“Very well,” said Andre-Louis. “It
shall be as you please. But nothing shall prevent
me at least from walking with you as far as the chateau,
and waiting for you while you make your appeal to M.
de Kercadiou.”
And so they left the house good friends, for the sweetness
of M. de Vilmorin’s nature did not admit of
rancour, and together they took their way up the steep
main street of Gavrillac.
THE ARISTOCRAT
The sleepy village of Gavrillac, a half-league removed
from the main road to Rennes, and therefore undisturbed
by the world’s traffic, lay in a curve of the
River Meu, at the foot, and straggling halfway up
the slope, of the shallow hill that was crowned by
the squat manor. By the time Gavrillac had paid
tribute to its seigneur — partly in money and
partly in service — tithes to the Church, and
imposts to the King, it was hard put to it to keep
body and soul together with what remained. Yet,
hard as conditions were in Gavrillac, they were not
so hard as in many other parts of France, not half
so hard, for instance, as with the wretched feudatories
of the great Lord of La Tour d’Azyr, whose vast
possessions were at one point separated from this
little village by the waters of the Meu.
The Chateau de Gavrillac owed such seigneurial airs
as might be claimed for it to its dominant position
above the village rather than to any feature of its
own. Built of granite, like all the rest of
Gavrillac, though mellowed by some three centuries
of existence, it was a squat, flat-fronted edifice
of two stories, each lighted by four windows with
external wooden shutters, and flanked at either end
by two square towers or pavilions under extinguisher
roofs. Standing well back in a garden, denuded
now, but very pleasant in summer, and immediately
fronted by a fine sweep of balustraded terrace, it
looked, what indeed it was, and always had been, the
residence of unpretentious folk who found more interest
in husbandry than in adventure.
Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac — Seigneur
de Gavrillac was all the vague title that he bore,
as his forefathers had borne before him, derived no
man knew whence or how — confirmed the impression
that his house conveyed. Rude as the granite
itself, he had never sought the experience of courts,
had not even taken service in the armies of his King.
He left it to his younger brother, Etienne, to represent
the family in those exalted spheres. His own
interests from earliest years had been centred in
his woods and pastures. He hunted, and he cultivated
his acres, and superficially he appeared to be little
better than any of his rustic metayers. He kept
no state, or at least no state commensurate with his
position or with the tastes of his niece Aline de
Kercadiou. Aline, having spent some two years
in the court atmosphere of Versailles under the aegis
of her uncle Etienne, had ideas very different from
