l have no
brighter days. Come when you please; only notify me first. My brother is
to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here. C. de C."

As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to
Poitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine
and across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring
deepened about him as he went. But he had never made a journey during
which he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land. He
obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove in
a couple of hours to the village of Fleurieres. But here, preoccupied
though he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of the
place. It was what the French call a petit bourg; it lay at the base of
a sort of huge mound on the summit of which stood the crumbling ruins of
a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as that of
the wall which dropped along the hill to inclose the clustered houses
defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.
The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its
grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to
have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very
headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass;
the patient elbow of the rampart held them together on one side, and in
front, far beneath their mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances
stretched away. The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to
vehicles. It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stood
watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend it, on the arm of her
elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other. Newman chose to lurk
among the common mourners who murmured "Madame la Comtesse" as a tall
figure veiled in black passed before them. He stood in the dusky little
church while the service was going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side
he turned away and walked down the hill. He went back to Poitiers,
and spent two days in which patience and impatience were singularly
commingled. On the third day he sent Madame de Cintre a note, saying
that he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in accordance with
this he again took his way to Fleurieres. He left his vehicle at the
tavern in the village street, and obeyed the simple instructions which
were given him for finding the chateau.

"It is just