next day was not quite so fine, gray and misty, but a good shooting day, no wind. We joined the gentlemen for lunch in another pavilion farther away and rather more open than the one of the other day. However, we were warm enough with our coats on, a good fire burning, and hot bricks for our feet. The battues (aux échelles) that day were quite a new experience for me. I had never seen anything like it. The shooters were placed in a semicircle, not very far apart. Each man was provided with a high double ladder. The men stood on the top (the women seated themselves on the rungs of the ladders and hung on as well as they could). I went the first time with W., and he made me so many recommendations that I was quite nervous. I mustn't sit too high up or I would gêner him, as he was obliged to shoot down for the rabbits; and I mustn't sit too near the ground, or I might get a shot in the ankles from one of the other men. I can't say it was an absolute pleasure. The seat (if seat it could be called) was anything but comfortable, and the detonation of the gun just over my head was decidedly trying; still it was a novelty, and if the other women could stand it I could.

For the second battue I went with Comte de B. That was rather worse, for he shot much oftener than W., and I was quite distracted with the noise of the gun. We were nearer the other shooters, too, and I fancied their aim was very near my ankles. It was a pretty view from the top of the ladder. I climbed up when the battues were over. We looked over the park and through the trees, quite bare and stripped of their leaves, on the great plains, with hardly a break of wood or hills, stretching away to the horizon. The ground was thickly carpeted with red and yellow leaves, little columns of smoke rising at intervals where people were burning weeds or rotten wood in the fields; and just enough purple mist to poetize everything. B. is a very careful shot. I was with him the first day at a rabbit battue where we were placed rather near each other, and every man was asked to keep quite to his own place and to shoot straight before him. After one or two shots B. stepped back and gave his gun to his servant. I asked what was the matter. He showed me the man next, evidently not used to shooting, who was walking up and down, shooting in every direction, and as fast as he could cram the cartridges into his gun. So he stepped back into the alley and waited until the battue was over.

The party was much smaller that night at dinner. Every one went away but W. and me. The talk was most interesting--all about the war, the first days of the Assemblée Nationale at Bordeaux, and the famous visit of the Comte de Chambord to Versailles, when the Maréchal de MacMahon, President of the Republic, refused to see him. I told them of my first evening visit to Mme. Thiers, the year I was married. Mme. Thiers lived in a big gloomy house in the Place St. Georges, and received every evening. M. Thiers, who was a great worker all his life and a very early riser, always took a nap at the end of the day. The ladies (Mlle. Dosne, a sister of Mme. Thiers, lived with them) unfortunately had not that good habit. They took their little sleep after dinner. We arrived there (it was a long way from us, we lived near the Arc de l'Étoile) one evening a little before ten. There were already four or five men, no ladies. We were shown into a large drawing-room, M. Thiers standing with his back to the fireplace, the centre of a group of black coats. He was very amiable, said I would find Mme. Thiers in a small salon just at the end of the big one; told W. to join their group, he had something to say to him, and I passed on. I did find Mme. Thiers and Mlle. Dosne in the small salon at the other end, both asleep, each in an arm-chair. I was really embarrassed. They didn't hear me coming in, and were sleeping quite happily and comfortably. I didn't like to go back to the other salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called me by name, and introduced herself, Mme. A. the wife of an admiral whom I often met afterward. She told me not to mind, there wasn't the slightest intention of rudeness, that both ladies would wake up in a few minutes quite unconscious of having really slept. We talked about ten minutes, not lowering our voices particularly. Suddenly Mme. Thiers opened her eyes, was wide awake at once--how quietly we must have come in; she had only just closed her eyes for a moment, the lights tired her, etc. Mlle. Dosne said the same thing, and then we went on talking easily enough. Several more ladies came in, but only two or three men. _They_ all remained in the farther room talking, or rather listening, to M. Thiers. He was already a very old man, and when he began to talk no one interrupted him; it was almost a monologue. I went back several times to the Place St. Georges, but took good care to go later, so that the ladies should have their nap over. One of the young diplomat's wives had the same experience, rather worse, for when the ladies woke up they didn't know her. She was very shy, spent a wretched ten minutes before they woke, and was too nervous to name herself. She was half crying when her husband came to the rescue.

We left the next morning early, as W. had people coming to him in the afternoon. I enjoyed my visit thoroughly, and told them afterward of my misgivings and doubts as to how I should get along with strangers for two or three days. I think they had rather the same feeling. They were very old friends of my husband's, and though they received me charmingly from the first, it brought a foreign and new element into their circle.

* * * * *

Another interesting old château, most picturesque, with towers, moat, and drawbridge, is Lorrey-le-Bocage, belonging to the Comte de S. It stands very well, in a broad moat--the water clear and rippling and finishing in a pretty little stream that runs off through the meadows. The place is beautifully kept--gardens, lawns, courts, in perfect order. It has no particular _historic_ interest for the family, having been bought by the parents of the present owner.

I was there, the first time, in very hot weather, the 14th of July (the French National fête commemorating the fall of the Bastille). I went for a stroll in the park the morning after I arrived, but I collapsed under a big tree at once--hadn't the energy to move. Everything looked so hot and not a breath of air anywhere. The moat looked glazed--so absolutely still under the bright summer sun--big flies were buzzing and skimming over the surface, and the flowers and plants were drooping in their beds.

Inside it was delightful, the walls so thick that neither heat nor cold could penetrate. The house is charming. The big drawing-room--where we always sat--was a large, bright room with windows on each side and lovely views over park and gardens; and all sorts of family portraits and souvenirs dating from Louis XV to the Comte de Paris. The men of the family--all ardent Royalists--have been, for generations, distinguished as soldiers and statesmen.

