Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight
smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and
saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several
pine-trees.
"A house! a house!" he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in crying
"Land!"
Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who had fallen
into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically.
"I'd rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair here," he
said, "than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux."
These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from the
councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of which
glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree trunks.
"Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory," cried the
marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through which
they could see, in the midst of a large park, a building constructed
in the style of the monasteries of old. "How those rascals the monks
knew how to choose their sites!"
This last exclamation was an expression of surprise and pleasure at
the poetical hermitage which met his eyes. The house stood on the
slope of the mountain, at the summit of which is the village of
Nerville.
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