IN the year 1828 any tourist who was on his way from Blois to the little town of Pont Brillant to visit—as travellers seldom fail to do—the famous castle of that name, the magnificent feudal abode of the Marquises Pont Brillant, would have been obliged to pass a farmhouse standing near the edge of the road, about two miles from the château.

If this lonely dwelling attracted the attention of the traveller, he would have been almost certain to have regarded it with mingled melancholy and disgust as one of the too numerous specimens of hideous rural architecture in France, even when these habitations belong to persons possessed of a competence. This establishment consisted of a large barn and storehouse, with two long wings in the rear. The interior of the sort of parallelogram thus formed served as a courtyard, and was filled with piles of manure rotting in pools of stagnant water, for cow, horse, and sheep stables all opened into this enclosure, where all sorts of domestic animals, from poultry to hogs, were scratching and rooting.

One of the wings in the rear served as the abode of the family. It was a story and a half high, and had no outlook save this loathsome courtyard, with the dirty, worm-eaten doors of the cow-stable for a horizon. On the other side of the structure, where no window pierced the wall, stood a superb grove of century-old oaks, a couple of acres in extent, through which flowed a beautiful stream that served as an outlet for several distant lakes. But this grove, in spite of its beauty, had become well-nigh a desert on account of the large amount of gravel that had been deposited there, and the thick growth of rushes and thistles that covered it; besides, the stream, for want of cleaning out and of a sufficient fall, was becoming turbid and stagnant.

But if this same tourist had passed this same farmhouse one year afterward, he would have been struck by the sudden metamorphosis that the place had undergone, though it still belonged to the same owner. A beautiful lawn, close and fine as velvet, and ornamented with big clumps of rose-bushes, had taken the place of the dirty manure-strewn courtyard. New doors had been cut on the other side of the horse and cow stables; the old doors had been walled up, and the house itself, as well as the big barn at the foot of the courtyard, had been whitewashed and covered with a green trellis up which vigorous shoots of honeysuckle, clematis, and woodbine were already climbing.

The wing in which the family lived had been surrounded with flowering plants and shrubbery. A gravel path led up to the main doorway, which was now shaded by a broad, rustic porch with a thatched roof in which big clumps of houseleek and dwarf iris were growing. This rustic porch, overhung with luxuriant vines, evidently served as the family sitting-room. The window-frames, which were painted a dark green, contrasted strikingly with the dazzling whiteness of the curtains and the clearness of the window-panes, and on each sill was a small jardinière made of silver birch bark, and filled with freshly gathered flowers. A light fence, half concealed by roses, lilacs, and acacias, had been run from one wing of the establishment to the other, parallel with the barn, thus enclosing this charming garden. The grove had undergone a no less complete transformation. A rich carpet of velvety turf, cut with winding walks of shining yellow sand, had superseded the rushes and thistles; the formerly sluggish stream, turned into a new bed and checked in the middle of its course by a pile of large, moss-covered rocks three or four feet high, plunged from the height in a little bubbling, dancing waterfall, then continued its clear and rapid course on a level with its grassy borders.

A few beds of scarlet geraniums, whose brilliant hues contrasted vividly with the rich, green turf, brightened this charming spot, in which the few bright sunbeams that forced their way through dense foliage made a bewitching play of light and shade, especially in the vista through which one could see in the distance the forest of Pont Brillant, dominated by its ancient castle.

The details of this complete transformation, effected in so short a time by such simple and inexpensive means, seem puerile, perhaps, but are really highly significant as the expression of one of the thousand different phases of maternal love. Yes, a young woman sixteen years of age, married when only a little over fifteen, exiled here in this solitude, had thus metamorphosed it.

It was the desire to surround her expected child with bright and beautiful objects here in this lonely spot where he was to live, that had thus developed the young mother's taste, and each pleasing innovation which she had effected in this gloomy, unattractive place, had been planned merely with the purpose of providing a suitable setting for this dear little eagerly expected child.

On the greensward in the carefully enclosed courtyard the child could play as an infant. The porch would afford a healthful shelter in case it rained or the sun was too hot. Later, when he outgrew his babyhood, he could play and run about in the shady grove, under his mother's watchful eye, and amuse himself by listening to the soft murmur of the waterfall, or by watching it dance and sparkle along over the mossy rocks. СКАЧАТЬ

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ENVY.

CHAPTER I.

The Seven Cardinal Sins: Envy and Indolence. Эжен Сю
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