To the right, a labyrinth of young trees, similarly clipped in the fashion of the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur.

This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, the blackness of Acheron.
Camors's first reflection at viewing this prospect was an exceedingly painful one; and the second was even more so.
At another time he would doubtless have taken an interest in searching through these souvenirs of the past for traces of an infant nurtured there, who had a mother, and who had perhaps loved these old relics.
But his system did not admit of sentiment, so he crushed the ideas that crowded to his mind, and, after a rapid glance around him, called for his dinner.
The old steward and his wife--who for thirty years had been the sole inhabitants of Reuilly--had been informed of his coming.

They had spent the day in cleaning and airing the house; an operation which added to the discomfort they sought to remove, and irritated the old residents of the walls, while it disturbed the sleep of hoary spiders in their dusty webs.

A mixed odor of the cellar, of the sepulchre, and of an old coach, struck Camors when he penetrated into the principal room, where his dinner was to be served.
Taking up one or two flickering candles, the like of which he had never seen before, Camors proceeded to inspect the quaint portraits of his ancestors, who seemed to stare at him in great surprise from their cracked canvases.

They were a dilapidated set of old nobles, one having lost a nose, another an arm, others again sections of their faces.