Therese and Jacques saw before them the flower-beds designed by Le Notre, the green carpet, the fountain; then the grotto with its five rustic arcades crowned by the tall trees on which autumn had already begun to spread its golden mantle.

“This green geometry is beautiful,” said Dechartre.

“Yes,” said Therese.  “But I think of the tree bent in the small courtyard where grass grows among the stones.  We shall build a beautiful fountain in it, shall we not, and put flowers in it?”

Leaning against one of the stone lions with almost human faces, that guarded the steps, she turned her head toward the castle, and, looking at one of the windows, said: 

“There is your room; I went into it last night.  On the same floor, on the other side, at the other end, is my father’s office.  A white wooden table, a mahogany portfolio, a decanter on the mantelpiece:  his office when he was a young man.  Our entire fortune came from that place.”

Through the sand-covered paths between the flowerbeds they walked to the boxwood hedge which bordered the park on the southern side.  They passed before the orange-grove, the monumental door of which was surmounted by the Lorraine cross of Mareuilles, and then passed under the linden-trees which formed an alley on the lawn.  Statues of nymphs shivered in the damp shade studded with pale lights.  A pigeon, posed on the shoulder of one of the white women, fled.  From time to time a breath of wind detached a dried leaf which fell, a shell of red gold, where remained a drop of rain.  Therese pointed to the nymph and said: 

“She saw me when I was a girl and wishing to die.  I suffered from dreams and from fright.  I was waiting for you.  But you were so far away!”

The linden alley stopped near the large basin, in the centre of which was a group of tritons blowing in their shells to form, when the waters played, a liquid diadem with flowers of foam.

“It is the Joinville crown,” she said.

She pointed to a pathway which, starting from the basin, lost itself in the fields, in the direction of the rising sun.

“This is my pathway.  How often I walked in it sadly!  I was sad when I did not know you.”

They found the alley which, with other lindens and other nymphs, went beyond.  And they followed it to the grottoes.  There was, in the rear of the park, a semicircle of five large niches of rocks surmounted by balustrades and separated by gigantic Terminus gods.  One of these gods, at a corner of the monument, dominated all the others by his monstrous nudity, and lowered on them his stony look.

“When my father bought Joinville,” she said, “the grottoes were only ruins, full of grass and vipers.  A thousand rabbits had made holes in them.  He restored the Terminus gods and the arcades in accordance with prints by Perrelle, which are preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale.  He was his own architect.”