The Chateau by William Maxwell

and Claude de France,” he said, turning back to the guidebook.
    â€œWhy does she have two emblems?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œClaude de France. You said—”
    â€œSo she does … Ummm. It doesn’t say. But it gives the genealogy of the Valois kings, the Valois-Orléans, the Valois-Angoulême, and the Bourbons through Louis XIV.… Charles V, 1364–1380, married Jeanne de Bourbon. Charles VI, 1380–1422, married Isabeau de Bavière. Charles VII—”
    â€œCouldn’t you just read it to yourself and tell me about it afterward?”
    â€œAll right,” he said. “But it’s very interesting. Charles VIII and Louis XII both married Anne of Brittany.”
    â€œThe salamander?”
    â€œNo, the ermine. I promise not to bother you any more.” But he did, almost immediately. “Listen to this, I just want to read you the beginning paragraph. It’s practically a prose poem.”
    â€œIs it long?”
    â€œÂ â€˜Between Gien and Angers, the banks of the Loire and theaffluent valleys of the great river present an incomparable ensemble of magnificent monuments.’ That’s very good, don’t you think? Don’t you think it has sweep to it? ‘The châteaux, by their number, their importance, and their interest appear in the foreground. Crammed with art and history, they occupy the choicest sites in a region that has a privileged light—’ ”
    â€œIt looks like just any gray day to me,” she said, glancing out at the sky.
    â€œMaybe the light is privileged and maybe it isn’t. The point is you’d never find an expression like that in an American guidebook.… ‘The landscapes of the Loire, in lines simple and calm’—that’s very French—’ owe their seductiveness to the light that bathes them, wide sky of a light blue, long perspectives of a current that is sometimes sluggish, tranquil streams with delicate reflections, sunny hillsides with promising vineyards, fresh valleys, laughing flower-filled villages, peaceful visions. A landscape that is measured, that charms by its sweetness and its distinction—’ ”
    He yawned. The guidebook slipped through his fingers and joined the pocket dictionary on the rug. After a minute or two, he got up and stood at the window. The heavy shutters opened in, and the black-out paper was crinkled and torn and beginning to come loose. Three years after the liberation of France, it was still there. No one in a burst of happiness and confidence in the future had ripped it off. Germans, he thought, standing where he stood now, with their elbows on the sill. Looking off toward the river that was there but could not be seen. Lathering their cheeks in front of the shaving stand … Did Mme Bonenfant and Mme Viénot eat with their unwelcome guests, or in the kitchen, or where?
    It had stopped raining but the air was saturated with moisture and the trees dripped. In the park in front of the château, the gardener and his wife and boy were pulling the haystacks apart with their forks and spreading the hay around them on the wet ground. He was tempted to go down and offer his services. Butif they wouldn’t understand in the kitchen, no doubt they wouldn’t understand outdoors either.
    â€œWhat time is it?” Barbara asked.
    â€œQuarter of eleven. How time flies, doesn’t it. Are you warm enough?”
    â€œMmmm.”
    â€œIt’s like living at the bottom of the sea.”
    He left the window and stood behind her, reading as she wrote. She had started a letter to her mother and father. The quick familiar handwriting moved across the page, listing the places they had been to, describing the château and the countryside and the terribly interesting French family they were now staying with. The letter seemed to him slightly stepped up, the pleasures exaggerated, as if she were trying to