La Grenadiere | Page 5

burgess of Tours, has charms for every imagination, for the
humblest and dullest as well as for the most impassioned and lofty. No
one can dwell there without feeling that happiness is in the air, without
a glimpse of all that is meant by a peaceful life without care or
ambition. There is that in the air and the sound of the river that sets you
dreaming; the sands have a language, and are joyous or dreary, golden
or wan; and the owner of the vineyard may sit motionless amid
perennial flowers and tempting fruit, and feel all the stir of the world
about him.
If an Englishman takes the house for the summer, he is asked a
thousand francs for six months, the produce of the vineyard not
included. If the tenant wishes for the orchard fruit, the rent is doubled;
for the vintage, it is doubled again. What can La Grenadiere be worth,
you wonder; La Grenadiere, with its stone staircase, its beaten path and
triple terrace, its two acres of vineyard, its flowering roses about the
balustrades, its worn steps, well-head, rampant clematis, and
cosmopolitan trees? It is idle to make a bid! La Grenadiere will never
be in the market; it was brought once and sold, but that was in 1690;
and the owner parted with it for forty thousand francs, reluctant as any
Arab of the desert to relinquish a favorite horse. Since then it has
remained in the same family, its pride, its patrimonial jewel, its Regent
diamond. "While you behold, you have and hold," says the bard. And
from La Grenadiere you behold three valleys of Touraine and the
cathedral towers aloft in air like a bit of filigree work. How can one pay
for such treasures? Could one ever pay for the health recovered there
under the linden-trees?
In the spring of one of the brightest years of the Restoration, a lady
with her housekeeper and her two children (the oldest a boy thirteen
years old, the youngest apparently about eight) came to Tours to look

for a house. She saw La Grenadiere and took it. Perhaps the distance
from the town was an inducement to live there.
She made a bedroom of the drawing-room, gave the children the two
rooms above, and the housekeeper slept in a closet behind the kitchen.
The dining-room was sitting-room and drawing-room all in one for the
little family. The house was furnished very simply but tastefully; there
was nothing superfluous in it, and no trace of luxury. The walnut-wood
furniture chosen by the stranger lady was perfectly plain, and the whole
charm of the house consisted in its neatness and harmony with its
surroundings.
It was rather difficult, therefore, to say whether the strange lady (Mme.
Willemsens, as she styled herself) belonged to the upper middle or
higher classes, or to an equivocal, unclassified feminine species. Her
plain dress gave rise to the most contradictory suppositions, but her
manners might be held to confirm those favorable to her. She had not
lived at Saint-Cyr, moreover, for very long before her reserve excited
the curiosity of idle people, who always, and especially in the country,
watch anybody or anything that promises to bring some interest into
their narrow lives.
Mme. Willemsens was rather tall; she was thin and slender, but
delicately shaped. She had pretty feet, more remarkable for the grace of
her instep and ankle than for the more ordinary merit of slenderness;
her gloved hands, too, were shapely. There were flitting patches of
deep red in a pale face, which must have been fresh and softly colored
once. Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately modeled forehead
beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair, invariably wound
about her head in two plaits, a girlish coiffure which suited the
melancholy face. There was a deceptive look of calm in the dark eyes,
with the hollow, shadowy circles about them; sometimes, when she was
off her guard, their expression told of secret anguish. The oval of her
face was somewhat long; but happiness and health had perhaps filled
and perfected the outlines. A forced smile, full of quiet sadness,
hovered continually on her pale lips; but when the children, who were
always with her, looked up at their mother, or asked one of the
incessant idle questions which convey so much to a mother's ears, then
the smile brightened, and expressed the joys of a mother's love. Her
gait was slow and dignified. Her dress never varied; evidently she had

made up her mind to think no more of her toilette, and to forget a world
by which she meant no doubt to be forgotten. She wore a long, black
gown, confined at the waist by a watered-silk ribbon, and by way of
scarf a lawn handkerchief with