Chapter IV

“In the Bosom of Wild Nature”

The Château du Glandier is one of the oldest châteaux in the Ile de

France, where so many building remains of the feudal period are still

standing. Built originally in the heart of the forest, in the reign of

Philip le Bel, it now could be seen a few hundred yards from the road

leading from the village of Sainte-Geneviève to Monthery. A mass of

inharmonious structures, it is dominated by a donjon. When the visitor

has mounted the crumbling steps of this ancient donjon, he reaches a

little plateau where, in the seventeenth century, Georges Philibert de

Sequigny, Lord of the Glandier, Maisons-Neuves and other places, built

the existing town in an abominably rococo style of architecture.

It was in this place, seemingly belonging entirely to the past, that

Professor Stangerson and his daughter installed themselves to lay the

foundations for the science of the future. Its solitude, in the depths

of woods, was what, more than all, had pleased them. They would have

none to witness their labours and intrude on their hopes, but the aged

stones and grand old oaks. The Glandier—ancient Glandierum—was so

called from the quantity of glands (acorns) which, in all times, had

been gathered in that neighbourhood. This land, of present mournful

interest, had fallen back, owing to the negligence or abandonment of

its owners, into the wild character of primitive nature. The buildings

alone, which were hidden there, had preserved traces of their strange

metamorphoses. Every age had left on them its imprint; a bit of

architecture with which was bound up the remembrance of some terrible

event, some bloody adventure. Such was the château in which science had

taken refuge—a place seemingly designed to be the theatre of mysteries,

terror, and death.

Having explained so far, I cannot refrain from making one further

reflexion. If I have lingered a little over this description of the

Glandier, it is not because I have reached the right moment for

creating the necessary atmosphere for the unfolding of the tragedy

before the eyes of the reader. Indeed, in all this matter, my first

care will be to be as simple as is possible. I have no ambition to be

an author. An author is always something of a romancer, and God knows,

the mystery of “The Yellow Room” is quite full enough of real tragic

horror to require no aid from literary effects. I am, and only desire

to be, a faithful “reporter.” My duty is to report the event; and I

place the event in its frame—that is all. It is only natural that you

should know where the things happened.

I return to Monsieur Stangerson. When he bought the estate, fifteen

years before the tragedy with which we are engaged occurred, the

Château du Glandier had for a long time been unoccupied. Another old

château in the neighbourhood, built in the fourteenth century by Jean

de Belmont, was also abandoned, so that that part of the country was

very little inhabited. Some small houses on the side of the road

leading to Corbeil, an inn, called the “Auberge du Donjon,” which

offered passing hospitality to waggoners; these were about all to

represent civilisation in this out-of-the-way part of the country, but

a few leagues from the capital.

But this deserted condition of the place had been the determining

reason for the choice made by Monsieur Stangerson and his daughter.

Monsieur Stangerson was already celebrated. He had returned from

America, where his works had made a great stir. The book which he had

published at Philadelphia, on the “Dissociation of Matter by Electric

Action,” had aroused opposition throughout the whole scientific world.

Monsieur Stangerson was a Frenchman, but of American origin. Important

matters relating to a legacy had kept him for several years in the

United States, where he had continued the work begun by him in France,

whither he had returned in possession of a large fortune. This fortune

was a great boon to him; for, though he might have made millions of

dollars by exploiting two or three of his chemical discoveries relative

to new processes of dyeing, it was always repugnant to him to use for

his own private gain the wonderful gift of invention he had received

from nature. He considered he owed it to mankind, and all that his

genius brought into the world went, by this philosophical view of his

duty, into the public lap.

If he did not try to conceal his satisfaction at coming into possession

of this fortune, which enabled him to give himself up to his passion

for pure science, he had equally to rejoice, it seemed to him, for

another cause. Mademoiselle Stangerson was, at the time when her father

returned from America and bought the Glandier estate, twenty years of

age. She was exceedingly pretty, having at once the Parisian grace of

her mother, who had died in giving her birth, and all the splendour,

all the riches of the young American blood of her parental grandfather,

William Stangerson. A citizen of Philadelphia, William Stangerson had

been obliged to become naturalised in obedience to family exigencies

at the time of his marriage with a French lady, she who was to be the

mother of the illustrious Stangerson. In that way the professor’s

French nationality is accounted for.

Twenty years of age, a charming blonde, with blue eyes, milk-white

complexion, and radiant with divine health, Mathilde Stangerson was one

of the most beautiful marriageable girls in either the old or the new

world. It was her father’s duty, in spite of the inevitable pain which

a separation from her would cause him, to think of her marriage; and

he was fully prepared for it. Nevertheless, he buried himself and his

child at the Glandier at the moment when his friends were expecting

him to bring her out into society. Some of them expressed their

astonishment, and to their questions he answered: “It is my daughter’s

wish. I can refuse her nothing. She has chosen the Glandier.”

Interrogated in her turn, the young girl replied calmly: “Where could

we work better than in this solitude?” For Mademoiselle Stangerson had

already begun to collaborate with her father in his work. It could

not at the time be imagined that her passion for science would lead

her so far as to refuse all the suitors who presented themselves to

her for over fifteen years. So secluded was the life led by the two,

father and daughter, that they showed themselves only at a few official

receptions and, at certain times in the year, in two or three friendly

drawing-rooms, where the fame of the professor and the beauty of

Mathilde made a sensation. The young girl’s extreme reserve did not at

first discourage suitors; but at the end of a few years, they tired of

their quest.

One alone persisted with tender tenacity and deserved the name of

“eternal fiancé,” a name he accepted with melancholy resignation;

that was Monsieur Robert Darzac. Mademoiselle Stangerson was now no

longer young, and it seemed that, having found no reason for marrying

at five-and-thirty, she would never find one. But such an argument

evidently found no acceptance with Monsieur Robert Darzac. He continued

to pay his court—if the delicate and tender attention with which he

ceaselessly surrounded this woman of five-and-thirty could be called

courtship—in face of her declared intention never to marry.

Suddenly, some weeks before the events with which we are occupied, a

report—to which nobody attached any importance, so incredible did it

sound—was spread about Paris, that Mademoiselle Stangerson had at last

consented to “crown” the inextinguishable flame of Monsieur Robert

Darzac! It needed that Monsieur Robert Darzac himself should not deny

this matrimonial rumour to give it an appearance of truth, so unlikely

did it seem to be well founded. One day, however, Monsieur Stangerson,

as he was leaving the Academy of Science, announced that the marriage

of his daughter and Monsieur Robert Darzac would be celebrated in the

privacy of the Château du Glandier, as soon as he and his daughter had

put the finishing touches to their report summing up their labours on

the “Dissociation of Matter.” The new household would install itself in

the Glandier, and the son-in-law would lend his assistance in the work

to which the father and daughter had dedicated their lives.

The scientific world had barely had time to recover from the effect

of this news, when it learned of the attempted assassination of

Mademoiselle under the extraordinary conditions which we have detailed

and which our visit to the château was to enable us to ascertain with

yet greater precision. I have not hesitated to furnish the reader

with all these retrospective details, known to me through my business

relations with Monsieur Robert Darzac. On crossing the threshold of

“The Yellow Room” he was as well posted as I was.