It was raining; and Monsieur Paul was paying us an evening call. A great fire was burning in the beautiful Francois I. fireplace of our sitting-room2, the famous Chambre des Marmousets. We had not consented that any of the lights should be lit, although the lovely little Louis XIV. chandelier and the antique brass3 sconces were temptingly filled with fresh candles. The flames of the great logs would suffer no rival illuminations; if the trunks of full-grown trees could not suffice to light up an old room, with low-raftered ceilings, and a mass of bric-à-brac, what could a few thin waxen candles hope to do?
On many other occasions we had thought our marvellous sitting-room had had exceptional moments of beauty. To turn in from the sunlit, open court-yard; to pass beneath, the vine-hung gallery; to lift the great latch4 of the low Gothic door and to enter the rich and sumptuous5 interior, where the light came, as in cathedral aisles6, only through the jewels of fourteenth-century glass; to close the door; to sit beneath the prismatic shower, ensconced in a nest of old tapestried7 cushions, and to let the eye wander over the wealth of carvings8, of ceramics9, of Spanish and Normandy trousseaux chests, on the collection of antique chairs, Dutch porcelains10, and priceless embroideries—all the riches of a museum in a living-room—such a moment in the Marmousets we had tested again and again with delectable11 results. At twilight12, also, when the garden was submerged in dew, this old seigneurial chamber13 was a retreat fit for a sybarite or a modern aesthete14. The stillness, the soft luxurious15 cushions, the rich dusk thickening in the corners, the complete isolation16 of the old room from the noise and tumult17 of the inn life, its curious, its delightful18 unmodernness, made this Marmouset room an ideal setting for any mediaeval picture. Even a sentiment tinctured with modern cynicism would, I think, have borrowed a little antique fervor19, if, like the photographic negative our nineteenth-century emotionalism somewhat too closely resembles, in its colorless indefiniteness, the sentiment were sufficiently20 exposed, in point of time and degree of sensitiveness, to the charm of these old surroundings.
On this particular evening, however, the pattering of the rain without on the cobbles and the great blaze of the fire within, made the old room seem more beautiful than we had yet seen it. Perhaps the capture of our host as a guest was the added treasure needed to complete our collection. Monsieur Paul himself was in a mood of prodigal21 liberality; he was, as he himself neatly22 termed the phrase, ripe for confession23; not a secret should escape revelation; all the inn mysteries should yield up the fiction of their frauds; the full nakedness of fact should be given to us.
"You see, chères dames1, it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn—it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused24 my inn. I found her poor, tattered25, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur Paul's possession of the English language was scarcely as complete as the storehouse of his memory. He would have been surprised, doubtless, to learn he had called poor Audrey, "a pure ting, buttaire my noon!"
"She was, however," he continued, securely, in his own richer Norman, "though a wench, a beautiful one. And I vowed27 to make her glorious. 'She shall be famous,' I vowed, and—and—better than most men I have kept my vow26. All France now has heard of Guillaume le Conquérant!"
The pride Monsieur Paul took in his inn was indeed a fine thing to see. The years of toil28 he had spent on its walls and in its embellishment had brought him the recompense much giving always brings; it had enriched him quite as much as the wealth of his taste and talent had bequeathed to the inn. Latterly, he said, he had travelled much, his collection of curios and antiquities29 having called him farther afield than many Frenchmen care to wander. His love of Delft had taken him to Holland; his passion for Spanish leather to the country of Velasquez; he must have a Virgin30, a genuine fifteenth-century Virgin, all his own; behold31 her there, in her stiff wooden skirts, a Neapolitan captive. The brass braziers yonder, at which the courtiers of the Henris had warmed their feet, stamping the night out in cold ante chambers32, had been secured at Blois; and his collection of tapestries33, of stained glass, of Normandy brasses34, and Breton carvings had made his own coast as familiar as the Dives streets.
"The priests who sold me these, madame," he went on, as he picked up a priest's chasuble, now doing duty as a table covering "would sell their fathers and their mothers. It is all a question of price."
After a review of the curios came the history of the human collection of antiquities who had peopled the inn and this old room.
Many and various had been the visitors who had slept and dined here and gone forth35 on their travels along the high-road.