One of them--a son of the famous Maréchal de S, brought up in the last years of the reign of Louis XV--carried his youthful ardour and dreams of liberty to America and took part, as did so many of the young French nobles, in the great struggle for independence that was being fought out on the other side of the Atlantic. Soon after his return to France he was named Ambassador to Russia to the court of Catherine II, and was supposed to have been very much in the good graces of that very pleasure-loving sovereign. He accompanied her on her famous trip to the Crimea, arranged for her by her minister and favourite, Potemkin--when fairy villages, with happy populations singing and dancing, sprang up in the road wherever she passed as if by magic--quite dispelling her ideas of the poverty and oppression of some of her subjects.

Among the portraits there is a miniature of the Empress Catherine. It is a fine, strongly marked face. She wears a high fur cap--a sort of military pelisse with lace jabots and diamond star. The son of the Maréchal, also soldier and courtier, was aide-de-camp to Napoleon and made almost all his campaigns with him. His description of the Russian campaign and the retreat of the "Grande Armée" from Moscow is one of the most graphic and interesting that has ever been written of those awful days. His memoirs are quite charming. Childhood and early youth passed in the country in all the agonies of the Terror--simply and severely brought up in an atmosphere absolutely hostile to any national or popular movement.

The young student, dreaming of a future and regeneration for France, arrived one day in Paris, where an unwonted stir denoted that something was going on. He heard and saw the young Republican General Bonaparte addressing some regiments. He marked the proud bearing of the men--even the recruits--and in an explosion of patriotism his vocation was decided. He enlisted at once in the Republican ranks. It was a terrible decision to confide to his family, and particularly to his grandfather, the old Maréchal de S. a glorious veteran of many campaigns and an ardent Royalist. His father approved, although it was a terrible falling off from all the lessons and examples of his family--but it was a difficult confession to make to the Maréchal. I will give the scene in his own words (translated, of course--the original is in French).

"I was obliged to return to Châlenoy to relate my 'coup-de-tête' to my grandfather. I arrived early in the morning and approached his bed in the most humble attitude. He said to me, very sharply, 'You have been unfaithful to all the traditions of your ancestors--but it is done. Remember that you have enlisted voluntarily in the Republican army; serve it frankly and loyally, for your decision is made, you cannot now go back on it.' Then seeing the tears running down my cheeks (he too was moved), and taking my hand with the only one he had left, he drew me to him and pressed me on his heart. Then giving me seventy louis (it was all he had), he added, 'This will help you to complete your equipment--go, and at least carry bravely and faithfully, under the flag it has pleased you to choose, the name you bear and the honour of your family.'"

The present Count, too, has played a part in politics in these troublous times, when decisions were almost as hard to take, and one was torn between the desire to do something for one's country and the difficulty of detaching oneself from old traditions and memories. People whose grandfathers have died on the scaffold can hardly be expected to be enthusiastic about the Republic and the Marseillaise. Yet if the nation wants the Republic, and every election accentuates that opinion, it is very difficult to fight against the current.

When I first married, just after the Franco-Prussian War, there seemed some chance of the moderate men, on both sides, joining in a common effort against the radical movement, putting themselves at the head of it and in that way directing and controlling--but very soon the different sections in parliament defined themselves so sharply that any sort of compromise was difficult. My host was named deputy, immediately after the war, and though by instinct, training, and association a Royalist and a personal friend of the Orléans family, he was one of a small group of liberal-patriotic deputies who might have supported loyally a moderate Republic had the other Republicans not made their position untenable. There was an instinctive, unreasonable distrust of any of the old families whose names and antecedents had kept them apart from any republican movement.

We had pleasant afternoons in the big drawing-room. In the morning we did what we liked. The Maîtresse de Maison never appeared in the drawing-room till the twelve o'clock breakfast. I used to see her from my window, coming and going--sometimes walking, when she was making the round of the farm and garden, oftener in her little pony carriage and occasionally in the automobile of her niece, who was staying in the house. She occupied herself very much with all the village--old people and children, everybody. After breakfast we used to sit sometimes in the drawing-room--the two ladies working, the Comte de S. reading his paper and telling us anything interesting he found there. Both ladies had most artistic work--Mme. de S. a church ornament, white satin ground with raised flowers and garlands, stretched, of course, on the large embroidery frames they all use. Her niece, Duchesse d'E., had quite another "installation" in one of the windows--a table with all sorts of delicate little instruments. She was book-binding--doing quite lovely things in imitation of the old French binding. It was a work that required most delicate manipulation, but she seemed to do it quite easily. I was rather humiliated with my little knit petticoats--very hot work it is on a blazing July day.

III

THE HOME OF LAFAYETTE

La Grange was looking its loveliest when I arrived the other day. It was a bright, beautiful October afternoon and the first glimpse of the château was most picturesque. It was all the more striking as the run down from Paris was so ugly and commonplace. The suburbs of Paris around the Gare de l'Est--the Plain of St. Denis and all the small villages, with kitchen gardens, rows of green vegetables under glass "cloches"--are anything but interesting. It was not until we got near Gréty and alongside of Ferrières, the big Rothschild place, that we seemed to be in the country. The broad green alleys of the park, with the trees just changing a little, were quite charming. Our station was Verneuil l'Etang, a quiet little country station dumped down in the middle of the fields, and a drive of about fifty minutes brought us to the château. The country is not at all pretty, always the same thing--great cultivated fields stretching off on each side of the road--every now and then a little wood or clump of trees. One does not see the château from the high road.