I wonder
if you think--if you think of that: a little home away from all
these wars, aloof from vexing things.
But there! all too plainly I am showing you my heart. Yet it is
so great a comfort to speak on paper to you, in this silence here.
Can you guess where is that HERE, Robert? It is not the Chateau
St. Louis--no. It is not the Manor. It is the chateau, dear Chateau
Alixe--my father has called it that--on the Island of Orleans.
Three days ago I was sick at heart, tired of all the junketings
and feastings, and I begged my mother to fetch me here, though it
is yet but early spring, and snow is on the ground.
First, you must know that this new chateau is built upon, and is
joined to, the ruins of an old one, owned long years ago by the
Baron of Beaugard, whose strange history you must learn some day,
out of the papers we have found here. I begged my father not to
tear the old portions of the manor down, but, using the first
foundations, put up a house half castle and half manor. Pictures
of the old manor were found, and so we have a place that is no
patchwork, but a renewal. I made my father give me the old
surviving part of the building for my own, and so it is.
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