In Château Land, Anne Hollingsworth Wharton [english reading book txt] 📗

the Queen on one side of the crypt in a ball dress with jewels around her neck. This statue, by Petitot, although strangely inappropriate in costume, is beautiful in expression, and in the modelling of the face, arms, and hands, the latter being very lovely.

Here also is a "Caveau Imperial," constructed by the order of Napoleon III, as the burial place of his dynasty. This tomb is quite untenanted, of course, as no Bonapartes lie at St. Denis; although the bones of the Valois, Orleans and Bourbon families, who have come and gone in France, probably forever, are royally entombed here, from their early sovereigns down to Louis XVIII.

I tell you all this because I think you have not been to St. Denis, and we found it so much more interesting than we had expected. Walter and Archie made their acknowledgments to Lydia, in due form, and indeed we should never have made this pilgrimage had she not been enterprising enough to lead us forth toward St. Denis and its royal tombs.

September 17th.

Madame La Tour and her son made a formal call upon us yesterday. M. La Tour had already dropped in, in his friendly way, to inquire after our comfort and to offer his services, as a guide to anything that we might wish to see. As Madame had announced her coming we were at home to receive her. She is pretty and graceful, a charming combination of the American and French woman. We all fell in love with her. M. La Tour is frankly proud of his mother and was anxious that we should meet her. He has evidently not yet grasped the situation of affairs, although during the visit, which was brief if somewhat embarrassing, I could see nothing but the sapphire that sparkled upon Lydia's finger. Madame La Tour very cordially invited Lydia to go to the opera with her, and M. La Tour was evidently much disappointed when she declined in consequence of another engagement.

"Lydia never said a truer word in her life!" exclaimed Walter, after the visitors had departed; "but La Tour is very stupid not to know what sort of an engagement it is that she has on her hands."

Upon which I suggested that Walter should mention the engagement to M. La Tour, quite casually, in the course of conversation.

"Why not tell him yourself, Zelphine? You are so much more adroit at that sort of thing."

"It is really becoming embarrassing. Some flowers came last night, forget-me-nots again, to Archie's amusement. Now if Lydia had been anything but just ordinarily nice and pleasant to him, as she is to everyone, it would be different."

"Well, and even if she had been more than ordinarily nice to La Tour why do you trouble yourself about it, Zelphine? It is something that only concerns Lydia and La Tour, and Archie perhaps in a way, but we really have nothing to do with it."

Thus, manlike, does Walter push aside all part and lot in the _affaires du coeur_ of his fellow-travellers; but I have just had a brilliant and beautiful idea, which I intend to communicate to Archie at once. We were all talking _en route_ of the Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte.

As this is a land where people make a fete upon every occasion, Archie shall give a breakfast at Melun or some place near the chateau, and invite us all, and the La Tours also, an engagement party. I have no doubt the French have some charming name for this sort of an entertainment, which we can find out. I shall write you later of the success of my plan.

September 18th.

Of course Archie was delighted with my suggestion, as he and Lydia have been promising themselves the pleasure of an excursion to Vaux-le-Vicomte which seems to go by the name of Vaux-Praslin at the present time. Archie and Walter did the very kindest and most friendly thing, which in the end proved to be the most advantageous to themselves. They took M. La Tour into their confidence and consulted with him as to how the little excursion should be made and where the breakfast should be given. Naturally the poor boy was very much surprised, and quite downhearted when he found out what event was to be celebrated, and we did not see him for two whole days, not until this evening, when he called and offered his congratulations to Lydia in pretty French phrases.

Angela is charmed with M. La Tour and his manners, and says that she does not see how Lydia could possibly resist his fascinations; this with a mischievous glance at Archie, who, serene and confident in his own happiness, replies that Lydia is probably making the mistake of her life in turning away from the young Frenchman and his chateau.

But Lydia knows that she is making no mistake and takes all this jesting in good part; but she insists that the little celebration shall be called a chateau fete, as Vaux-le-Vicomte is our objective point. This is in much better taste, and, after all, we don't know the French name for an engagement fete.

"We certainly don't want to ask La Tour to inform our ignorance," as Walter says. "It would be like requiring the man who is down on his luck to name the happy day. It is quite better taste, and, after all, we don't know the occasion."

