The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)

by Henri Alain-Fournier

  The gypsy had ‘decked it out’. Coats were hanging from the clothes pegs. On a heavy dressing table with a cracked marble top, they had laid out everything needed to transform into a dandy some lad or other who had spent the previous night in an abandoned sheepfold. On the mantelpiece were matches beside a large torch. But they had forgotten to wax the floor, and Meaulnes could feel sand and grit rolling and grating under his shoes. Once again he had the impression that he was in a long-since abandoned house. Going to the mantelpiece, he almost bumped into a heap of large cartons and small boxes. He reached out his hand, lit the candle, then lifted the lids and leant over to look inside.

  There were young men’s clothes from long ago: frock coats with high velvet collars, stylish low-cut waistcoats, innumerable white ties and patent leather shoes from the start of the century. He did not dare lay a finger on anything, but after cleaning himself up and shivering as he did so, he put one of the large coats over his schoolboy’s smock, turning up the pleated collar, and replaced his hobnailed boots with slender, highly polished pumps. Then, bare-headed, he got ready to go down.

  He reached the bottom of a wooden staircase, in a dark corner of the yard, without meeting anyone. The icy breath of night blew on his face and lifted one corner of his coat.

  He took a few steps and, thanks to the faint light in the sky, he managed at once to grasp the layout of the place. He was in a little courtyard enclosed by the outbuildings of the main house. Everything here seemed old and in ruins. The openings at the foot of the stairways were gaping, because their doors had long since been removed. Nor had anyone replaced the glass in some windows, which were just black holes in the walls. Yet all the buildings had a mysteriously festive air. A sort of coloured glow shone from the low-ceilinged rooms where lanterns must also have been lit at the windows opposite the yard. The ground had been swept and grass pulled up where it had invaded the cobbles. Finally, if he listened carefully, Meaulnes thought he could hear some kind of singing, like children’s and girls’ voices, some way off in the jumble of buildings where the wind was shaking the branches across the pink, green and blue openings of the windows.

  He was standing there in his big overcoat, like a hunter, leaning forward and straining his ears, when an extraordinarily small young man came out of the nearby building, which had looked empty.

  He had a close-fitting top hat which shone in the dark as though it had been made of silver, a coat with its collar high into his hair, a very low-cut waistcoat and trousers with stirrups… This dandy, who was perhaps fifteen years old, was walking on tiptoe as though lifted up by the elastic under his feet, but with astonishing rapidity. He greeted Meaulnes as he went past, without stopping, bowing deeply, automatically, then vanished into the dark towards the main building – the farm, château or abbey – the turret of which had guided the boy since early that afternoon.

  After hesitating for a moment, our hero followed behind the curious little fellow. They went across a kind of great garden court, passed between flowerbeds, skirted a fish pond with a fence around it, and a well, then finally reached the door into the main house.

  The heavy, wooden door, with a rounded lintel and studded like the door of a presbytery, was half open. The dandy disappeared inside. Meaulnes followed and as soon as he stepped into the corridor, even though he could see no one, he was surrounded by laughter, singing, shouts and the sounds of pursuit.

  Another corridor crossed the end of this one at a right angle. Meaulnes was not sure whether to carry on right to the end or to open one of the doors behind which he could hear the sound of voices, when he saw a girl chasing another along the corridor at the end. On his pumps, he ran to look at them and to catch them up. He could hear doors opening and see two fifteen-year-old faces, pink with the cool of evening and the heat of the chase, under their wide-brimmed bonnets with laces, all about to vanish in a sudden burst of light.

  For an instant, they twirled round, playfully; their full, light skirts lifted and filled with air. He glimpsed the lace of their long, quaint knickers and then, both together, after this pirouette, they leapt into the room and shut the door behind them.

  For a moment, Meaulnes stayed there, dazzled and steadying himself in the dark corridor. Now he was afraid of being discovered: his awkward, uncertain manner would surely mean he would be mistaken for a thief. He was about to retreat towards the door when he once more heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor and children’s voices. Two small boys were approaching, talking as they came.

