The clock of the Town Hall struck ten, chimed, waited for the church
clock to approve and confirm, then repeated all that it had said and
sung a minute before.
We were going to look for ghosts of kings and dukes and queens; and like
ghosts ourselves, we stepped from moonlit shores into pools of shadow,
and back to moonlit shores again; past the golden Arch of Triumph, which
Stanislas built in honour of his daughter's marriage with Louis XV;
through the Carriere, where the tops of tall copper-beeches caught the
light with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the
sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the
Pepiniere, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed
towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke Rene II.
There we stopped, because of all places this dark corner was the place
for Nancy's noblest ghost to walk, Rene the Romantic, friend of Americo
Vespucius when Americo needed friends; Rene the painter, whose pictures
still adorn old churches of Provence, where he was once a captive: Rene,
whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.
What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or
come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts
may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the
huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the
greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who
held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the
Bold? War was lawless enough in his day.
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