Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 | Page 7

the
long line of trees that bordered the road, I could not help thinking that
this thoughtful provision for the protection of the traveller was the most
pleasing indication I had yet seen of a country long settled.
While I was thus looking and wondering, and drawing perhaps the
hasty comparisons of a novice, I saw a gentleman coming towards us
with a firm, quick step, his blue surtout buttoned tight over his breast, a
light walking-stick in his hand, and with the abstracted air of a man
who saw something beyond the reach of the bodily eye. It was Cooper,
just returning from a visit to the General, and dreaming perhaps of his
forest-paths or the ocean. His carriage with his family was coming
slowly on behind. A day earlier and I should have found them all at La
Grange.
It was evident that the good people of Rosay were accustomed to the
sight of travellers on their way to La Grange with a very small stock of
French; for I had hardly named the place, when a brisk little fellow,
announcing himself as the guide of all the _Messieurs Américains_,
swung my portmanteau upon his back and set out before me at the
regular jog-trot of a well-trained porter. The distance was but a mile,
the country level, and we soon came in sight of the castle. Castle,

indeed, it was, with its pointed Norman towers, its massive walls, and
broad moat,--memorials of other days,--and already gray with age
before the first roof-tree was laid in the land which its owner had
helped to build up to a great nation. On a hill-side its appearance would
have been grand. As it was, it was impressive, and particularly as first
seen from the road. The portcullis was gone, but the arched gateway
still remained, flanked by towers that looked sombre and stern, even
amidst the deep green of the ivy which covered the left tower almost to
the battlements. I was afterwards told that the ivy itself had a special
significance,--having been planted by Charles Fox, during a visit to La
Grange not long before his death. And Fox, it will be remembered, had
exerted all his eloquence to induce the English Government to demand
the liberation of Lafayette from Olmütz,--an act which called down
upon him at the time the bitterest invectives of party rhetoric, but which
the historian of England now records as a bright page in the life of one
of her greatest men. Ah, how different would our record be, if we could
always follow our instinct of immortality, and in all our actions look
thoughtfully forward to the judgment of the future!
Passing under the massive arch, I found myself in the castle court.
Three sides of the edifice were still standing, darkened, indeed, and
distained by the winds and rains of centuries, but with an air of modern
comfort and neatness about the doors and windows that seemed more
in keeping than the moat and towers with the habits of the present day.
The other curtain had been thrown down years before,--how or why
nobody could tell me, but not improbably in some of the domestic wars
which fill and defile the annals of mediaeval Europe. In those days the
loss of it must have been a serious one; but for the modern occupant it
was a real gain,--letting in the air and sunlight, and opening a pleasant
view of green plantations from every window of the court.
A servant met me at the main entrance, a broad stairway directly
opposite the gate, and, taking my card, led me up to a spacious hall,
where he asked me to wait while he went to announce my arrival to the
General. The hall was a large oblong room, plainly, but neatly
furnished, with a piano at one end, its tessellated oaken floor highly
polished, and communicating by folding-doors with an inner room, in
which I caught a glimpse of a bright wood-fire, and a portrait of Bailly
over the mantel. On the wall, to the left of the folding-doors, was

suspended an American flag with its blue field of stars and its red and
white stripes looking down upon me in a way that made my American
veins tingle.
But I had barely time to look around me before I heard a heavy step on
the stairs, and the next moment the General entered. This time he gave
me a French greeting, pressing me in his arms and kissing me on both
cheeks. "We were expecting you," said he, "and you are in good season
for dinner. Let me show you your room."
If I had had my choice of all the rooms in the castle, I should have
chosen the very one that had been