time in my life I feel at peace, as though something that I should have done long ago has been at last accomplished."
He was so solemn that I laughed a little. He stopped me suddenly: "It's true—I've always felt an urge within me, a blinding force pushing me toward something that is waiting for me: where, I do not know; what, I have no idea. For the first time, it's gone—that nameless urge that I knew not how to satisfy, and I feel that the call's being answered."
With the usual inanity of people at a loss for words, I said the first thing that came into my mind: "Perhaps Rougemont has been calling you."
"You've no idea what a relief it is," he continued, "not to feel constantly pulled with no way of knowing toward what, or how to go about answering the summons. I have often thought that I should take my life—that that was what was meant——" His voice trailed off.
This time I was not at a loss for words. I started to read him a lecture that would have done credit to Martin Luther or John Knox. At the end of my harangue Wrexler laughed, a rare thing for him, and put his arm through mine.
"All that's gone now. Didn't I tell you that at last in some strange way I am at peace?"
Rougemont's towers were visible—long before we reached the great iron gates that had to be swung open to let us pass. For miles the great edifice dominated the landscape. The huge building had a soft, reddish tinge, from which I supposed it derived its name—Red Mountain. It was a fairy-tale palace perched on a mountain top. A great thrill went through me as I realized that this beautiful château was mine, and as we drove through the gates, up the winding road, through my own forest, the pride of possession swelled up in me and for the first time I began to understand why my father had never put his foot outside the great gates and the high wall that enclosed the acres that now belonged to me.
As we drove on, up the winding, narrow road, over the drawbridge that spanned the moat, into the courtyard, I understood more and more. Here was everything: beauty such as I had never dreamed, forests stocked with game, running brooks full of fish, a lake, and farther off, a farm—I could glimpse its thatched roofs—to supply our wants. Rougemont was a world in itself.
The high carved door was swung open as Wrexler and I got out of the car. Monsieur de Carrier, my father's lawyer, advanced to meet us, a friendly smile on his Santa Claus countenance. I shook hands, introduced Wrexler as "a very good friend who is going to stay with me."
Monsieur Carrier's face fell. Clearly Wrexler's being with me was a disappointment. Nevertheless, he greeted him politely, as he ushered us in.
That moment Rougemont took me to its heart and won me for its own.
Imagine Amboise, or any of the great French châteaux, suddenly restored to itself as it was in the days of the Medici, and you have a small idea of Rougemont. For we had stepped out of the present into the past. Carrier, Wrexler and I were anachronisms; everything else was in keeping with the dead centuries. Even the servants were in doublet and hose of a sort of cerulean blue, with great slashes puffed with crimson silk.
I think I gasped. At any rate, Monsieur Carrier saw my astonishment. "It is your father's will, my boy, He always kept it so, and wore the costume of former days, himself. He greatly admired the first Francis. In your rooms you will find costumes prepared for you.
