La Grande Breteche | Page 4

sun, winter,
summer, and snow have eaten into the wood, warped the boards, peeled
off the paint. The dreary silence is broken only by birds and cats,
polecats, rats, and mice, free to scamper round, and fight, and eat each
other. An invisible hand has written over it all: 'Mystery.'
"If, prompted by curiosity, you go to look at this house from the street,
you will see a large gate, with a round-arched top; the children have
made many holes in it. I learned later that this door had been blocked
for ten years. Through these irregular breaches you will see that the
side towards the courtyard is in perfect harmony with the side towards
the garden. The same ruin prevails. Tufts of weeds outline the
paving-stones; the walls are scored by enormous cracks, and the
blackened coping is laced with a thousand festoons of pellitory. The
stone steps are disjointed; the bell-cord is rotten; the gutter-spouts
broken. What fire from heaven could have fallen there? By what decree
has salt been sown on this dwelling? Has God been mocked here? Or
was France betrayed? These are the questions we ask ourselves.
Reptiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and deserted house
is a vast enigma of which the answer is known to none.

"It was formerly a little domain, held in fief, and is known as La
Grande Breteche. During my stay at Vendome, where Despleins had
left me in charge of a rich patient, the sight of this strange dwelling
became one of my keenest pleasures. Was it not far better than a ruin?
Certain memories of indisputable authenticity attach themselves to a
ruin; but this house, still standing, though being slowly destroyed by an
avenging hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. At the very
least, it testified to a caprice. More than once in the evening I boarded
the hedge, run wild, which surrounded the enclosure. I braved scratches,
I got into this ownerless garden, this plot which was no longer public or
private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the disorder. I would not, as
the price of the story to which this strange scene no doubt was due,
have asked a single question of any gossiping native. On that spot I
wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself to little debauches of
melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known the reason--perhaps
quite commonplace--of this neglect, I should have lost the unwritten
poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge represented the most
various phases of human life, shadowed by misfortune; sometimes the
peace of the graveyard without the dead, who speak in the language of
epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of lepers; another, the house of
the Atridae; but, above all, I found there provincial life, with its
contemplative ideas, its hour-glass existence. I often wept there, I never
laughed.
"More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the dull
hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank;
you must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering
about with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no fear
of cold, for in a few moments you feel an icy cloak settle on your
shoulders, like the Commendatore's hand on Don Giovanni's neck.
"One evening I felt a shudder; the wind had turned an old rusty
weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry from the house, at the
very moment when I was finishing a gloomy drama to account for this
monumental embodiment of woe. I returned to my inn, lost in gloomy
thoughts. When I had supped, the hostess came into my room with an
air of mystery, and said, 'Monsieur, here is Monsieur Regnault.'
" 'Who is Monsieur Regnault?'
" 'What, sir, do you not know Monsieur Regnault?--Well, that's odd,'

said she, leaving the room.
"On a sudden I saw a man appear, tall, slim, dressed in black, hat in
hand, who came in like a ram ready to butt his opponent, showing a
receding forehead, a small pointed head, and a colorless face of the hue
of a glass of dirty water. You would have taken him for an usher. The
stranger wore an old coat, much worn at the seams; but he had a
diamond in his shirt frill, and gold rings in his ears.
" 'Monsieur,' said I, 'whom have I the honor of addressing?'--He took a
chair, placed himself in front of my fire, put his hat on my table, and
answered while he rubbed his hands: 'Dear me, it is very cold.--
Monsieur, I am Monsieur Regnault.'
" I was encouraging myself by saying to myself, '/Il bondo cani!/ Seek!'
" 'I am,' he went on, 'notary at