A Joyous Adventure

"The Château de la Villorée still stands today as it did in this memorable year 1800, and as it had done for several centuries before then. With its four square, crenellated towers, its massive front and iron gates, it dominates the whole of the valley of the Orne. At the foot of the wooded heights the river winds its turbulent way towards the English Channel; the valley here is very narrow, and the heights rise on either side of it, steep and densely wooded on the right, sloping more gently up on the left to the plateau on which the château stands. Its gardens and terraces and parkland had been beautiful once, sumptuous and magnificent in the days, now past, when the Marquis de Marillac de la Villorée was counted one of the greatest gentlemen in France, the friend of kings, the proud aristocrat born and bred in the notion that Almighty God had created French noblemen above the rest of mankind and only one small degree below His angels.

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Excerpt From: Emma Orczy. "A Joyous Adventure." iBooks.

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