at the chateau, mademoiselle?”
“Scarcely. I am not yet accepted. I have to await…”
“The decision of Monsieur Ie Comte,” put in Madame Bastide.
“It is natural, I suppose,” I said, moved rather unaccountably by a desire to defend him.
“One could say I had come under false pretences.
They were expecting my father and I did not tell them that he was dead and that I proposed to take over his commitments. Everything depends on Monsieur Ie Comte. “
“Everything always depends on Monsieur Ie Comte,” said Madame Bastide resignedly.
“Which’, added Jean Pierre with his sunny smile, ‘ma demoiselle will say is natural since the chateau belongs to him, the pictures on which she plans to work belong to him, the grapes belong to him … in a sense we all belong to him.”
“The way you talk it would seem we were back before the Revolution,” murmured Madame Bastide.
Jean Pierre was looking at me.
“Here, mademoiselle, little has changed through the years. The chateau stands guarding the town and the surrounding country as it did through the centuries. It retains its old character and we whose forefathers depended on its bounty still depend upon it. There has been little change in Gaillard. That is how Monsieur Ie Comte de la Talle would have it, so that is how it is.”
“I have a feeling that he is not greatly loved by those who depend on him.”
“Perhaps only those who love to depend, love those they depend on. The independent ones always rebel.”
I was a little mystified by this conversation. There was clearly strong feeling concerning the Comte in this house hold, but I was
becoming more and more anxious to learn everything I could about this man on whom my fate depended, so I said: “Well, at the moment, I’m on sufferance awaiting his return.”
“Monsieur Philippe would not dare give a decision for fear of offending the Comte,” said Jean Pierre.
“He is much in awe of his cousin?”
“More than most. If the Comte does not marry, Philippe could be the heir, for the de la Talles follow the old royalty of France, and the Salic law which applied to the Valois and the Bourbons is for the de la Talles as well. But, like everything else, it rests with the Comte.
As long as some male heir inherits he could pass over his cousin for some other relative. Sometimes I think Gaillard is mistaken for the Versailles of Louis the Fourteenth. “
“I imagine the Comte to be young … at least not old. Why should he not marry again?”
“It is said that the idea is distasteful to him.”
“I should have thought a man of his family pride would have wanted a son for he is undoubtedly proud.”
“He is the proudest man in France.”
At that moment the children returned with Gabrielle and their father, Armand. Gabrielle Bastide was strikingly lovely. She was dark like the rest of the family, but her eyes were not brown but a deep shade of blue and those eyes almost made of her a beauty. She had a sweet expression and was more subdued than her brother.
I was explaining to them that I had had a French mother, which accounted for my fluency in their language, when a bell began to ring so suddenly that I was startled.
“It is the maid summoning the children for goiiter,” said Madame Bastide.
“I will go now,” I said.
“It has been so pleasant. I hope we shall meet again.”
But Madame Bastide would not hear of my going. I must, she said, stay to try some of the wine.
Bread with layers of chocolate between it for the children, and for us little cakes and wine, were brought in.
We talked of the vines, pictures, and life in the neighbour hood. I was told I must visit the church and the old hotel de ville: and most of all I must come back and visit the Bastides. I must look in whenever I was passing. Both Jean Pierre and his father who said very little would be delighted to show me anything I wished to see.
The children were sent out to play when they had finished their bread
Steven Saylor
Jade Allen
Ann Beattie
Lisa Unger
Steven Saylor
Leo Bruce
Pete Hautman
Nate Jackson
Carl Woodring, James Shapiro
Mary Beth Norton