  ‘Is it time for dinner soon?’ Meaulnes asked confidently.

  ‘Come with us,’ the elder boy said. ‘We’ll take you.’

  And with the trust and need for affection that children have on the eve of a big day, both of them took him by the hand. They were probably two little peasant boys. They had been dressed in their best clothes: three-quarter-length trousers that revealed their coarse woollen stockings and clogs, a little blue velvet jerkin, a cap in the same colour and a white tie.

  ‘Do you know her?’ one of the children asked.

  ‘What I know,’ said the smaller, who had a round head and innocent eyes, ‘is that Mum told me she had a black dress and a ruff and she looked like a pretty pierrot.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Meaulnes asked.

  ‘Why, Frantz’s fiancée, the one he went to fetch…’

  Before the young man could say anything in reply, all three of them reached the door of a large hall in which a fine fire was blazing. Trestle tables had been set up, with white tablecloths spread over them, and all sorts of people were dining, ceremoniously.

  XIV

  THE STRANGE FETE

  (continued)

  It was the kind of meal, in the great hall with its low ceiling, that is given on the eve of a country wedding to relatives who have come from far away.

  The two children had let go of the schoolboy’s hand and rushed over to a neighbouring room, where you could hear childish voices and the sound of spoons clattering on plates. Meaulnes, boldly and with complete self-assurance, stepped over a bench and found he was sitting beside two old peasant women. He immediately began to eat greedily, and it was only after a short time that he looked up to examine the other guests and listen to them.

  Not that much was being said. These people seemed hardly to know one another. Some must have come from the depths of the country and others from distant towns. Here and there along the tables there were a few old men with sideboards, and others, clean-shaven, who might be old mariners. Beside them were other old people dining who resembled them: the same weatherbeaten faces, the same bright eyes under bushy eyebrows and the same ties as narrow as shoelaces… But it was not hard to see that these ones had sailed no further than the parish boundaries, and if they had been tossed and rolled more than a thousand times in wind and rain, it was to make the hard but unhazardous voyage that consists in ploughing a furrow to the end of one’s field and then turning the plough around. There were few women to be seen: some old peasants with round faces wrinkled like apples under fluted bonnets.

  There was not one of these guests with whom Meaulnes did not feel confident and at ease. Later he explained this feeling, saying: when you have committed some grave, inexcusable sin, you sometimes think, in the midst of great bitterness: ‘Even so, there are some people in the world who would excuse me.’ One thinks of old people, all-forgiving grandparents who are sure in advance that whatever you do is right and proper. The guests in that room had certainly been chosen from among that breed. And, as for the rest, they were adolescents and children…

  Meanwhile, next to Meaulnes, the two old ladies were chatting.

  ‘The very best we can hope,’ the elder of them was saying, in a comical, high-pitched voice that she was vainly trying to moderate, ‘the engaged couple will not arrive tomorrow before three o’clock.’

  ‘Be quiet, or you’ll get me angry,’ the other replied, in the calmest of tones.

  This lady was wearing a knitted bonnet on
her head.

  ‘Let’s work it out,’ the first one carried on, taking no notice. ‘One and a half hours by railway from Bourges to Vierzon and seven leagues by car, from Vierzon to here…’

  The discussion continued. Meaulnes followed every word. Thanks to this gentle little argument, the situation was getting a little clearer: Frantz de Galais, the son of the house – who was a student, or a sailor, or perhaps a midshipman, that was uncertain – had been to Bourges to fetch a girl and marry her. The odd thing was that this boy, who must be very young and capricious, organized everything to suit himself on the estate. He wanted the house that would greet his fiancée to look like a palace decked out for a celebration. And to mark the girl’s arrival, he had himself invited these children and jaunty old people. These were the points that emerged from the two ladies’ discussion. Everything else, they left in obscurity and constantly reverted to the matter of the engaged couple’s return. One of them thought it would be the following morning: the other, the afternoon.

