La Grenadiere

De Balzac Honore, Ellen Marriage

Description

Immerse yourself in a French pastoral idyll in this engrossing tale from Honore de Balzac, whose unparalleled powers of description will whisk you away to La Grenadiere, a quaint estate in the midst of a blossoming orchard. Indeed, the house itself emerges as one of the most memorable characters in the story.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776585793
• Langue: English

Extrait

LA GRENADIERE
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HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by
ELLEN MARRIAGE
 
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La Grenadiere First published in 1832 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-579-3 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-580-9 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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La Grenadiere Addendum
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To D. W.
La Grenadiere
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La Grenadiere is a little house on the right bank of the Loire as you godown stream, about a mile below the bridge of Tours. At this point theriver, broad as a lake, and covered with scattered green islands, flowsbetween two lines of cliff, where country houses built uniformly ofwhite stone stand among their gardens and vineyards. The finest fruitin the world ripens there with a southern exposure. The patient toil ofmany generations has cut terraces in the cliff, so that the face of therock reflects the rays of the sun, and the produce of hot climates maybe grown out of doors in an artificially high temperature.
A church spire, rising out of one of the shallower dips in the line ofcliffs, marks the little village of Saint-Cyr, to which the scatteredhouses all belong. And yet a little further the Choisille flows into theLoire, through a fertile valley cut in the long low downs.
La Grenadiere itself, half-way up the hillside, and about a hundredpaces from the church, is one of those old-fashioned houses dating backsome two or three hundred years, which you find in every picturesquespot in Touraine. A fissure in the rock affords convenient space for aflight of steps descending gradually to the "dike"—the local name forthe embankment made at the foot of the cliffs to keep the Loire in itsbed, and serve as a causeway for the highroad from Paris to Nantes. Atthe top of the steps a gate opens upon a narrow stony footpath betweentwo terraces, for here the soil is banked up, and walls are builtto prevent landslips. These earthworks, as it were, are crowned withtrellises and espaliers, so that the steep path that lies at the foot ofthe upper wall is almost hidden by the trees that grow on the top of thelower, upon which it lies. The view of the river widens out before youat every step as you climb to the house.
At the end you come to a second gateway, a Gothic archway coveredwith simple ornament, now crumbling into ruin and overgrown withwildflowers—moss and ivy, wallflowers and pellitory. Every stone wallon the hillside is decked with this ineradicable plant-life, whichsprings up along the cracks afresh with new wreaths for every time ofyear.
The worm-eaten gate gives into a little garden, a strip of turf, a fewtrees, and a wilderness of flowers and rose bushes—a garden won fromthe rock on the highest terrace of all, with the dark, old balustradealong its edge. Opposite the gateway, a wooden summer-house standsagainst the neighboring wall, the posts are covered with jessamine andhoneysuckle, vines and clematis.
The house itself stands in the middle of this highest garden, above avine-covered flight of steps, with an arched doorway beneath thatleads to vast cellars hollowed out in the rock. All about the dwellingtrellised vines and pomegranate-trees (the grenadiers , which give thename to the little close) are growing out in the open air. The frontof the house consists of two large windows on either side of a veryrustic-looking house door, and three dormer windows in the roof—a slateroof with two gables, prodigiously high-pitched in proportion to the lowground-floor. The house walls are washed with yellow color; and door,and first-floor shutters, all the Venetian shutters of the atticwindows, all are painted green.
Entering the house, you find yourself in a little lobby with a crookedstaircase straight in front of you. It is a crazy wooden structure, thespiral balusters are brown with age, and the steps themselves take anew angle at every turn. The great old-fashioned paneled dining-room,floored with square white tiles from Chateau-Regnault, is on your right;to the