Chapter 5

Their rapid intimacy did not leave off growing during the following days. M. Des Boys never left the workmen who were making the new paths and from moment to moment he would call his daughter or M. Hervart, soliciting their approval.

In the afternoons they would go and look at one of the castles in the neighbourhood.

They saw Martinvast, towers, chapel, Gothic arches, ingeniously adapted so as to cover, without spoiling their lines, the flimsy luxury of modern times. Tourlaville, though less old, looked more decayed under its cloak of ivy. M. Hervart admired the great octagonal tower, the bold lines of the inward-curving roofs. They saw Pepinbast, a thing of lace-work and turrets, florid with trefoils and pinnacles. They saw Chiflevast, a Janus, Gothic on one side and Louis XIV on the other.

Nacqueville is old in parts; the main block seems to be contemporary with Richelieu; as a whole, it is imposing, a building to which each generation has added its own life without hiding the distant origins.

Vast, which looks quite modern, occupies a pleasing site by the falls of the Saire. It seemed more human than the others, whose hugeness and splendour they had admired without a wish to possess. Here one could give play to one’s desire.

“All the same,” said M. Hervart, “it looks too much like a big cottage.”

M. Des Boys resolved to have a cascade at Robinvast. It was a pity that he had nothing better than a stream at his disposal.

They returned by La Pernelle, from which one can see all the eastern part of the Hague, from Gatteville to St. Marcouf, a great sheet of emerald green, bordered, far away by a ribbon of blue sea.

They made a halt. Rose picked some heather, with which she filled M. Hervart’s arms. The eagerness of the air lit up her eyes, fired her cheeks.

“Isn’t it lovely, my country?”