MARS
507
it was already filled with milk, which had wetted her shirt. He re–
coiled, as though he had unwittingly touched red-hot iron just thrown
into water and hardened. Controlling himself with an effort, he mur–
mured an Ave Maria and then the invocation to Saint Michael, the
immaculately armored prince; resentfully, he quelled the upsurge of
desire and fell at once into a dreamless sleep. He awoke only when
the house, shaken from cellar to attic, reared and stamped like a
horse trembling before its rider.
"The Hooded Man," as the inn was called, occupied the site of
a monastery secularized at the time of the Reformation and later
burnt to the ground during the religious wars. Only a small chapel
had withstood the flames: its delicate arch bore Saint Martin with
sword and cloak, halo and beggar, in its tympanum.
As
this chapel
was always dry and cool, it now served the inn as a storage room
for uncured meat. Here also the innkeeper prepared an exquisite
liqueur. One of his ancestors, who had once helped the monks make
a hurried escape, had received the recipe from a lay brother. This
liqueur, together with a certain kind of Christmas cookie which was
sold even outside the town, was rumored to be the source of his
present prosperity.
In the course of time the inn had gained title to some famous
vineyards, and to farmland where any kind of vegetable could be
grown. The old custom of acquiring adjacent property or money
through marriage (like bringing together matching jewels, or sword
and shield) ultimately increased the wealth of the family to such an
extent that the present owner had been able to wed a poor girl of
great beauty, to whom he was equally bound by inclination, duty
and gratitude.
His present wife had come to him as housekeeper shortly after
the death of his first; she soon meant more to him, but could never
make him forget the gentle face of her predecessor from whose
deathbed he had been drafted into the army and sent to the western
front.
Because of
his
knowledge of husbandry he had soon been sent
back behind the lines, where the army authorities, in the exuberance
of their initial victories, assigned him as cook and waiter to the
ranking officers in an old chateau they had taken as headquarters.
