"It was the finest in the county, so the old books say!" she told me. "There was a hall for dancing, a hundred feet long, and once the Sieur D'Arthenay gave a ball for the king, Henri Quatre it was, and the hall was lighted with a thousand tapers of rose-coloured wax, set in silver sconces. How that must have been pretty, M. D'Arthenay!"
I thought of our kitchen at home, and the glass lamps that Mère-Marie kept shining with such care; but before I could speak, Yvon broke in. "He shall come! I tell him he shall come, Valerie! All my life I perish, thou knowest it, for a companion of my sex, of my age. Thou art my angel, Valerie, but thou art a woman, and soon, too, thou wilt leave me. Alone, a hermit in my château, my heart desolate, how to support life? It is for this that I cry to the friend of my house to return to his country, the country of his race; to bring here his respected father, to plant a vineyard, a little corn, a little fruit,--briefly, to live. Observe!" Instantly his hands fluttered out, pointing here and there.
"Jacques, observe, I implore you! This tower; it is now uninhabited, is it not? you can answer me that, though you have been here but a day."
As he waited for an answer, I replied that it certainly was vacant, so far as I could see; except that there must be bats and owls, I thought, in the thickness of the ivy trees.
"Perfectly! Except for these animals, there is none to dispute your entrance. The tower is solid,--of a solidity! Cannon must be brought, to batter down these walls. Instead of battering, we restore, we construct. With these brave walls to keep out the cold, you construct within--a dwelling! vast, I do not say; palatial, I do not say; but ample for two persons, who--who have lived together, _à deux_, not requiring separate suites of apartments." He waved his hand in such a manner that I saw long sets of rooms opening one after another, till the eye was lost in them.
"Here, where we now are posed, is your own room, Jacques. For you this view of Paradise. Monsieur your father will not so readily mount the stairs, becoming in future years infirm, though now a tree, an oak, massive and erect. We build for the future, D'Arthenay! Below, then, the paternal apartments, the salon, perhaps a small room for guns and dogs and appliances." Another wave set off a square space, where we could almost see the dogs leaping and crouching.