“My son,” said my good tutor, pulling
my coat sleeve, “put all that in your memory,
put cross, knocker, and the rest, so that we’ll
be able to find, to-morrow, the enchanted door.
And you, Sir Maecenas——”
But the philosopher was gone. No one had seen
him leaving.
Arrival at the Castle of M. d’Asterac and Interview
with the Cabalist.
On the following day at an early hour we walked, my
tutor and I, on the St Germain road. The snow
which covered the earth under the russet light of
the sky, rendered the atmosphere dull and heavy.
The road was deserted. We walked in wide furrows
between the walls of orchards, tottering fences and
low houses, the windows of which looked suspiciously
on us. And, after having left behind two or three
tumbledown huts built of clay and straw, we saw in
the middle of a disconsolate heath the Cross of the
Sablons. At fifty paces farther commenced a very
large park, closed in by a ruined wall, wherein was
the little door, and on it the knocker representing
a horrible-looking figure with a finger in her mouth.
We recognised it easily as the one the philosopher
had described, and used the knocker.
After some rather considerable time, an old servant
opened it and made us a sign to follow him across
the untidy park. Statues of nymphs, who must
have seen the boyhood of the late king, secreted under
tree ivy their gloominess and mutilations. At
the end of an alley, the sloughs of which were covered
with snow, stood a castle of stone and brick, as morose
as the one of Madrid, which, oddly covered by a high
slate roof, looked like the castle of the Sleeping
Beauty in the wood.
Following the silent valet, M. Coignard whispered
to me:
“I confess, my son, that this lodging has no
smiling appearance. It shows the ruggedness wherein
the customs of Frenchmen were still immured in the
time of King Henry IV., and it drives the soul to
gloom and nearly to melancholy by the state of forlornness
in which unhappily it has been left. How much
sweeter it would be to climb the enchanted hillocks
of Tusculum with the hope of hearing Cicero discourse
of virtue, under the firs and pines of his villa so
dear to the philosopher! And have you not observed,
my boy, that all along yonder road neither taverns
nor hostels are to be met with, and that it would
be necessary to cross the bridge and go up the hill
to the Bergeres to get a drink of fresh wine?
There is thereabout a hostel of the Red Horse,
where, if I remember well, Madame de St Ernest took
me once to dinner in the company of her monkey and
her lover. You can’t imagine, Tournebroche,
how excellent the victuals are there. The Red
Horse is as well known for its morning dinners
as for the abundance of horses and carriages which
it has on hire. I convinced myself of it when
I followed to the stables a certain wench who seemed
to be rather pretty. But she was not; it would
be a truer saying to call her ugly. But I illuminated
her with the colours of my longings. Such is
the condition of men when left to themselves; they
err wretchedly. We are all abused by empty images;
we go in chase of dreams and embrace shadows.
In God alone is truth and stability.”
