The Lost Estate Read Online Free PDF

stream. In summer, it is hidden by elms, by the oaks in the yard and by hedgerows. It stands on a little track that leads, in one direction, to the station road, and in the other to a village. The vast farmhouse, dating from feudal times, is surrounded by high walls with buttresses that rise out of a bed of manure; in June, it vanishes among the leaves, and all that you can know of it from school is the sound of carts rumbling and cowmen shouting as night begins to fall. But today, between the leafless trees, I can look through the window and see the tall, greyish farmyard wall, then the gateway and, between two lengths of hedge, the line of the track, white with frost, running alongside the river and leading to the station road.
    So far, nothing is moving in this clear winter landscape. As yet, nothing has changed.
    Here, Monsieur Seurel is just finishing writing out the second question. Usually, he gives us three, but what if, by some chance, today, he were to give us only two… He would immediately go back to his desk and notice that Meaulnes is not here. Then he would send two boys to look for him in the village, and they would surely find him before the mare was harnessed up.
    For a moment, after copying out the second question, Monsieur Seurel lets his tired arm fall. Then, much to my relief, he goes to a new line and starts to write, saying, ‘Now this one is child’s play!’
    Two small black shapes which earlier rose above the wall of La Belle-Etoile have vanished: they must have been the tworaised shafts of the trap. I am sure that preparations are being made over there for Meaulnes’ departure. Now we have the mare: her head and neck emerge between the posts of the gate, then stop, no doubt while a second seat is being fixed at the back of the trap for the travellers that he claims to be meeting. Finally, the whole team slowly leaves the yard, vanishes for a moment behind the hedge, then proceeds at the same leisurely pace along the length of white track that you can see through a gap in the hedge. It is then that, in the dark shape holding the reins, casually leaning as the peasants do with one elbow on the side of the cart, I recognize my friend Augustin Meaulnes.
    Shortly after that, everything disappears behind the hedge. Two men who have remained standing at the gate of La Belle-Etoile, watching the cart leave, are now involved in an increasingly animated discussion. One of them finally puts his hands to his mouth, like a megaphone, and calls out to Meaulnes, then runs a little way towards him along the track. But at that moment, as the little cart slowly reaches the station road and must now be invisible from the little farm track, Meaulnes suddenly changes position. Rising up like a Roman charioteer, with one foot resting on the footplate and shaking the reins with both hands, he urges the animal on at full speed, and in a second has vanished over the brow of the hill. The man on the farm track who was shouting at him starts running again, while the other has set off at full speed over the fields and appears to be coming towards us.
    In a short while, at the very moment when Monsieur Seurel has left the board and is rubbing the chalk off his hands, at the very moment when two or three voices are calling from the back of the class: ‘Monsieur! Meaulnes has gone!’, the man in the blue smock has reached the door, which he suddenly throws open and, from the doorway, raising his hat, asks, ‘Excuse me, Monsieur, but did you authorize that boy to request the trap to go to Vierzon and fetch your parents? Because we were starting to wonder…’
    ‘Certainly not!’ Monsieur Seurel replies.
    And instantly there is the most frightful commotion in the room. The first three boys next to the entrance, whose usualtask is to chase away the pigs and goats by throwing stones at them when they come into the school yard to munch the alyssum leaves, rush through the door. Outside, the loud crashing of their hobnailed