A French Portrait

Mlle. Marie and Mlle. Jeanne de Grandet were the last of a distinguished family of the Midi. I have often visited their little town, and I knew them and their ancient dwelling well. It was approached by way of a cobbled street, running close to the foot of the citadel.

It was a charming place, rambling round a courtyard spaced and shaded with bay-trees and oleanders. To the world its aspect was grave and reticent; but giving on the paved and formal garden were galleries flecked with sun between the twisted branches of vine and wisteria, and purple to the spring and autumn skies. Old grey roofs were set with dormer-windows, from which you might watch the changes of light and colour on Pyrenean snows, or the flag flapping against the blue on the top of the Château Fort.

Within, the house was dark. People of the Midi fear the sun, knowing him in his might; and so, at high noon of brightest midsummer, the house was full of mystery and shade. Such light as filtered through the shuttered windows fell faintly in the sombre rooms, lay still on the panelled walls, the aged tapestries, the ancestral furniture. Perhaps, after all, it was airless. One felt at first a little breathless, restrained, enclosed, as in a narrow valley among high mountains where the air is still and no flower stirs in the grass. But slowly the restraint became safety; the lack of movement, rest; the noiselessness, peace. Slowly there was distilled of ancient perfumes, of forgotten airs, the meditative voice of the race and family, enunciating eternal and Catholic verities to the grave and tranquil measure of the great French grandfather clock.