Page:A Motor-Flight Through France.djvu/78

A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE "Mais oui y Madame—c'est Nohant."

The goose-girl—pink as a hawthorn bud, a "kerchief" tied about her curls—might really, in the classic phrase of sentimental travel, have "stepped out" of one of the novels written yonder, under the high roof to which she pointed: she had the honest savour of the terroir, yet with that superadded grace that the author of the novels has been criticised for bestowing on her peasants. She formed, at any rate, a charming link between our imagination and the famous house; and we presently found that the miracle which had preserved her in all her 1830 grace had been extended to the whole privileged spot, which seemed, under a clear glass bell of oblivion, to have been kept intact, unchanged, like some wonderful "exhibit" illustrative of the extraordinary history lived within it.

The house faces diagonally toward the road, from which a high wall once screened it; but it is written in the Histoire de ma vie that M. Dudevant, in a burst of misdirected activity, threw down several yards of this wall, and filled the opening with a hedge. The hedge is still there; and thanks to this impulse of destruction, the [ 42 ]