The Château
William Maxwell
Language: English
Pages: 285
ISBN: 2:00351353
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
It is 1948 and a young American couple arrive in France for a holiday, full of anticipation and enthusiasm. But the countryside and people are war-battered, and their reception at the Chateau Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.
the evening. The city was plastered with posters advertising the annual industrial fair, and they were turned away from one hotel after another. They decided that the situation was hopeless, and Harold told the taxi driver to take them to the railway station. The next train to anywhere left at seven thirty a.m. They drove back into the center of town and tried more places. While Harold was standing on the sidewalk, wondering where to go next, a man came up to him and handed him a card with the
sometimes, afterward, but she did not mind deeply. She did not want the kind of life that a “brilliant” marriage would have opened up to her. And the waters did not close over her head, though there was every reason to think that they would. Or perhaps there wasn’t every reason to think that. It all depends on how you look at things. She did have talent; it was merely slow in revealing itself. And failure—real failure—has a way of passing over slight, pale, idealistic girls with observant eyes
Comique; that it did not belong on so large a stage. The Opéra was more suited to Aida. She found the singing acceptable but the opera itself did not greatly interest her. Did he know Aida? It was her favorite. Again she pressed the little bag of candy on him in the dark, and he suddenly remembered the strange behavior of Mme Marguerite Mailly, when they went backstage after her play. A few minutes later, hearing the rustle of the little bag again coming toward him, he was close to hating Mme
under the letter R. She had on a wheat-colored traveling suit and the short black cloth coat that was fashionable that year and black gloves but no hat. He was wearing a wrinkled seersucker suit, a white broadcloth shirt, a foulard tie, and dusty white shoes. He needed a haircut. The gray felt hat he held in his hand was worn and sweat-stained, and in some mysterious way it looked like him. One would have said that, day in and day out, the hat was cheerful, truthful, even-tempered, anxious to do
all people. Barbara was thanking her for the book and the bottle of champagne she had sent to the boat. Barbara’s handwriting was very dashing, and not very legible, because of a tendency to abbreviate and leave off parts of letters, but if you were patient you could get the hang of it, and no doubt Mme Viénot had. On the table, beside a pile of guidebooks, were three pages—also in Barbara’s handwriting—of a diary she was keeping. The entries covered the period from July 11, when they came to