Count Eustache d’Etchegorry’s solitary
country house had the appearance of a poor man’s
home, where people do not have enough to eat every
day in the week, where the bottles are more frequently
filled at the pump than in the cellar, and where they
wait until it is dark before lighting the candles.
It was an old and sordid building; the walls were
crumbling to pieces, the grated, iron gates were eaten
away by rust, the holes in the broken windows had
been mended with old newspapers, and the ancestral
portraits which hung against the walls, showed that
it was no tiller of the soil, nor miserable laborer
whose strength had gradually worn out and bent his
back, who lived there. Great, knotty elm trees
sheltered it, as if they had been a tall, green screen,
and a large garden, full of wild rose-trees and of
straggling plants, as well as of sickly-looking vegetables,
which sprang up half-withered from the sandy soil,
went down as far as the bank of the river.
From the house, one could hear the monotonous sound
of the water, which at one time rushed yellow and
impetuous towards the sea, and then again flowed back,
as if driven by some invisible force towards the town
which could be seen in the distance, with its pointed
spires, its ramparts, and its ships at anchor by the
side of the quay, and its citadel built on the top
of a hill.
A strong smell of the sea came from the offing, mingled
with the resinous smell of pine logs, and of the large
nets with great pieces of sea-weed clinging to them,
which were drying in the sun.
Why had Monsieur d’Etchegorry, who did not like
the country, who was of a sociable rather than of
a solitary nature, for he never walked alone, but
kept step with the retired officers who lived there,
and frequently played game after game at piquet
at the cafe, when he was in town, buried himself
in such a solitary place, by the side of a dusty road
at Boucau, a village close to the town, where on Sundays
the soldiers took off their tunics, and sat in their
shirt sleeves in the public-houses, drank the thin
wine of the country, and teased the girls.
What secret reasons had he for selling the mansion
which he had possessed at Bayonne, close to the bishop’s
palace, and condemning his daughter, a girl of nineteen,
to such a dull, listless, solitary life; counting the
minutes far from everybody, as if she had been a nun,
no one knew, but most people said that he had lost
immense sums in gambling, and had wasted his fortune
and ruined his credit in doubtful speculations.
They wondered whether he still regretted the tender,
sweet woman whom he had lost, who died one evening,
after years of suffering, like a church lamp whose
oil has been consumed to the last drop. Was he
seeking for perfect oblivion, for that soothing repose
in nature, in which a man becomes enervated, and which
envelopes him like a moist, warm cloth? How could
he be satisfied with such an existence? With
the bad cooking, and the careless, untidy ways of
a char-woman, and with the shabby clothes, that were
discolored by use!
