The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton | Page 7

probably an almost literal
transcription of what took place in the court-room; and the trial lasted
nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was detestable. . .

At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But it is full of
wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are forever
straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle it, and give it
here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to the text
because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense of
what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added anything of my own.

III
It was in the year 16-- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of
Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his religious duties.
He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year, but
hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all
his neighbours attested. In appearance he seems to have been short and
broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a
hanging nose and broad hands with black hairs on them. He had
married young and lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had
lived alone at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a
handsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there; and
occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were found to
declare that during these absences he led a life different from the one he
was known to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate,
attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in hunting the wild
boar and water-fowl. But these rumours are not particularly relevant,
and it is certain that among people of his own class in the
neighbourhood he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant
of his religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was
no talk of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that
time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some people said
he had never looked at a woman since his wife's death; but such things
are hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not worth much.
Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the pardon at
Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden
over pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was
Anne de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much

less great and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father
had squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in
his little granite manor on the moors. . . I have said I would add nothing
of my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt
myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of
Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also
dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare thing: a
faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a late
pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain's study, and is said to be
a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark of
identity but the initials A. B., and the date 16--, the year after her
marriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval face, almost
pointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at
the corners. The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far
apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese painting.
The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which one feels to be
fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying close like a cap. The eyes
are neither large nor small, hazel probably, with a look at once shy and
steady. A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below the lady's
breast. . .
The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the
Baron came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered
another to be instantly saddled, called to a young page come with him,
and rode away that same evening to the south. His steward followed the
next morning with coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following
week Yves de Cornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and
tenants, and told them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de
Barrigan of Douarnenez. And on