The Yellow Poppy. D. K. Broster
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Название: The Yellow Poppy
Автор: D. K. Broster
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066387389
isbn:
“How did he escape! He did not need to escape!” retorted the sentry. “He wasn’t there. He had emigrated long before that. That’s what saved him.”
“But he could not know, long before, what was going to happen in 1792,” said the woman, almost as if she were defending M. de Trélan.
“Maybe not,” returned the National Guard indifferently. “All I know is that he wasn’t here. But she was—the ci-devant Duchesse—and that was the end of her, after a few days of La Force. Myself, I don’t approve of murdering prisoners, especially those of the sex, though the woman Lamballe, being such a friend of the female Capet—as we used to call her before Thermidor—doubtless deserved what she got. But as for this Duchesse, I have heard that she was always kind to the poor, here and elsewhere. But what would you have? Mistakes happen.”
“Yes,” agreed the concierge, looking at him. “But, no doubt, she is well out of this world. It is not too merry a one, Citizen, even, perhaps, for a Duchesse.”
M. Thibault, who was in reality a sympathetic soul, and by no means the blood-boltered patriot he liked to paint himself at times, said to this, “You have known trouble, Citoyenne?”
“I have known what it is to lose my husband, my home, and every penny I had. But I am not faint-hearted; do not think that! One goes on to the end, does one not, citizen sentry—till the relief?”
“Sacré tonnerre, yes!” asseverated the citizen sentry, struck. “I see you are a good-plucked one, Madame. Well, I shall like to think of you behind me in the château there, and if ever there’s anything you want doing for you, I’m your man. Grégoire Thibault is my name.”
The new concierge thanked him with a smile which caused a sensible warmth to flow over the Citizen Grégoire, and made him regret still more that he could not decently keep her waiting any longer. He fitted the key slowly into the lock, saying, “You’ve got your warrant with you, I suppose, Madame?”
The woman held it out at once—an official document duly stamped and sealed, appointing the widow Vidal, sempstress, of the Rue de Seine, concierge of the ci-devant château of Mirabel, in room of the woman Prévost, resigning that charge. The document was signed by the Deputy Camain, the administrator of Mirabel, and countersigned by one of the five Directors, Larevellière-Lépeaux.
“ ‘Vidal,’ ” murmured the sentry, studying it. “Parfaitement.” He returned the paper and at last unfastened the barrier. “Do you see those two bits of balustrading, Madame Vidal, on either hand of the great steps? When you get there you will find that there is a stairway the other side of them, going down to the basement storey. The left-hand one has ‘Concierge’ on it. You go down there. Mme Prévost will probably be on the look-out for you. Good-luck to you, Citoyenne!”
She bent her head again with that smile which had charmed him.
“Thank you, Citizen. I think I shall find my way. . . . Ah, there is one thing I forgot. I have lived in Paris for some years with my niece Mme Tessier, and it is probable that she may come to see me soon—that she will come regularly, in fact. She will have a pass from M. Camain himself. I suppose therefore that there will be no difficulty?”
“No, that will be all right. No need to bother about that,” replied M. Thibault heartily.
And Mme Vidal passed through the barrier. As she did so she not unnaturally glanced up at the broken stone lion on one of the gateposts which still held between its paws the defaced shield of the Ducs de Trélan. The man, who saw the movement, made a gesture of half-tolerant contempt.
“Those watchdogs won’t bark at you now—nor at any one!” he remarked. But Mme Vidal seemed not to have heard him; nor did he, on his side, observe that she had caught her underlip between her teeth like one in sudden pain. Then she began to walk steadily towards the great house.
CHAPTER II
LE PALAIS DE FAIENCE
A trifle of agitation might easily have been excused in any prospective caretaker confronted for the first time by the château of Mirabel. Since there was, on this side of it, no half-concealing avenue, nor, indeed, trees of any kind whatever, but only the prone skeletons of what had been a series of formal gardens, the whole towering extent of the façade broke in one oppressive moment upon eye and brain. And that, no doubt, was why Mme Vidal, walking at first with fair speed towards it over the wide gravel approach, suddenly came to a standstill, and, gripping tightly the handle of her basket, stood like a statue, gazing, across its forlorn parterres, at the overpowering bulk of her new home.
Forty-two years had gone to the making of Mirabel. Begun in 1528 for François I., at the same time as that other palace of Fontainebleau, it had risen under the eyes of successive Royal architects, de l’Orme and Primaticcio, till it became the great château reckoned, in that day of the French Renaissance, so wonderful a novelty—a residence not built round courtyards one or many, but constructed in a solid mass, a parallelogram of great length and height, whereof the north side exactly reproduced the south and the east the west. And Girolamo della Robbia, brought from Italy, had ornamented it in every part with details of many-coloured majolica.
So it stood, this great pile, before the eyes of Mme Vidal—its five-storeyed façade cut, as it were, into three portions by the two square-faced towers which ran up it, and which were repeated, something larger and more aspiring, at the corners. Along both of the two lower storeys, making a sort of colonnade or loggia in front of the tall windows, went richly decorated arcading, fifteen bays of it, lofty and round-arched. Interrupted by similar towers at intervals the colonnading ran, in fact, round the entire building. But the five bays of the central portion were more deeply recessed than the others, for at their pillar bases stretched, from tower to tower, twelve immensely long, wide and shallow steps. Save for the absence of these steps and of the great entrance door to which they led—and for a difference, also, in the frieze over the arches—the second storey exactly reproduced the first. But the third and fourth gained a measure of variety from the absence of the colonnading; though on the third there was still an uncovered terrace or balcony. Here too the windows, no longer so lofty, showed differing schemes of ornamentation, the frames of the lower row being supported by a sort of winged design, the upper accompanied by flat columns.
Yet, despite these devices to break monotony, it was with relief that the eye, travelling upwards over this regular assemblage of colonnades and windows, came at last to the high-pitched roofs, with their agreeably different levels, their dormer windows, and their tall, ornate chimney-stacks. The roof of the midmost portion of the château, between the two central towers, was the lowest; yet even this, after putting forth two great decorated chimneys, suddenly soared up at each end into a peak higher even than those of the towers. And on either hand of it sprang the great pointed pavilion-roofs of the side wings, much higher again, and blossoming, they also, into the most intricately ornamented chimneys and dormer windows.
And everywhere there was this astounding many-hued, glazed and highly-modelled decoration, lavished in frieze and medallion from the richly diapered soffits of the arcading on the ground floor to the very crests of the roofs themselves. It was true that it did not glitter so brightly in the sun of 1799 as in that of 1570, that more than two centuries of exposure to northern weather had dimmed—not perhaps to its disadvantage—something of the Italian’s lustre and colouring, and that the far more destructive human agencies of the СКАЧАТЬ