La Grenadiere, but certainly it will always be the home of a poet's
desire, and the sweetest of retreats for two young lovers--for this
vintage house, which belongs to a substantial burgess of Tours, has
charms for every imagination, for the humblest and dullest as well as
for the most impassioned and lofty. No one can dwell there without
feeling that happiness is in the air, without a glimpse of all that is
meant by a peaceful life without care or ambition. There is that in
the air and the sound of the river that sets you dreaming; the sands
have a language, and are joyous or dreary, golden or wan; and the
owner of the vineyard may sit motionless amid perennial flowers and
tempting fruit, and feel all the stir of the world about him.

If an Englishman takes the house for the summer, he is asked a
thousand francs for six months, the produce of the vineyard not
included. If the tenant wishes for the orchard fruit, the rent is
doubled; for the vintage, it is doubled again. What can La Grenadiere
be worth, you wonder; La Grenadiere, with its stone staircase, its
beaten path and triple terrace, its two acres of vineyard, its
flowering roses about the balustrades, its worn steps, well-head,
rampant clematis, and cosmopolitan trees? It is idle to make a bid! La
Grenadiere will never be in the market; it was brought once and sold,
but that was in 1690; and the owner parted with it for forty thousand
francs, reluctant as any Arab of the desert to relinquish a favorite
horse. Since then it has remained in the same family, its pride, its
patrimonial jewel, its Regent diamond. "While you behold, you have and
hold," says the bard. And from La Grenadiere you behold three valleys
of Touraine and the cathedral towers aloft in air like a bit of
filigree work. How can one pay for such treasures? Could one ever pay
for the health recovered there under the linden-trees?