[Gutenberg 46865] • War Days in Brittany

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...middle ages the serf from his overlord! After a most excellent luncheon of chicken "en casserole," venison, fresh vegetables and salads, a pastry and some fine Burgandy (all furnished by the estate, except the wine), the host and hostess, the singer, my husband and I, climbed around the upper turrets, gazed down through the "Machiacoli" whence boiling oil was hurled on the besieger in the Dark Ages, scrambled through low stone arches, up corkscrew-stairs to the bedroom of the famous Comte de Chateaubriand, greatuncle of the present owner, and from whom she inherited the property. Here he spent his lonely childhood, full of dreams and fears; in one of his books, complaining of the bats circling and flapping outside his window, in the moonlight, around this white-washed room high up in this silent tower! What a dreary abode for an imaginative boy! Down the turning staircase, where an ancestral ghost with a wooden leg and accompanied by a spectral cat "walks" before any disaster comes to the family, we came to the Poet's Library, a circular room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, as well as many unbound manuscripts. A ladder on runners can be pushed around to reach the higher rows. Here are many family relics; a comfortable oak armchair and table before the open fireplace, where Chateaubriand wrote many of his worldrenowned books. The Castle of Combourg 79 On returning to one of the salons, we found some thirtyfive wounded awaiting the little concert we had arranged for them. Some village notables, the mayor, the cure, the postmaster and a few elderly neighbors, were amongst them. The singer, Miss Marion Gregory, of New York, confided to me afterwards that she was so overcome, facing those poor wounded...