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Updated: May 16, 2025
I have almost forgotten to say that, in the early days of my life at Les Rochers, M. de la Tourelle, in contemptuous indulgent pity at my weakness in disliking the dreary grandeur of the salon, wrote up to the milliner in Paris from whom my corbeille de mariage had come, to desire her to look out for me a maid of middle age, experienced in the toilette, and with so much refinement that she might on occasion serve as companion to me.
Yet it was not three years since we had parted, and his eyes were keen and dreadful like those of the lynx. I told M. Voss, on his return home, and he tried to cheer me, but the shock of seeing M. de la Tourelle had been too terrible for me. I was ill for long months afterwards. Once again I saw him. Dead.
There was a kitchen separated from the King's chamber by a small dark room, which had been successively occupied by M. de Chamilly and M. de Hue. The fourth story was shut up; and on the ground floor there were kitchens of which no use was made." The Tower was a square building, with a round tower at each corner and a small turret on one side, usually called the Tourelle.
Perhaps I might be able to discern somewhat through the aperture above the pin of the 'sneck. 'Brownie's' den had, as I knew, a window in its tourelle, and as the night was moonlit though stormy, I might in a flitting moonbeam perhaps espy somewhat.
Madame Rupprecht had been out all morning, as she told me, to glean information about Monsieur de la Tourelle. He was a propriétaire, had a small château on the Vosges mountains; he owned land there, but had a large income from some sources quite independent of this property. Altogether, he was a good match, as she emphatically observed.
He also gave her many instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly belonged to my department of management. But I was young and inexperienced, and thankful to be spared any responsibility. I daresay it was true what M. de la Tourelle said before many weeks had elapsed that, for a great lady, a lady of a castle, I became sadly too familiar with my Norman waiting-maid.
And with all her shrewdness to others, she had quite tender ways with me; all the more so at this time because she knew, what I had not yet ventured to tell M. de la Tourelle, that by-and-by I might become a mother that wonderful object of mysterious interest to single women, who no longer hope to enjoy such blessedness themselves. It was once more autumn; late in October.
The days were lovely, though short in duration, and M. de la Tourelle had occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate the superintendence of which so frequently took him away from home. He took Lefebvre with him, and possibly some more of the lacqueys; he often did.
But when, in the gloom of an autumnal evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors, which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry with me, although he affected to laugh, and so decidedly put aside the notion of my having any other rooms but these, that I trembled in silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called up as peopling the background of those gloomy mirrors.
I think this roused M. de la Tourelle a little from his contemptuous indifference, for he ground an oath through his teeth, and said, 'Feel! this dagger is sharp, Henri. If my wife breathes a word, and I am such a fool as not to have stopped her mouth effectually before she can bring down gendarmes upon us, just let that good steel find its way to my heart.
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