Chapter III: The Tree of Knowledge

His mother looked at him with astonishment; his father became serious, and said: “Paul, this house satisfies your mother just as it is, and me too; you three—your two sisters and yourself—were all born here; my father left it to me, and I have added to it only what has been necessary. There is not a corner in this house but is associated with some happy or mournful reminiscence; it has been consecrated by the labours of three generations of honourable occupants. All the people of the neighbourhood, who please to give it the name of the _Château_, know that they may look for bread here when they want it, clothes for their little ones, advice in their differences, and relief if they are ill. They do not need to be shown the staircase that leads to your mother’s room or my study, for they know it as well as we do; they know as well as we do those ‘break-neck places’ on which you are so severe, and do not get lost in the long passages. If the kitchen is a little too far from the dining-room, it is large enough to hold the harvest-men when they come to supper, and the shepherds when they come to settle their accounts. I do not think I should be justified in altering all this, for this house belongs, I may say, to the neighbourhood; and you should not forget any more than I do that, in 1793, my grandfather remained here alone with his wife and my father without molestation, while all the neighbouring _châteaux_ were abandoned and pillaged.

“When we are gone—your mother and I—you will do what you think fit with this house; but if there is one piece of advice I would impress upon you, it is—Keep it as it is, for it may outlast you and your children. Keep it, for you must have committed many faults before it can cease to be a shelter for our family.

“I know as well as you—perhaps better—all that it needs to adapt it to the taste of the day; and if I were to sell it to some wealthy proprietor, he would probably soon demolish it and build a house or a _château_ more comfortable, and better suited to modern habits. What such a purchaser might do I cannot, I ought not to do.

“The good people with wooden shoes on their feet and woollen cloaks on their backs who come here to _talk with me_, and who would protect my old house, if need were (I have had proof of it), would cease to come into a new dwelling with which they were not familiar,—where everything would have a tendency to repel them, if not to arouse envious reflections in them. I should become unaccustomed to see them; and while it seems to me quite natural to see them at any time in this house—which only recalls the past, and where all is simple and somewhat rough, like themselves—it would probably appear to me strange to introduce them into apartments arranged and decorated in modern taste.

“It is undesirable to disturb visual associations; our simple-minded neighbours connect in thought the inhabitant with the house: change the latter, and they will no longer recognize the former.

“Your cousin knows still better than you or I what are the defects of our old mansion, and how it might be rendered much more attractive; yet he has never suggested modifications to me, because he perceives, as I do, that by making any change in such buildings acquired habits among those around us would be disturbed in a way that could only be injurious.

“And here are you—an architect of two or three hours’ standing, and before you know whether you could improve on the house as it is—thinking of pulling it down. Be a little more modest; when you have studied some time and seen more, you will know that a dwelling ought to be, to a man and his family, a well-suited dress, and that when a residence is perfectly adapted to the manners and habits of those it shelters, it is excellent. How many proprietors have I seen who, while destroying their ancestral mansion, to replace it by a habitation conformable as they thought to the requirements of the moment, have by the same act ruptured the tie which attached their family to the humble inhabitants of the neighbourhood!”

The only reply Paul offered to these arguments was to go and embrace his mother and father; and no better could have been thought of.

“I don’t exactly see,” said Paul to his cousin, when they were both in the park after breakfast, “why my father should wish to have a house built for my sister, since he thinks it so desirable to keep for himself and for us the old mansion in which we were born.”

“It is not a matter of very easy explanation; but you are old enough, Paul, to understand it. In the first place, your sister Marie now bears another name than yours; and a well-known respected name has a similar standing in the neighbourhood with the old house to which, so to speak, it is attached. If you had not been born, and your parents were no longer living, Madame N——, your sister, on coming to live on this estate, might safely pull down the old house and build a new one, for it would not be more difficult to introduce the new house than the name of a new proprietor. She would have to create new ties with all this little world that surrounds you, and consequently to establish between this world and her new family relations differing probably from those which now exist between your father and the people of your neighbourhood. Your father’s connection with the peasants of Berri, among whom he has always lived, is intertwined with traditions handed down through several generations without interruption. He can therefore obtain services from them, and inspire them with a confidence which would not be accorded to new-comers, or to any name but his; while these peasants on their part unsuspectingly accept favours which they know from long experience to be disinterested. The old manor-house, occupied by a stranger bearing a new name, would lose the prestige which your father so justly appreciated; there would in that case be no advantage in preserving its time-honoured aspect. M. de Gandelau, therefore, who does nothing without consideration, perceives that some day or other, by the pressure of circumstances, his house might be no longer suitable for his children, so that before its possible disappearance, he builds a new one for your sister; a house to which the neighbourhood will become gradually accustomed, and which will form a new family centre; for Madame Marie is beloved and esteemed throughout the neighbourhood. People will become accustomed to the more modern habits of the new manor-house, and no one will then think it strange that the old one should be demolished. Your father is preparing a gradual transition from a social condition, which, though on the decline even in the country districts, still exists, to that which is destined to replace it. You see, then, that though he values the past, and endeavours to preserve its advantages, he does not believe in its perpetuity, and foresees the time when it must vanish before the habits and requirements of the present. Natural as is your father’s mode of living, because it is the result of habits that have not been interrupted for many generations, it would be difficult for a new-comer to conform to these habits. Besides, this estate which M. de Gandelau has rendered so productive, and which he has increased in extent, will have to be divided at his decease amongst his three children. Already he has detached a portion of it to form your sister’s dowry. He intends, then, by the residence we are going to build, to have this part now brought into harmony with the habits of the new proprietors, who are young, and whose mode of life must be different from that which still suits your father. When you are older you will appreciate all these things better. Let us go and resume our work.”

Paul was endeavouring to gain a clear view of the grave subjects his cousin had been discussing. He recalled the conversation of the preceding days between his father and mother, and his mind was evidently full of ideas, new to him, which had been thus suggested. At any rate, the old house began to assume in his eyes a venerable appearance, and he was no longer inclined to censure its inconvenient arrangements and somewhat inelegant exterior.