The Chevalier's daughter — Reading Notes

IV. Trust and Distrust

V. Guests at the Tour

VI. The Lonely Grange

VII. A Sudden Summons

XX. "You shall have no Choice"

THE CHEVALIER'S DAUGHTER

I WAS born in the year of grace 1660, at the Tour d'Antin, a château not very far from the little village of Sartilly in Normandy.

My father was the Chevalier d'Antin, a younger son of the Provençal family of De Fayrolles.

My mother was an English lady, daughter of a very ancient Devonshire family. Her name was Margaret Corbet, and the branch of that tribe to which she belonged had settled in Cornwall. I remember her as a very beautiful woman, with crispy waved blonde hair and a clear white skin more like alabaster than marble, and no tinge of color in her cheeks. I never saw any other person so pale as she, though her lips were always red. She had beautiful gray eyes, with long black lashes, and clearly defined arched eyebrows meeting above her nose, which gave a very serious and even solemn expression to her face. This expression accorded well with her character, which was grave and thoughtful and very deeply religious. I never saw any person whose faith was so much like sight as hers. Nevertheless, she could smile very sweetly, and even laugh merrily at times, but not very often. For a shadow hung over our house from my earliest years—the same shadow which darkened so many other French families at that time.

My father was a pleasant, lively, kindhearted gentleman, who worshipped his beautiful wife, and treated her as if she were indeed some fragile statue of alabaster which might be broken by rough usage.

He was, as I have said, a younger son. His elder brother lived far-away in Provence—at least his grand château was there; but he and his wife spent most of their time at court, where they both held offices about the king and queen. By some family arrangement which I never understood, our own Tour d'Antin came to my father, thus putting him in a much more comfortable position than that of most younger brothers, as there was a large and productive domain and certain houses at Granville which brought good rents. Besides, there were dues of fowls and so forth from the tenants and small farmers. Indeed, my father, with his simple country tastes, was far richer than his elder brother, and that though my father's purse was always open to the poor, especially those of our own household of faith.

The Tour d'Antin was a large building of reddish stone, partly fortress, partly château. I suspect it had some time been a convent also, for there was a paved court surrounded by a cloister, and a small Gothic chapel which was a good deal dilapidated, and never used in my time. The fortress part of the house was very old. It consisted of a square and a round tower, connected by a kind of gallery. The walls were immensely thick, and so covered with lichens and wall plants that one could hardly tell what they were made of.

In the square tower my mother had her own private apartment, consisting of a parlor and an anteroom, and an oratory, or closet, as we should call it in England, the last being formed partly in the thickness of the wall, partly by a projecting turret. It seemed an odd choice, as the new part of the house was so light and cheerful, but there was a reason for this choice which I came to understand afterward.

The rooms communicated by a gallery with the newer part of the house, where was a saloon, my father's special study and business room, and various lodging rooms. This same gallery, as I have said, led to the oldest part of the château—the round tower, which was somewhat ruinous, and where nobody lived but the bats and owls, and, if the servants were to be credited, the ghosts of a certain chevalier and his unhappy wife, about whom there was a terribly tragical legend. There was a steep stone staircase leading to the top of the round tower, from whence one could see a very little bit of the sea and the great monastery and fortress of St. Michael.