And one morning early, visible at a distance to all
the world, risen betimes to gaze, the Queen-mother and her three sons
were [45] kneeling there--yearning, greedy, as ever, for a hundred
diverse, perhaps incompatible, things. It was at the beginning of
that winter of the great siege of Chartres, the morning on which the
child Guy Debreschescourt died in his sleep. His tiny body--the
placid, massive, baby head still one broad smile, the rest of him
wrapped round together like a chrysalis--was put to rest finally, in
a fold of the winding-sheet of a very aged person, deceased at the
same hour.
For a hard winter, like that famous winter of 1567, the hardest that
had been known for fifty years, makes an end of the weak--the aged,
the very young. To the robust, how pleasant had the preparation for
it seemed--the scent of the first wood-fire upon the keen October
air; the earth turning from grey to black under the plough; the great
stacks of fuel, come down lazily from the woods of Le Perche, along
the winding Eure; its wholesome perfume; the long, soothing nights,
and early twilight.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73