  ‘Poor Moinelle, you’re as batty as ever,’ the younger one said calmly.

  ‘And you, my poor Adèle, are as stubborn as always. It’s four years since I saw you last and you haven’t changed,’ the other replied, shrugging her shoulders, but in the most untroubled voice.

  And so they went on opposing one another without the slightest annoyance. Meaulnes broke in, hoping to learn more:

  ‘Is she as pretty as they say, Frantz’s fiancée?’

  They looked at him, flabbergasted. No one except Frantz had seen the young woman. He himself, on his way back from Toulon, had met her one evening, distraught, in one of those gardens in Bourges called the Marais. Her father, a weaver, had driven her out of his house. She was extremely pretty, and Frantz had immediately decided to marry her. It was an odd story, but hadn’t his father, Monsieur de Galais, and his sister Yvonne always given him whatever he wanted!

  Meaulnes was cautiously going to ask further questions when a delightful couple appeared in the doorway: a sixteen-year-old girl with a velvet bodice and flounced skirt, and a young man in a high-collared coat and trousers with elastic stirrups. They danced across the room, in a sort of pas de deux. Others followed, then still others ran by, shouting, pursued by a tall, pale-faced pierrot, with sleeves that were too long for him, wearing a black hat and laughing with a toothless mouth. He was running in large, awkward strides as though, at every step, he should have made a jump, and he was waving his long, empty sleeves. The girls were a little afraid of him, but the boys shook his hand, and he seemed to be delighting the children who were chasing after him with shrill cries. As he went past, he looked at Meaulnes through glassy eyes, and the schoolboy thought he recognized M. Maloyau’s friend, now clean-shaven: the gypsy who a short while before had been hanging up lanterns.

  The meal was over. Everyone got up.

  Rounds and farandoles were being arranged in the corridors. From somewhere, there was the sound of music: a minuet… Meaulnes, whose head was half hidden in the collar of his overcoat, as though in a ruff, felt he was someone else. Caught up in the game, he too began to chase the great pierrot through the corridors of the château, as though in the wings of a theatre where the performance has spread off the stage. In this way, for the rest of the night, he mingled with a happy throng in fanciful attire. At times, he would open a door and find himself in a room where a magic lantern show was going on and children were applauding loudly… at other times, in a corner of a drawing room where people were dancing, he got into conversation with some young beau and quickly gleaned some information about the costumes that would be worn in the following days…

  Eventually, rather anxious at the idea of all this pleasure at his disposal, constantly fearing that his half-open coat would reveal his schoolboy’s smock, he went to take a few moment’s rest in the quietest and most obscure corner of the house. All that could be heard there was the muffled sound of a piano.

  He went into a silent room, which was a dining room lit by an overhead lamp. There was a party here, too, but a party for little children.

  Some, sitting on poufs, were leafing through picture books that were open on their knees. Others were crouching on the ground beside a chair and, very seriously, spreading pictures out on it. Still others were by the fire, saying nothing, doing nothing, but listening to the sound of revelry, far off in the vast estate.

  One door to this dining room was wide open. From the adjoining room you could hear someone playing the piano. Meaulnes cautiously put his head round the door. There was a kind of parlour, in which a woman or girl, with a large brown cloak over her shoulders and her back to him, was very quietly playing ditties or part songs. Side by side on the divan six or seven little boys and girls, lined up like in a picture and obedient as children are late at night, were listening. Just occasionally one of them, supporting herself on her hands, would slip off the divan and go to the dining room. Then one of those who had had enough of looking at pictures would take her place.

  After the party, where everything had been delightful, but crazy and agitated, and where he had so madly charged after the big pierrot, Meaulnes now found himself in the midst of the most tranquil happiness imaginable.

  Silently, while the young woman carried on playing, he went back and sat at the dining-room table where, opening one of the large red books scattered around it, he absent-mindedly began to read.

