GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT.
The wedding party was lost in a thicket. Pierre gave his whip so
resounding a snap, it was no surprise to find ourselves rolling over
the cobbles of a village street.
"This is Dives, mesdames, this is the inn!"
Pierre drew up, as he spoke, before a long, low facade.
Now, no one, I take it, in this world enjoys being duped. Surely
disappointment is only a civil term for the varying degrees of fraud
practised on the imagination. This inn, apparently, was to be classed
among such frauds. It did not in the least, externally at least, fulfil
Renard's promises. He had told us to expect the marvellous and the
mediaeval in their most approved period. Yet here we were, facing a
featureless exterior! The facade was built yesterday--that was writ
large, all over the low, rambling structure. One end, it is true, had a
gabled end; there was also an old shrine niched in glass beneath the
gable, and a low Norman gateway with rude letters carved over the arch.
June was in its glory, and the barrenness of the commonplace structure
was mercifully hidden by a wreath of pink and amber roses. But one
scarcely drives twenty miles in the sun to look upon a facade of roses!
Chat noir, meanwhile, was becoming restless. Pierre had managed to keep
his own patience well in hand. Now, however, he broke forth:
"Shall we enter, my ladies?"
Pierre drove us straight into paradise; for here, at last, within the
courtyard, was the inn we had come to seek.
A group of low-gabled buildings surrounded an open court. All of the
buildings were timbered, the diagonal beams of oak so old they were
black in the sun, and the snowy whiteness of fresh plaster made them
seem blacker still. The gabled roofs were of varying tones and tints;
some were red, some mossy green, some as gray as the skin of a mouse;
all were deeply, plentifully furrowed with the washings of countless
rains, and they were bearded with moss. There were outside galleries,
beginning somewhere and ending anywhere. There were open and covered
outer stairways so laden with vines they could scarce totter to the low
heights of the chamber doors on which they opened; and there were open
sheds where huge farm-wagons were rolled close to the most modern of
Parisian dog-carts. That not a note of contrast might be lacking,
across the courtyard, in one of the windows beneath a stairway, there
flashed the gleam of some rich stained glass, spots of color that were
repeated, with quite a different lustre, in the dappled haunches of
rows of sturdy Percherons munching their meal in the adjacent stalls.
Add to such an ensemble a vagrant multitude of rose, honeysuckle,
clematis, and wistaria vines, all blooming in full rivalry of perfume
and color; insert in some of the corners and beneath some of the older
casements archaic bits of sculpture--strange barbaric features with
beards of Assyrian correctness and forms clad in the rigid draperies of
the early Jumièges period of the sculptor's art; lance above the roof
ridges the quaint polychrome finials of the earlier Palissy models; and
crowd the rough cobble-paved courtyard with a rare and distinguished
assemblage of flamingoes, peacocks, herons, cockatoos swinging from
gabled windows, and game-cocks that strut about in company with pink
doves--and you have the famous inn of Guillaume le Conquérant!
Meanwhile an individual, with fine deep-gray eyes, and a face grave,
yet kindly, over which a smile was humorously breaking, was patiently
waiting at our carriage door. He could be no other than Monsieur Paul,
owner and inn-keeper, also artist, sculptor, carver, restorer, to whom,
in truth, this miracle of an inn owed its present perfection and
picturesqueness.
"We have been long expecting you, mesdames," Monsieur Paul's grave
voice was saying. "Monsieur Renard had written to announce your coming.
You took the trouble to drive along the coast this fine day? It is
idyllically lovely, is it not--under such a sun?"
Evidently the moment of enchantment was not to be broken by the worker
of the spell. Monsieur Paul and his inn were one; if one was a poem the
other was a poet. The poet was also lined with the man of the practical
moment. He had quickly summoned a host of serving-people to take charge
of us and our luggage.
"Lizette, show these ladies to the room of Madame de Sévigné. If they
desire a sitting-room--to the Marmousets."
The inn-keeper gave his commands in the quiet, well-bred tone of a man
of the world, to a woman in peasant's dress. She led us past the open
court to an inner one, where we were confronted with a building still
older, apparently, than those grouped about the outer quadrangle. The
peasant passed quickly beneath an overhanging gallery, draped in vines.
