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Page 49
Monsieur de Lucan was born in Vastville. The poetic reminiscences of
childhood mingled in his imagination with the natural poetry of that site,
and made it dear to him. Under pretext of hunting, he came on a pilgrimage
to it every year. Since his marriage only, he had given up that habit of
the heart, in order not to leave Clotilde, who was detained in Paris by
her daughter; but it had been agreed upon that they would go and bury
themselves in that retreat for a season as soon as they had recovered
their liberty. Clotilde only knew Vastville from her husband's
enthusiastic descriptions; she loved it on his representations, and it was
for her, in advance, an enchanted spot. Nevertheless, when the carriage
that brought her from the station entered, at nightfall, among the wooded
hills, in the gloomy avenue that led up to the chateau, she felt an
impression as of cold.
"Mon Dieu! my dear," she said, laughingly, "your chateau is a perfect
castle of Udolpho!"
Lucan excused his chateau as best he could, and protested, moreover, that
he was ready to leave it the very next day, if she were not better pleased
with its appearance after sunrise.
It was not long before she became passionately fond of it. Her happiness,
hitherto so constrained, blossomed freely for the first time in that
solitude, and shed upon it a charming light. She even expressed the wish
of spending the winter and waiting there for Julia, who was to return to
France in the course of the following year. Lucan offered some slight
opposition to that project, which appeared to him rather over-heroic for a
Parisian, but ended by adopting it, too happy himself to harbor the
romance of his love in that romantic spot. He began, however, taxing his
ingenuity to attenuate what there might be too austere in that abode, by
opening relations with some of the neighbors for Clotilde's benefit, and
by procuring her, at intervals, her mother's society. Madame de Pers was
kind enough to lend herself to that combination, although the country was
generally repulsive to her, and Vastville in particular had in her eyes a
sinister character. She pretended that she heard at night noises in the
walls and moans in the woods. She slept with one eye open and two candles
burning. The magnificent cliffs that bordered the coast a short distance
off, and which they tried to make her admire, caused her a painful
sensation.
"Very fine!" she said, "very wild! quite wild! But it makes me sick; I
feel as though I were on top of the towers of Notre Dame! Besides, my
children, love beautifies everything, and I understand your transports
perfectly. As to myself, you must excuse me if I do not share them. I can
never go into ecstasies over such a country as this. I am as fond of the
country as any one, but this is not the country--it is the desert, Arabia
Petroea, I know not what. And as to your chateau, my dear friend--I am
sorry to tell you so: it has a savor of crime. Look well, and you'll see
that a murder has been committed in it."
"Why, no, my dear madam," replied Lucan laughingly, "I know perfectly the
history of my family, and I can guarantee you--"
"Rest assured, my friend, that some one has been killed in it--in old
times. You know how little they troubled themselves about those things
formerly!"
Julia's letters to her mother were frequent. It was a regular journal of
travels written helter-skelter, with a striking originality of style, in
which the vivacity of the impressions was corrected by that shade of
haughty irony which was a peculiarity of the writer. Julia spoke rather
briefly of her husband, but always in pleasant terms. There was generally
a rapid and kindly postscript addressed to Monsieur de Lucan.
Monsieur de Moras was more chary of descriptions. He seemed to see no one
but his wife in Italy. He extolled her beauty, still further enhanced, he
said, by the contact of all those marvels of art with which she was
becoming impregnated; he praised her extraordinary taste, her
intelligence, and even her good disposition. In this latter respect, she
was extremely matured, and he found her almost too staid and too grave for
her age. These particulars delighted Clotilde, and finished instilling
into her heart a peace she had never yet enjoyed.
The count's letters were not less reassuring for the future than the
present. He did not think it necessary, he said, to urge Julia on the
subject of her reconciliation with her step-father; but he felt that she
was quite ready for it. He was, besides, preparing her more and more for
it by conversing habitually with her of the old friendship that united him
to Monsieur de Lucan, of their past life, of their travels, of the perils
they had braved together. Not only did Julia hear these narratives without
revolt, but she often solicited them, as if she had regretted her
prejudices, and had sought good reasons to forget them.
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