Some of the men lingered on the way to
knock the stiff clay of the road-bed from their shoes.
"This is devilishly like the road to Paradise," remarked Beau-Pied.
Thanks to the impatience of the postilion, Mademoiselle de Verneuil
soon saw the chateau of La Vivetiere. This house, standing at the end
of a sort of promontory, was protected and surrounded by two deep
lakelets, and could be reached only by a narrow causeway. That part of
the little peninsula on which the house and gardens were placed was
still further protected by a moat filled with water from the two lakes
which it connected. The house really stood on an island that was
well-nigh impregnable,--an invaluable retreat for a chieftain, who
could be surprised there only by treachery.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil put her head out of the carriage as she heard
the rusty hinges of the great gates open to give entrance to an arched
portal which had been much injured during the late war. The gloomy
colors of the scene which met her eyes almost extinguished the
thoughts of love and coquetry in which she had been indulging. The
carriage entered a large courtyard that was nearly square, bordered on
each side by the steep banks of the lakelets. Those sterile shores,
washed by water, which was covered with large green patches, had no
other ornament than aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted
trunks and hoary heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes,
gave them a certain grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets.
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