The Woollen Dress by Henry Bordeaux

AMAZED, enraptured, I gazed about me. This, surely, was the very forest of the Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Suddenly, at a turn of the road, her castle loomed up among the trees, huge and mysterious.

I had been pushing my bicycle, despite its various gears, up a long heavy slope. Once again in the saddle, I had penetrated into a wild valley, a mere gorge at first, then broadening into field and forest, with a pool in the lower distance. The brilliant bouquet that autumn can make if it pleases, of water and trees and bushes massed upon a mountain side, was before me -- autumn, the flower time of the woods, when the heaviest burdens have fallen and the spring of trunk and branch and airy foliage show all the indescribable hues of light. Golden lindens, pale elms, ruddy chestnuts, copper horse-chestnuts, rusty oaks, purplish fruit trees, poplars like golden candle-sticks, form under the level rays of sunlight, a fairy train: it is a gay parade that would cause a thrill of joyful amazement, did not the lightest whispering breeze threaten the loss of all the marvellous attire. Dread and pleasure meet in October walks, dread that comes with the pleasure that is fleeting.

It was Sunday, and I had met no one. A village through which I had passed was as if dead. The women were no doubt at church, the men in the wine-shop. From the whole valley, as from a vast deserted garden, arose a perfume of old legend, which I inhaled with rapture. The country here had the look of some deserted park, and I was keen to discover some abandoned habitation in it. Any usual modern villa would have dishonoured this ageless landscape. Nothing would answer my mood but a confusion of ancient stones and wild vines, or at least real ruins, authentic and crumbling.

To tell the truth, it was not ruins that I had perceived on the hillside at the end of the avenue of more than century-old oaks. The avenue led up to a terrace ornamented by urns and stretching all along the front of the house. The urns were empty and no one had thought to mow the grass. The chateau was a large building, with mullioned windows, and a sort of cloister running its entire length, and but for these ivy wreathed arcades would have appeared almost commonplace. The dark tone of its walls gave it an aspect of venerable age, with all the added solitude of silence and the melancholy of the season and the surrounding forest. There it stood, in its own well-sheltered place, presenting its front, as an old man his face, to the warmth of the sun, letting the days flow by. A clump of yellow chrysanthemums and a few climbing roses gave it the look of a faint smile.

I dismounted to enter into communion with this old place. The gate was open; indeed the hinges, being sprung, would not allow it to be shut. A lodge at the entrance was almost hidden among the trees, overwhelmed as with a flood of greenery by their luxuriant growth. As I drew nearer I observed that several oaks had been replaced by horse-chestnuts, the rapid growth of which had speedily filled the gaps that time had made in the avenue.

A peasant was raking up the nuts, though they seemed to me to be uneatable.

"They are for my beasts," he explained.

I at once proceeded to question him.

"What is the name of this chateau?"

"The chateau of the Sleeping Beauty, that is, of the Sleeping Woods."

I could hardly have imagined a name more perfectly responding to the enchantment which had taken possession of me since my entrance into the valley.

"Was it not an ancient nunnery?"

"Perhaps -- once upon a time, long ago. No one knows how long."

"Before the Revolution?"

"Long before that. At the Revolution it belonged to the Count."

"What Count?"

"Count d'Alligny. The same whose grandson sold it."

"Sold it to whom?"

"To M. Cernay, the present owner."

The name Cernay is known to every one nowadays as that borne by the millionaire aviator who has devoted himself to perfecting the aeroplane, and in the train of Bleriot, Latham, the Wrights, has experimented in the conquest of the air. I knew Raymond Cernay personally, having met him in society a few years ago, before he became interested in aviation, and I was proud of the acquaintance. He gave me the impression of a man richly endowed mentally, though perhaps too versatile, one who would find it difficult to fix upon any interest, likely to abandon every attempt if the outcome of it were within easy reach. He had begun to succeed in many things, giving them up, each one, at the first smile of success, as if a mere forecast of glory was all he sought. A few rough-hewn sculptures, the narrative of a journey in the Indies, daring century motor rides, brief scientific investigations had sufficed at that time to win for him a sort of reputation in society for originality. The reputation was fostered by constant change, and appeared to satisfy him, for above all things he valued the celebrity of the drawing room. During the last few years he had disappeared from Paris, doubtless to devote himself all the more fervently to the new passion of aviation.