The
owners only came over for the day for a picnic, or at the
vintage-time, sending provisions across in the morning, and scarcely
ever spent the night there except during the grape harvest; but the
English settled down on Touraine like a cloud of locusts, and La
Grenadiere must, of course, be completed if it was to find tenants.
Luckily, however, this recent appendage is hidden from sight by the
first two trees of a lime-tree avenue planted in a gully below the
vineyards.
There are only two acres of vineyard at most, the ground rising at the
back of the house so steeply that it is no very easy matter to
scramble up among the vines. The slope, covered with green trailing
shoots, ends within about five feet of the house wall in a ditch-like
passage always damp and cold and full of strong growing green things,
fed by the drainage of the highly cultivated ground above, for rainy
weather washes down the manure into the garden on the terrace.
A vinedresser's cottage also leans against the western gable, and is
in some sort a continuation of the kitchen. Stone walls or espaliers
surround the property, and all sorts of fruit-trees are planted among
the vines; in short, not an inch of this precious soil is wasted. If
by chance man overlooks some dry cranny in the rocks, Nature puts in a
fig-tree, or sows wildflowers or strawberries in sheltered nooks among
the stones.
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