The inn had had a noble origin; it had been built by no less a personage than the great William himself. He had deemed the spot a fitting one in which to build his boats to start forth for his modest project of conquering England. He could watch their construction in the waters of Dives River—that flows still, out yonder, among the grasses of the sea-meadows. For some years the Norman dukes held to the inn, in memory of the success of that clever boat-building. Then for five centuries the inn became a manoir—the seigneurial residence of a certain Sieur de Sémilly. It was his arms we saw yonder, joined to those of Savoy, in the door panel, one of the family having married into a branch of that great house.
Of the famous ones of the world who had travelled along this Caen post-road and stopped the night here, humanly tired, like any other humble36 wayfarer37, was a hurried visit from that king who loved his trade—Louis XI. He and his suite38 crowded into the low rooms, grateful for a bed and a fire, after the weary pilgrimage to the heights of Mont St. Michel. Louis's piety39, however, was not as lasting40 in its physically41 exhaustive effects, as were the fleshly excesses of a certain other king—one Henri IV., whose over-appreciation of the oysters42 served him here, caused a royal attack of colic, as you may read at your pleasure in the State Archives in Paris—since, quite rightly, the royal secretary must write the court physician every detail of so important an event. What with these kingly travellers and such modern uncrowned kings as Puvis de Chavannes, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, and Troyon, together with a goodly number of lesser43 great ones, the famous little inn has had no reason to feel itself slighted by the great of any century. Of all this motley company of notabilities there were two whose visits seemed to have been indefinitely prolonged. There was nothing, in this present flowery, picturesque44 assemblage of buildings, to suggest a certain wild drama enacted45 here centuries ago. Nothing either in yonder tender sky, nor in the silvery foliage46 on a fair day, which should conjure47 up the image of William as he must have stood again and again beside the little river; nor of the fury of his impatience48 as the boats were building all too slowly for his hot hopes; nor of the strange and motley crew he had summoned there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow49, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently50 forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by far the most realizable of all the personages who have inhabited the old house.
There was another visitor whose presence Monsieur Paul declared was as entirely51 real as if she, also, had only just passed within the court-yard.
"I know not why it is, but of all these great, ces fameux, Madame de Sévigné seems to me the nearest, in point of time. Her visit appears to have happened only yesterday. I never enter her room but I seem to see her moving about, talking, laughing, speaking in epigrams. She mentions the inn, you know, in her letters. She gives the details of her journey in full."
I, also, knew not why; but, later, after Monsieur Paul had left us, when he had shut himself out, along with the pattering raindrops, and had closed us in with the warmth and the flickering52 fire-light, there came, with astonishing clearness, a vision of that lady's visit here. She and her company of friends might have been stopping, that very instant, without, in the open court. I, also, seemed to hear the very tones of their voices; their talk was as audible as the wind rustling53 in the vines. In the growing stillness the vision grew and grew, till this was what I saw and heard:
TWO BANQUETS AT DIVES.
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1
dames
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| n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人 | |
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2
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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7
tapestried
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| adj.饰挂绣帷的，织在绣帷上的v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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carvings
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| n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物 | |
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ceramics
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| n.制陶业；陶器 | |
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porcelains
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| n.瓷，瓷器( porcelain的名词复数 ) | |
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delectable
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| adj.使人愉快的；美味的 | |
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12
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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13
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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aesthete
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| n.审美家 | |
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15
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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17
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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fervor
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| n.热诚；热心；炽热 | |
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20
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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23
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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24
espoused
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| v.（决定）支持，拥护（目标、主张等）( espouse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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28
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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29
antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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31
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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32
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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33
tapestries
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| n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 )；绣帷，织锦v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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34
brasses
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| n.黄铜( brass的名词复数 )；铜管乐器；钱；黄铜饰品（尤指马挽具上的黄铜圆片） | |
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35
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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wayfarer
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| n.旅人 | |
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38
suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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39
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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40
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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41
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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42
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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43
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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44
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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45
enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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47
conjure
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| v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法 | |
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48
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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49
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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50
insolently
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| adv.自豪地，自傲地 | |
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51
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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52
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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53
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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