William Maxwell - The Chateau

Coming home on the top of a bus just as the lights were turned on in the shops along the Boulevard St. Germain, they saw a china shop, and got off the bus and went inside and bought two small ash trays of white porcelain, in the shape of an elm and a maple leaf.

Barbara bought gloves in the rue de Rivoli, and in a little shop in the rue St. Honoré she found a moss-green velours hat with a white ostrich feather that curled charmingly against her cheek. It was too small, and after the clerk had stretched it Barbara knew suddenly that it was not right. It was too costumy. But the clerk and Harold both begged her to take it, and so, against her better judgment, she did.

He was looking for the complete correspondence of Flaubert, in nine volumes, and this was not easy to find and gave him an excuse to stop in every bookstore they came to.

In a little alley off the rue Jacob they saw a small house with a plaque on it: Ici est mort Racine . Across the door of a butcher shop in the rue Vaugirard they saw a deer hanging head down, with a sign pinned to its fur: Will be cut up on Thursday .

They took the train to Versailles, and walked all the way around the palace and then a little way into the park, looking for the path to the Petit Trianon. They couldn’t find it, but came instead upon a fountain with a reclining goddess whose beautiful vacant face was turned to the sky. Leaves came drifting down and settled on the surface of the pool and sailed around the statue like little boats. For the few minutes that they stood looking at the fountain, they were released from the tyranny of his wristwatch and the calendar; there was no time but the time of statues, which seems to be eternity, though of course they age, too, and become pitted, lose a foot or a hand, lichen grows in the folds of their drapery, their features become blurred, and what they are a statue of nobody knows any longer.

Finding themselves in the street where Jean Allégret lived, they stopped and rang his bell. There was no answer. Harold left a note for him, in the mailbox. There was no answer to that, either.

Passing through the Place St. Sulpice on their way home, they raised their eyes to the lighted windows and wondered about the people who lived there. As far as they could see, nobody wondered about them.

The woman who had helped Barbara write those two mildly misleading letters to Mme Viénot had also given Harold the name and telephone number of two old friends from the period when she and her husband were living in Paris. One was a banker. She had not heard anything from him for a long time and she was worried about him. The other was her doctor. Both men were cultivated and responsive and just the sort of people Harold and Barbara would enjoy knowing. Harold called the Hanover Bank and learned that the banker was dead. Then he telephoned the doctor, and the doctor thanked him for giving him news of his friends in America and hung up. Harold looked at the telephone oddly, as if it must in some way be to blame. As for their own French friends, he had been conscious for some time of how completely absent they were—Alix, Sabine, Eugène, Jean Allégret, Mme Straus. Not one word from any of them.

Though they were very happy in Paris, they were aware that a shadow hung over the city. The words “crise” and “grève” appeared in the newspaper headlines day after day. The taxi strike had lasted two weeks. One day the Métro was closed, because of a strike. Two days later, to save coal, the electric utilities shut off all power for twelve hours, and as a result the elevator in their hotel did not run and their favorite restaurant was lit by acetylene lamps. Tension and uncertainty were reflected in the faces they saw in the streets.

They made one more attempt to find the château with the green lawn in front of it—they went to Fontainebleau. They enjoyed seeing the apartment of Mme de Maintenon and Napoleon’s little bathtub, and from across the water the château did look like a fairy-tale palace, but not the right one. It was too large, and it was not white.

When they got back to their hotel, M. le Patron handed them a letter. Mme Straus-Muguet’s handwriting dashed all the way across the face of the envelope, which was postmarked Sarthe:

My dear little friends, what contretemps all along the line, since I miss you at every turn! Because of the beautiful weather I have not had the courage to remain in Paris, and here I am in paradise! Sun, flowers, and the dear nuns, who are so good to me! But let us put an end to this game of hide-and-seek. I must return to Paris on Thursday, the fourteenth, but if it is necessary I shall advance the date of my return in order to see you. What are the sorties, plays, operas that will be performed on these dates, and what would you like to see? Find this out in La Semaine or from the billboards, and write me at once if between the fifteenth and your departure there is to be a Wednesday soirée de ballet, for I will then write immediately to Paris to the Opéra. If I return on Sunday—the eleventh that would be—is that better for you? Have you still many things to do before the final departure? And from where do you sail? And on what boat? Behind all these questions, my dear children, is only the desire to please you and see you again before the complete separation that will be so hard for me to bear.… I will continue to write to your present hotel, and do not change without telling me. What have you done up to this moment that was delightful and interesting? I so much wanted to show you all the beautiful things—but you have already seen many of them!… Au revoir, dear little friends. I clasp you to my heart, both of you, and embrace you with all my tenderness—the tenderness of a friend and of a mother.

Madame Minou

Straus-Muguet

October 4

THERE WAS NO BALLET between the twelfth and the nineteenth, and so Harold got seats for le Roi d’Ys instead. He wrote to Mme Straus that they had seats for the opera for the fourteenth of October and were looking forward to her return. Also that they were enjoying Paris very much, and that on Sunday they were going to Chartres for the day.

Chartres was wonderful; it was one of the high points of their whole trip. There was no streetcar line, just as Mme Viénot had said, and so no little church at the end of it, but they got off the train and found that it was only a short walk to the cathedral from the station. To their surprise, in the whole immense interior there was no one. The greatest architectural monument of the Middle Ages seemed to be there just for them. The church was as quiet as the thoughts it gave rise to. They stood and looked at the stained-glass prophets, at the two great rose windows, at the forest of stone pillars, at the dim, vaulted ceiling, at a little side altar with lighted candles on it. They felt in the presence of some vast act of understanding. When they spoke, it was in whispers. Their breathing, their heartbeat, seemed to be affected.

They climbed one of the towers, and saw what everybody in Chartres was doing. Then they went down and had a very good lunch in a little upstairs restaurant, where they were the only patrons, and walked through the old part of town until dusk. They went back to the cathedral, and walked all the way around it, and came upon the little vegetable garden in the rear; like every other house in Chartres, it had its own potager. This time, when they went inside, there was no light at all in the sky, and it was a gray evening, besides. The stained-glass windows were still glorious, still blazing with their own color and their own light.