e green turf shines ironically under the scorching sun,
a gigantic cedar uplifts its crested foliage, enveloped in black and
floating shadows--an exotic silhouette, upright before this former
dwelling of some Louis XIV farmer of revenue, which makes one think of a
great negro carrying the sunshade of a gentleman of the court.

From Valence to Marseilles, throughout all the Valley of the Rhone,
Saint-Romans of Bellaignes is famous as an enchanted palace; and,
indeed, in that country burnt up by the fiery wind, this oasis of
greenness and beautiful rushing water is a true fairy-land.

"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet used to say, as quite a small boy,
to his mother whom he adored, "I shall give you Saint-Romans of
Bellaignes." And as the life of the man seemed the fulfilment of a story
from the Arabian Nights, as all his wishes came true, even the most
disproportionate, as his maddest chimeras came to lie down before him,
to lick his hands like familiar and obedient spaniels, he had bought
Saint-Romans to offer it, newly furnished and grandiosely restored, to
his mother. Although it was ten years since then, the dear old woman was
not yet used to her splendid establishment. "It is the palace of Queen
Jeanne that you have given me, my dear Bernard," she wrote to her son.
"I shall never live there." She never did live there, as a matter of
fact, having stayed at the steward's house, an isolated building of
modern construction, situated quite at the other end of the grounds,
so as to overlook the outbuildings and the farm, the sheepfolds and the
oil-mills, with their rural horizon of stacks, olive-trees and vines,
extending over the plain as far as one could see. In the great castle
she would have imagined herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the midst of your happiness and
does not let you go for a hundred years. Here, at least, the
peasant-woman--who had never been able to accustom herself to
this colossal fortune, come too late, from too far, and like a
thunder-clap--felt herself linked to reality by the coming and going of
the work-people, the letting-out and taking-in of the cattle, their slow
movement to the drinking pond, all that pastoral life which woke her by
the familiar call of the cocks and the sharp cries of the peacocks, and
brought her down the corkscrew staircase of the pavilion before dawn.
She looked upon herself only as the trustee of this magnificent estate,