De Potter's Grand Tour Read Free Page A

drawing of the original plan in the cellar, she turned her attention to the garden. She hired a local mason to repair the broken fountain and bought huge terra-cotta pots to place around the perimeter of the grass terrace. She planted clumps of lavender around the fountain and filled the pots with carnation plants. She had François spread gravel and repair the steps of the paths that curved out from the terrace, and she helped him thin brush from a little orchard of apricot and cherry trees on the west side of the garden. Once he’d trimmed the box hedge, she filled the flower beds with rosebushes and geraniums and more carnations. She bought a stone bench to set beneath the gnarly branches of a grand old magnolia. For the boundary just inside the back wall, already partly established with tall cypresses, she brought in a dozen saplings. For the final touch, she had a plumber lay a new pipe to the fountain, and soon water was spilling from the pitcher being tipped by the nymph.
    With so much rewarding work to be done at Grand Bois, she was grateful to be free from the demands of set itineraries. The de Potters could travel when they wished and stay at home for as long as they pleased. Armand took a short trip to Cairo in April, and in May he and Aimée joined the Old World Tour in northern Italy. With Victor they spent a week in June at Baden-Baden and the rest of the summer in Cannes. Time passed too quickly. In the long letters Aimée wrote to her friends back in America, she liked to say that the only thing she lacked was a means to slow the hours so she could fully savor the pleasures of life in the south of France.
    On the twenty-first of October 1904, the eve of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, they hired a car, picked up Victor from his school in Mandelieu, and drove to the mountain village of Auribeau-sur-Siagne, coming as close to the top as the narrow street permitted. They had lunch at a café and lit a candle in the chapel. On their way down, the chauffeur drove so fast that Aimée’s scarf blew right off her head.
    Lightning and thunder kept them awake that night. Armand joined Aimée in her room, his feigned fear of the storm his pretext for diving under the covers. Oh, she’d let the whole household know what a clown he was if she couldn’t stifle her giggles. “Stop, please stop,” she begged, but of course he knew she meant don’t stop , and he didn’t.
    By the time they came downstairs the next day, Felicie had already prepared a lamb stew. After the meal, they walked with Victor into town, where they treated themselves to chocolate ice cream topped with marshmallow parfait. Back inside the front hall of Grand Bois, they found the servants waiting with a basket of flowers. Armand opened a bottle of champagne to share with everyone—even Victor was given a thimbleful. Armand presented Aimée with a silver bread basket and platter, along with a Limoges ceramic head of a peasant girl. Aimée gave Armand a silver coffeepot.
    â€œIs it possible to be too happy?” she murmured later, when they found themselves alone for a moment. She interpreted the short laugh he offered in response as fondly conspiratorial. She playfully straightened his bow tie before giving him a kiss.
    Such a perfect day deserved a record, and that evening, after Armand had left to take Victor back to school, Aimée headed out to the garden to write in her diary. Stopping in her husband’s study to find a pencil, she noticed an envelope on the desk. It was from the University Museum in Philadelphia, where her husband had his collection of Egyptian treasures on loan. She felt curious. Since the letter had already been opened, Armand surely wouldn’t mind if it was opened again.
    The letter turned out to be nothing more remarkable than a handwritten note from Mrs. Stevenson, the curator in Philadelphia, who was writing in response to Professor de Potter’s recent