Very different from this was the ancient chateau of La Pauline, perched half-way up the mountain on a table-land--its grey stone face showing grimly against a sombre background of cypress trees. The house was built, as the antiquarians of Draguignan avow, of stone that was hewn by the Romans for less peaceful purposes. That an ancient building must have stood here would, indeed, be to some extent credible, from the fact that in front of the house lies a lawn of that weedless turf which is only found in this country in such places as the Arena at Fréjus. In the center of the lawn stands a sun dial--grey, green and ancient--a relic of those days when men lived by hours, and not by minutes, as we do to-day. It is all of the old world--of that old, old world of France beside which our British antiquities are, with a few exceptions, youthful. This was the birthplace of Madame de Clericy and of Lucille herself. Hither the ladies always returned with a quiet joy. There is no more peaceful spot on earth than La Pauline, chiefly, perhaps, because there is nothing in nature so still and lifeless as an olive grove. Why, by the way, do the birds of the air never build their nests in these trees--why do they rarely rest and never ring there? Behind La Pauline--so close, indeed, that the little chapel stands in the grey hush of the trees, guarded, of course, by a sentinel circle of cypresses--rise the olive terraces and stretch up, tier above tier, till the pines are reached. Below the grey house the valley opens out like a fan, and far away to the south the rugged crags of Roquebrune stand out against a faint blue haze, which is the Mediterranean.
No better example of Peace on Earth is to be found than La Pauline after sunset, at which time the olive groves are a silver fairyland--when the chapel bell tinkles in vain for the faithful to come to vespers--when the stout old placid curé sits down philosophically in the porch to read the office to himself, knowing well that a hot day in the vineyards turns all footsteps homewards.
When the ladies are in residence at the chateau, it is a different matter. Then, indeed, the curé lays aside his old soutane and dons that fine new clerical habit presented to him by Mademoiselle Lucille at the time of her first communion, when the Bishop of Fréjus came to Draguignan, and the whole valley assembled to do him honour there.
