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During that same day and those that followed, Julia conquered new titles to Monsieur de Lucan's good graces, by manifesting a strong liking for the chateau of Vastville and the surrounding sites. The chateau pleased her for its romantic style, its old-fashioned garden ornamented with yews and evergreens, the lonely avenues of the park, and its melancholy woods scattered with ruins.
Monsieur de Lucan was born in Vastville. The poetic reminiscences of childhood mingled in his imagination with the natural poetry of that site, and made it dear to him.
Clotilde was preparing to submit that project to her daughter when she received, one beautiful May morning, the following letter dated from Paris: "BELOVED MOTHER: 'No more Switzerland! too much Switzerland! Here I am; don't disturb yourself. I know how much you are enjoying yourself at Vastville.
For want of time to do any better, they gave her for company, the cure of Vastville, the local physician, the receiver of taxes, and recorder of deeds, all of whom were tolerably frequent guests at the chateau, and great admirers of Julia. It was doubtless not a great deal; it was enough, however, to furnish to the baroness an occasion for wearing one of her handsome dinner-dresses.
Some two weeks after Julia's arrival, there was a ball given by the Marchioness de Boisfresnay, in her chateau of Boisfresnay, which is situated two or three miles from Vastville. Monsieur and Madame de Lucan were on pleasant visiting-terms with the marchioness.
Clotilde only knew Vastville from her husband's enthusiastic descriptions; she loved it on his representations, and it was for her, in advance, an enchanted spot. Nevertheless, when the carriage that brought her from the station entered, at nightfall, among the wooded hills, in the gloomy avenue that led up to the chateau, she felt an impression as of cold.
The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan's attention at the time, and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville, an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing to light again.
Madame de Pers was kind enough to lend herself to that combination, although the country was generally repulsive to her, and Vastville in particular had in her eyes a sinister character. She pretended that she heard at night noises in the walls and moans in the woods. She slept with one eye open and two candles burning.
Monsieur de Lucan had left Paris two or three weeks before, and had taken up his quarters in an old family residence at the very extremity of Normandy, where Clotilde hastened to join him immediately after Julia's departure. Vastville, the patrimonial domain of the Lucan family, is situated a short distance from the sea, on the west coast of the Norman Finisterre.
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