Gustave
took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where
Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old
lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of
caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy
whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of
twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago.
And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well,
dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her
ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very
tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's
determination to make it a chateau. It is a square white building, with
two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter.
Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with
plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in
front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff
gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall
poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of
it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie
the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of
the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem
to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle.
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