She was next preceding us up a spiral turret stairway; the adjacent
walls were hung here and there with faded bits of tapestry. Once more
she turned to lead us along an open gallery; on this several rooms
appeared to open. On each door a different sign was painted in rude
Gothic letters. The first was "Chambre de l'Officier;" the second,
"Chambre du Curé," and the next was flung widely open. It was the room
of the famous lady of the incomparable Letters. The room might have
been left--in the yesterday of two centuries--by the lady whose name it
bore. There was a beautiful Seventeenth century bedstead, a couple of
wide arm-chairs, with down pillows for seats, and a clothes press with
the carvings and brass work peculiar to the epoch of Louis XIV. The
chintz hangings and draperies were in keeping, being copies of the
brocades of that day. There were portraits in miniature of the
courtiers and the ladies of the Great Reign on the very ewers and
basins. On the flounced dressing-table, with its antique glass and a
diminutive patch-box, now the receptacle of Lubin's powder, a sprig of
the lovely Rose The was exhaling a faint, far-away century perfume. It
was surely a stage set for a real comedy; some of these high-coiffed
ladies, who knows? perhaps Madame de Sévigné herself would come to
life, and give to the room the only thing it lacked--the living
presence of that old world grace and speech.
Presently, we sallied forth on a further voyage of discovery. We had
reached the courtyard when Monsieur Paul crossed it; it was to ask if,
while waiting for the noon breakfast, we would care to see the kitchen;
it was, perhaps, different to those now commonly seen in modern taverns.
The kitchen which was thus modestly described as unlike those of our
own century might easily, except for the appetizing smell of the
cooking fowls and the meats, have been put under lock and key and
turned over to a care-taker as a full-fledged culinary museum of
antiquities. One entire side of the crowded but orderly little room was
taken up by a huge open fireplace. The logs resting on the great
andirons were the trunks of full-grown trees. On two of the spits were
long rows of fowl and legs of mutton roasting; the great chains were
being slowly turned by a _chef_ in the paper cap of his profession. In
deep burnished brass bowls lay water-cresses; in Caen dishes of an age
to make a bric-a-brac collector turn green with envy, a _Béarnaise_
sauce was being beaten by another gallic master-hand. Along the beams
hung old Rouen plates and platters; in the numberless carved Normandy
cupboards gleamed rare bits of Delft and Limoges; the walls may be said
to have been hung with Normandy brasses, each as burnished as a jewel.
The floor was sanded and the tables had attained that satiny finish
which comes only with long usage and tireless use of the brush. There
was also a shrine and a clock, the latter of antique Norman make and
design.
The smell of the roasting fowls and the herbs used by the maker of the
sauces, a hungry palate found even more exciting than this most
original of kitchens. There was a wine that went with the sauce; this
fact Monsieur Paul explained, on our sitting down to the noonday meal;
one which, in remembrance of Monsieur Renard's injunctions, he would
suggest our trying. He crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the
bowels of the earth, beneath one of the inn buildings, to bring forth a
bottle incrusted with layers of moist dirt. This Sauterne was by some,
Monsieur Paul smilingly explained, considered as among the real
treasures of the inn. Both it and the sauce, we were enabled to assure
him a moment later, had that golden softness which make French wines
and French sauces at their best the rapture of the palate.
In the courtyard, as our breakfast proceeded, a variety of incidents
was happening. We were facing the open archway; through it one looked
out upon the high-road. A wheelbarrow passed, trundled by a
peasant-girl; the barrow stopped, the girl leaving it for an instant to
cross the court.
"_Bonjour, mère--_"
"_Bonjour, ma fille_--it goes well?" a deep guttural voice responded,
just outside of the window.
"_Justement_--I came to tell you the mare has foaled and Jean will be
late to-night."
"_Bien._"
"And Barbarine is still angry--"
"Make up with her, my child--anger is an evil bird to take to one's
heart," the deep voice went on.
"It is my mother," explained Monsieur Paul. "It is her favorite seat,
out yonder, on the green bench in the courtyard. I call it her judge's
bench," he smiled, indulgently, as he went on. "She dispenses justice
with more authority than any other magistrate in town. I am Mayor, as
it happens, just now; but madame my mother is far above me, in real
power. She rules the town and the country about, for miles. Everyone
comes to her sooner or later for counsel and command. You will soon see
for yourselves."
A murmur of assent from all the table accompanied Monsieur Paul's
prophecy.
"_Femme vraiment remarquable_," hoarsely whispered a stout breakfaster,
behind his napkin, between two spoonsful of his soup.
"Not two in a century like her," said my neighbor.
"No--nor two in all France--_non plus_," retorted the stout man.
"She could rule a kingdom--hey, Paul?"
"She rules me--as you see--and a man is harder to govern than a
province, they say," smiled Monsieur Paul with a humorous relish,
obviously the offspring of experience. "In France, mesdames," he added,
a sweeter look of feeling coming into the deep eyes, "you see we are
always children--_toujours enfants_--as long as the mother lives. We
are never really old till she dies. May the good God preserve her!" and
he lifted his glass toward the green bench. The table drank the toast,
in silence.
[Illustration: CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLES--DIVES]