In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. | Page 7

to order his servant to bring me some sherry to restore my nerves. There is one phrase in this song which I never can hear sung, or never can sing myself, without emotion.
The season is getting so late mama thinks we ought to leave London, especially as Garcia is taking his vacation, and we are going in a few days to Paris.
Garcia has given us a letter to his sister, Madame Viardot (of whom he said she had brains but no voice). He wrote: "I send you my pupil. Do all you can to persuade her to go on the stage. She has it in her."
But Madame Viardot may "do all she can"; I will never go on the stage.
If "it" is in me, it must work out some other way.
PARIS, _May, 1861._
DEAR A.,--Mother will have written to you of my engagement to Charles Moulton. I wish you would come and see me married, and that I could present all my future family to the most lovable of aunts.
I think I shall have everything to make me happy. In the first place, my fiancé is very musical, composes charming things, and plays delightfully on the piano; my future mother-in-law is a dear old lady, musical and universally talented; my future father-in-law is a _bona-fide_ American, a dear quixotic old gentleman who speaks the most awful French. Although he has lived in Paris for forty years, he has never conquered the pronunciation of the French language, but has invented a unique dialect of his own. Every word that can be pronounced in English he pronounces in English, as well as all numbers. For instance, a phrase such as _La guerre de mille huit cent quinze était une démonstration de la liberté nationale_ would sound like this: "La gur de 1815 (in English) était une demonstration (in English) de la liberty national." It is almost impossible to understand him; but he will read for hours unabashed, not only to us, the drowsy and inattentive members of his family, but to the most fastidious and illustrious Frenchmen. There are two brothers and a sweet little sister. I shall have a beautiful home, or rather homes, because they have not only a handsome hotel in Paris, but an ideal country place (Petit Val) and a villa in Dinard.
Good-by. Greet all the united family from me, and tell them not to worry over my future, as you wrote they were doing. I have renounced forever the pomps and allurements of the stage, and I trust the leaves on the genealogical tree will cease their trembling, and that the Fays, my ancestors, will not trouble themselves to turn in their graves, as you threatened they would if I did anything to disgrace them.
CH?TEAU DE PETIT VAL, _June, 1862._
DEAREST A.,--I wish I could give you an idea of Petit Val and our life as lived by me. Petit Val is about twelve miles from Paris, and was built for the Marquis de Marigny, whose portrait still hangs in the salon--the brother of Madame de Pompadour--by the same architect who built and laid out the park of Petit Trianon.
There is an avenue of tall poplar-trees leading from Petit Val straight to Choisy-le-Roi, where Madame de Pompadour lived, a distance of ten miles.
Like Petit Trianon, Petit Val has little lakes with shady trees bordering them; it has grottos, waterfalls, winding paths, magnificent greenhouses, fountains, a _rivière_, pavilions, aviaries, terraces, charmilles, berceaux, _enfin tout!_ One feels like saying, "Mein Liebchen, was willst du mehr?" as the poet Heine says. The park is surrounded by a saut de loup (a sunken wall about twenty feet high like "la Muette" in Paris). There is no need of putting up sign-boards with "No trespassing here" as no one could scale the walls of the saut de loup, so we feel very safe, especially when the five iron gates are locked. Beyond the park are the chasse, the farm, the vineyards, and the potager. We are so near Paris that we have many visitors. The drive out here is a pleasant one, going through Vincennes, Charenton, Alfort, etc., and one can get here in about an hour. Duke de Morny, the Duke de Persigny and the Rothschild family, Prince de Sagan, and different diplomats, not to speak of our numerous American friends who are thankful for a breath of fresh air, are frequent guests. The nearest chateau to us is Montalon, where Madame de Sévigné used to live, and from which she wrote some of her letters. If she ever wrote a tiresome one, it must surely have been from here, as the damp and moldy house, covered with creeping vines and overgrown with ivy, surrounded by melancholy cypress and poplar trees, which shut out the view, could scarcely have inspired her with brilliant