Between the two, an ordinary wooden hurdle had been put up, and this hurdle was opened for us by a little blue-bloused urchin in a pair of huge _sabots_, who, thinking we belonged to the bridal party, pointed up the dusky avenue, and said, with a grin:-- "_Tout droit, M'sieur--ils sont passes par la!_" _Par la_, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," we went accordingly.
Far away on either side stretched dim vistas of neglected park-land, deep with coarse grass and weeds and, where the trees stood thickest, all choked with a brambly undergrowth.

After about a quarter of a mile of this dreary avenue, we came to a broad area of several acres laid out in the Italian style with fountains and terraces, at the upper end of which stood the house--a feudal, _moyen-age_ French chateau, with irregular wings, steep slated roofings, innumerable windows, and fantastic steeple-topped turrets sheeted with lead and capped with grotesque gilded weathercocks.

The principal front had been repaired in the style of the Renaissance and decorated with little foliated entablatures above the doors and windows; whilst a double flight of steps leading up to a grand entrance on the level of the first story, like the famous double staircase of Fontainebleau, had been patched on in the very centre, to the manifest disfigurement of the building.

Most of the windows were shuttered up, and as we drew nearer, the general evidences of desolation became more apparent.

The steps of the terraces were covered with patches of brown and golden moss.