ice; sometimes it plunged down the mountain-side as if on purpose to let us hear the music of the water; and one of these sudden swoops downward brought us in sight of a château so enchanting and so evidently enchanted, that I was sure a fairy's wand had waved for its creation, perhaps only a moment before. When we were gone, it would disappear again, and the fairy would flash down under the translucent water, laughing, as she sent up a spray of emeralds and pearls.
"Of course, it isn't real!" I exclaimed. "But do let's stop, because such a knightly castle wouldn't be rude enough to vanish right before our eyes."
"No, it won't vanish, because it's a most courteous little castle, which has been well brought up, and even though its greatness is gone, tries to live up to its traditions," said Jack. "It always appears to everyone it thinks likely to appreciate it; and I was certain it would be here in its place to welcome you."
We smiled into each other's eyes, and I felt as if the castle were a present from him to me. How I should have loved to have it for mine, to make up for one poor old château, now crumbled hopelessly into ruin, and despised by the least exacting of tourists! Coming upon it unexpectedly in this green dell, at the foot of the precipice, seeing it rise from the water on one side, reflected as in a broken mirror, and draped in young, golden foliage on the other, it really was an ideal castle for a fairy tale. A connoisseur in the best architecture of the Renaissance would perhaps have been ungracious enough to pick faults; for to a critical eye the turrets and arches might fall short of perfection; and there was little decoration on the time-darkened stone walls, save the thick curtain of old, old ivy; but the fairy grace of the towers rising from the moat of glittering, bright green water was gay and sweet as a song heard in the woods.
"Some beautiful nymph ought to have lived here," I said dreamily, when we had got out of the car. "A nymph whose beauty was celebrated all over the world, so that knights from far and near came to this lovely place to woo her."
"Why, you might have heard the story of the place!" said Jack. "It's the Château de la Caze, usually called the Castle of the Nymphs, for instead of one, eight beautiful nymphs lived in it. But their beauty was their undoing. I don't quite know why they were called 'nymphs,' for nymphs and naiads had gone out of fashion when they reigned here as Queens of Beauty, in the sixteenth century. But perhaps in those days to call a girl a 'nymph' was to pay her a compliment. It wouldn't be now, when chaps criticize the 'nymphery' if they go to a dance! Anyhow, these eight sisters, were renowned for their loveliness, and all the unmarried gentlemen of France—according to the story—as well as foreign knights, came to pay court to them. The unfortunate thing was, when the cavaliers saw the eight girls together, they were all so frightfully pretty it wasn't possible to choose between them, so the poor gentlemen fought over their rival charms, and were either killed or went away unable to make up their minds. The sad end was, if you'll believe me, that all the eight maidens died unmarried, martyrs to their own incomparable charms."
"I can quite believe it," I answered, "and it wasn't at all sad, because I'm sure any girl who had once had this place for her home would have pined in grief at being taken away, even by the most glorious knight of the world."
"Come in and see their boudoir," said the knight who worked, if he did not fight, for me.
So we went in, without the trouble of using battering rams; for alas, the family of the eight nymphs grew tired of their château and the gorge in the dreadful days of the religious wars, and now it is an hotel. It would not receive paying guests until summer, but a good-natured caretaker opened the door for us, and we saw a number of stone-paved corridors, and the nymphs' boudoir.
Their adoring father had ordered their portraits to be painted on the ceiling; and there they remain to this day, simpering sweetly down upon the few bits of ancient furniture made to match the room and suit their taste.
They smiled amiably at us, too, the eight little faces framed in Henrietta Maria curls; and their eyes said to me, "If you want to be happy, m'amie, it is better not to be too beautiful; or else not to have any sisters. Or if Providence will send you sisters, go away yourself, and visit your plainest friend, till you have got a husband."
Gazing wistfully back, as one does gaze at places one fears never to see again, the Castle of the Nymphs looked like a fantastic water-flower standing up out of the green river, on its thick stem of rock. Then it was gone; for our time was not quite our own, and we dared not linger, lest the boat with our Betters should arrive at the meeting place before we reached it in the car. But there were compensations, for almost with every moment the gorge grew grander. Cascades sparkled in the sun like blowing diamond-dust. The rocks seemed set with jewels, or patterned with mosaic; and there were caves—caves almost too good to be true. Yet if we could believe our eyes, they were true, even the dark cavern where, once upon a time, lived a scaly dragon who terrorized the whole country for miles around, and had no relish for his meals unless they were composed of the most exquisite young maidens—though he would accept a child as an hors d'oeuvre. In such a strange world as this, after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than in hiding countesses, fed and tended for months upon months by faithful servants, while the red Revolution raged; yet the countess and her cave were vouched for by history, which ignored the dragon and his.
Not only had each mountain at least one cavern, but every really eligible crag had its ruined castle; and each ruin had its romance, which clung like the perfume of roses to a shattered vase. There were rocks shaped like processions of marching monks following uplifted crucifixes; and farther on, one would have thought that half the animals had scrambled out of the ark to a height where they had petrified before the flood subsided. As we wound through the gorge the landscape became so strange, hewn in such immensity of conception, that it seemed prehistoric. We, in the blue car, were anachronisms, or so I felt until I remembered how, in pre-motoring days, I used to think that owning an automobile must be like having a half-tamed minotaur in the family. As for the Aigle, she was a friendly, not a vicious, monster, and as if to make up for her mistakes of yesterday, she was to-day more like a demi-goddess serving an earthly apprenticeship in fulfilment of a vow than a dragon of any sort. Swinging smoothly round curve after curve, the noble car running free and cooing in sheer joy of fiery life, as she swooped from height to depth, I, too, felt the joy of life as I had hardly ever felt it before. The chauffeur and I did not speak often, but I looked up at him sometimes because of the pleasure I had in seeing and re-seeing the face in which I had come to have perfect confidence; and I fancied from its expression that he felt as I felt.
So we came to Les Vignes, and lunched together at a table set out of doors, close to the car, that she might not be left alone. We had for food a strange and somewhat evil combination; wild hare and wild boar; but they seemed to suit the landscape somehow, as did the mystical music of the conch-shells, blown by passing boatmen. It was like being waked from a dream of old-time romance, by a rude hand shaking one's shoulder, to hear the voices of Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, he mildly arguing, she disputing, as usual.
Poetry fled like a dryad of some classic wood, scared by a motor omnibus; and, though the gorge as far as Le Rozier was magnificent, and the road all the way to Millau beautiful in the sunset, it was no longer our gorge, or our road. That made a difference!
Chapter XXIV
There was a telegram from "Bertie" at Millau. The invitation to the château where he was stopping near Clermont-Ferrand, had been asked for and given. I heard all about it, of course, from the conversation between the bride and groom; for Lady Turnour prides herself on discussing things in my presence, as if I were deaf or a piece of furniture. She has the idea that this trick is a habit of the "smart set"; and she would allow herself to be tarred and feathered, in Directoire style, if she could not be smart at smaller cost.
Nothing was ever more opportune than that telegram, for her ladyship had burnt her frock and chilled her liver in the boat, and though the hotel at Millau was good, she arrived there with the evident intention of making life a burden to Sir Samuel. The news from Bertie changed all that, however; and though the weather was like the breath