  Almost immediately one of the children who had been on the ground came over, clasped his arm and clambered up on his knee so that he could look at the same time, while another did the same from the other side. Then it was a dream like the one he used to have. For a long time, he could imagine that he was in his own house, married, one fine evening. And that the charming stranger playing the piano, close by, was his wife…

  XV

  THE MEETING

  On the following morning, Meaulnes was one of the first to get ready. As he had been advised, he wore a simple black suit, in old-fashioned style: a jacket, tight at the waist with sleeves puffed out on the shoulders, a double-breasted waistcoat, trousers so wide at the bottom that they almost hid his elegant shoes and a top hat.

  The courtyard was empty when he came down. He took a few steps, and it was as though he had been transported into a spring day. In fact, this was the mildest morning that winter, and the sun was shining as it does in the first days of April. The frost was melting, and the damp grass shone as though sprinkled with dew. In the trees, several little birds were singing, and now and then a warm breeze touched his face as he walked.

  He behaved like a guest who has got up before the master of the house. He went out into the courtyard of the château, thinking that a merry, friendly voice would be calling to him at any moment: ‘Up already, Augustin?’

  But he walked alone for a long time through the yard and the garden. Over in the main house, nothing was moving, either in the windows or in the turret. However, the double doors in the round wooden entrance had been opened, and a ray of sunlight shone on one of the upper windows as in summer at first light.

  For the first time Meaulnes found himself looking at the inside of the grounds in daylight. The remains of a wall separated the run-down garden from the courtyard where sand had recently been spread and raked. At the far end of the outbuildings where he was staying were some stables, an amusing jumble of structures with many corners in which unkempt bushes and untended vines ran wild. Fir woods came right up to the edges of the estate, hiding it from the flat countryside, except to the east, where you could see blue hills covered with rocks and more firs.

  For a moment, in the garden, Meaulnes leant against the rickety wooden fence around the fish pond: a little ice remained on the edges, thin and wrinkled like foam. He saw himself reflected in the water, as if leaning against the sky, in his romantic student garb. And he thought he saw another Meaulnes, no longer the schoolboy who had run away in a peasant’s cart, but a charming, fabled being, from the pages of the sort of books given as end-of-term p
rizes…

  He hurried towards the main house: he was hungry. In the great hall where he had dined the evening before, a peasant woman was laying the tables. As soon as Meaulnes had sat down in front of one of the bowls lined up on the tablecloth, she poured out his coffee, saying: ‘You’re the first, Monsieur.’

  He preferred not to say anything, because he was so afraid that he would suddenly be recognized as a stranger. He just asked when the boat would leave for the morning trip that he had heard about.

  ‘Not for half an hour at least, Monsieur. No one has come down yet,’ was her answer.

  So he went on looking for the landing-stage, walking round the long manor house with its unequal wings, like a church. When he came round the south wing, he was suddenly confronted by a landscape of reed beds, extending as far as the eye could see. On this side, the lake water came right up to the foot of the walls, and there were little wooden balconies in front of several of the doors, overhanging the lapping waves.

  The idler wandered for a while along the bank, which was sanded like a towpath. He was looking with curiosity at the big doors with their dusty windows opening on ramshackle or abandoned rooms, on storage rooms cluttered with wheel-barrows, rusted tools and broken flowerpots, when suddenly, from the far end of the building, he heard footsteps on the gravel.

  It was two women, one very old and bent, the other a young woman, blonde, slender, whose delightful attire, after all the fancy dress of the day before, at first seemed astonishing to Meaulnes.

  They stopped for a moment to look at the scenery, while Meaulnes – with what he would later feel was quite inappropriate surprise – thought: ‘This must be what you’d call an eccentric young woman, perhaps some actress brought here for the party.’ Meanwhile the two women walked past him, and Meaulnes stood quite still, watching the girl.

  Often, later, when he was falling asleep after trying desperately to recall that lovely, vanished face, he would dream that he saw rows of young women like her going by, one with a hat like hers, another with her slightly stooping manner; yet another had her candid expression, another her slender waist, and another her blue eyes; but none of these was ever the tall young woman.