The Villa Lucienne

Madame Koetlegon told the story, and told it so well that her audience
seemed to know the sombre alley, the neglected garden, the shuttered
house, as intimately as though they had visited it themselves, seemed
to feel a faint reverberation of the incommunicable thrill which she
had felt--which the surly guardian, the torn rag of lace, the closed
pavilion had made her feel. And yet, as you will see, there is in
reality no story at all; it is merely an account of how, when in the
Riviera two winters ago, she went with some friends to look over a
furnished villa, which one of them thought of taking.

It was afternoon when we started on our expedition, Madame de M--,
Cécile her widowed daughter-in-law, and I. Cécile's little girl Renée,
the nurse, and Médor, the boarhound of which poor Guy had been so
inordinately fond, dawdled after us up the steep and sunny road.

The December day was deliciously blue and warm. Cécile took off her
furs and carried them over her arm. We only put down our sunshades
when a screen of olive-trees on the left interposed their grey-green
foliage between us and the sunshine.

Up in these trees barefooted men armed with bamboos were beating the
branches to knock down the fruit; and three generations of women,
grandmothers, wives, and children, knelt in the grass, gathering up
the little purplish olives into baskets. All these paused to follow us
with black persistent eyes, as we passed by; but the men went on
working, unmoved. The tap-tapping, swish-swishing, of their light
sticks against the boughs played a characteristically southern
accompaniment to our desultory talk.

We were reasonably happy, pleasantly exhilarated by the beauty of the
weather and the scene.

Renée and Médor, with shrill laughter and deep-mouthed joy-notes,
played together the whole way. And when the garden wall, which now
replaced the olive-trees upon our right, gave place to a couple of
iron gates standing open upon a broad straight drive, and we, looking
up between the overarching palm-trees and cocoanuts, saw a white,
elegant, sun-bathed house at the end, Cécile jumped to the conclusion
that here was the Villa Lucienne, and that nowhere else could she find
a house which on the face of it would suit her better.