Miss Cassandra and Walter and I went to the American church this morning because we like the simple service there, and the rest of the party went to the Russian Church to hear the music, which was very good to-day. The afternoon we all spent at Versailles, where we were so fortunate as to see the fountains play. Nothing, not even the chateaux of the Loire, gives us so realizing a sense of the gayety and splendor of the life of the French court, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as this vast palace of pleasure when the gardens bask in sunshine and the fountains are playing. We recalled Madame de Sevigne's spirited description of the court and royal family setting forth upon some pleasure party, herself among them, tucked in snugly in the same _carosse_ with her favorite, Duchesse de La Valliere, or Madame de Montespan of the many ringlets, for whom she cares nothing,--these two ladies in close quarters although cordially hating each other. The Queen is in another _carosse_ with her children, and the King, being a free lance, drives in the coach with the royal favorites or rides beside it as his fancy dictates.

Our fete is to be on Tuesday, and M. La Tour came to the hotel this evening with a well arranged plan. He really is a dear, and having plenty of spirit and a certain kind of pride that seems to belong to well-bred French people, he has no idea of wearing his heart upon his sleeve, even for the love of Lydia. His suggestions are most practical and sensible, and his advice to Archie is to go to Fontainebleu first and have a walk through the forest, breakfast at one of the hotels there, and motor to Vaux-le-Vicomte, by way of Melun, in the afternoon. It all sounds perfectly delightful, and I have secured a copy of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, at Brentano's, in order to read over again his account of Fouquet's reception of the King at Vaux.

We shall be glad to see Fontainebleau again. Since we have seen the chateaux of the Loire, all of these palaces near Paris are most interesting to us, as they make us realize, as we have never done before, what a great pleasure park much of France was under the Valois and the Bourbons. If the forest of Chambord was vast with its many acres, so also was that of Fontainebleau with its 42,500 acres. Palaces of pleasure, all of these chateaux were intended to be, as were Chenonceaux, Azay le Rideau, Blois and Chambord, although many of them are stained by dark and bloody crimes. Passing through the gardens and park of Versailles to-day we forgot the terrible scenes that were enacted there in 1793, until the guide pointed out to us the Queen's apartments, and showed us the little room from which Marie Antoinette fled for safety to the King's rooms, on that October night of horror, when the Parisian mob swept down upon the palace.

September 20th.

Our day in the open was a brilliant success. Archie had a large automobile, or perhaps I should say a touring car, large enough to hold us all. Madame La Tour declined, and so we have our chateau party, with the pleasant addition of Angela and Ian, who naturally entered with great spirit into the celebration. We had all the time we needed at Fontainebleau, entering by the old Cour du Cheval Blanc, but avoiding the interior of the palace, as we had all been here before, some of us several times, and spending all our time in the gardens and forest which are ever new and always beautiful. We looked for the quincunx near which Louise de La Valliere and her companions were hiding when the king and St. Aignan overheard their girlish confidences, but not finding anything answering to Dumas's description we had to content ourselves with a labyrinth which M. La Tour thinks should answer quite as well. At the end of it is the huge grape-vine, called the King's Vine, which reminded us of the vine at Hampton Court, and like it is said to produce an enormous crop of grapes.

Archie's breakfast was delightful, an _al fresco_ entertainment under a spreading horse-chestnut tree in the garden of a hotel at Fontainebleau. The table was beautifully decorated with flowers and fruit, and the menu, which was suggested by M. La Tour, was the sort to tempt one's appetite on a warm day like this, for it is summer here and much like our September weather at home.

Walter complimented M. La Tour so heartily upon his good taste that he laughingly reminded Walter of our first acquaintance at the _Bon Laboreur_, and asked him if he still had a poor opinion of the French _cuisine_. "Not when you have anything to do with the ordering, my dear fellow!" was the response. "Perhaps my taste needed to be cultivated, for I have come to like some of your French dishes very much, and as for your wines, my taste did not need to be cultivated to like them; I took to them quite naturally." There were toasts, speeches and good wishes, Angela and Ian coming in for their full share. Altogether something to be remembered was that luncheon under the chestnut tree, and near the great forest