As we went down the stairs she added, "He was a wild boy, but we adored him. He was always wild, not like Monsieur l'Abbé. But how we adored him!"
She said, "I thought Madame would die the day he went away. But yet it is he who is dead, since seven months, and Madame and I, we live."
The gates stand open. Some one has broken open the gates. Or perhaps no one had troubled to close them.
The porter's lodge, under the limes, is empty.
The avenue of ancient, stately lime trees that leads to the château, is overgrown, in this one year, deep with grass and moss. The trees, that have not been trimmed, shade it too darkly. The leaves of the lime-trees are falling. In another year it would seem strange if the leaves fell so, before the end of August; but in this year no death seems strange. The dead leaves lie deep in the avenue.
At the end of the avenue the château stands, helplessly. Through long times and much history, its towers commanded the valley and the great road of the river. Its name rang in high councils, and its banners knew the winds of many wars.
Again its sons went out to battle. They were three of them. They went, just more than a year ago, three gay young chasseurs alpins. They are all three of them dead, on the field of honour.
The little aged orange trees are all dead in their green tubs in the courtyard. The ivy has grown across the great barred entrance door. The lantern over the door is full of swallows' nests.
The old Monsieur and the old Madame are gone away. How could they have lived on in the house that was not to be for their sons?
We asked many people in the village, but no one knew where they had gone.
In the library of the Octagon I found some little etchings of these old streets and courtyards and allées murées, steep roofs and balconies and open loggie, carved windows and doorways, corners and turnings, done beautifully by someone who had surely understood them. He had known how the smell of old wood and stone strikes out from certain shadows and stabs you in the heart; and the sudden sharp loneliness you feel because of dead leaves driven against the tower stairs.
The librarian said, "He was indeed an artist."
The librarian was very old. He wore a little black skull cap and a grey muffler about his throat. He was bent quite over, and could see what I had taken only when he held the things close to his eyes. His hands were twisted like old brown fagots, and they trembled and fumbled as he held the etchings, one after the other, close to his eyes.