rendered serious.

The corner towers, which have three stories with a single window in
each, looking to the side, are covered with very high-pitched roofs
surrounded by granite balustrades, and on each pyramidal slope of these
roofs crowned at the top with the sharp ridge of a platform surrounded
with a wrought iron railing, is another window carved like the rest.
On each floor the corbels of the doors and windows are adorned with
carvings copied from those of the Genoese mansions. The corner tower
with three windows to the south looks down on Montegnac; the other, to
the north, faces the forest. From the garden front the eye takes in that
part of Montegnac which is still called Les Tascherons, and follows
the high-road leading through the village to the chief town of the
department. The facade on the courtyard has a view of the vast plains
semicircled by the mountains of the Correze, on the side toward
Montegnac, but ending in the far distance on a low horizon. The main
building has only one floor above the ground-floor, covered with a
mansarde roof in the olden style. The towers at each end are three
stories in height. The middle tower has a stunted dome something like
that on the Pavillon de l'Horloge of the palace of the Tuileries, and in
it is a single room forming a belvedere and containing the clock. As
a matter of economy the roofs had all been made of gutter-tiles, the
enormous weight of which was easily supported by the stout beams and
uprights of the framework cut in the forest.

Before his death Graslin had laid out the road which the peasantry
had just built out of gratitude; for these restorations (which Graslin
called his folly) had distributed several hundred thousand francs
among the people; in consequence of which Montegnac had considerably
increased. Graslin had also begun, before his death, behind the offices
on the slope of the hill leading down to the plain, a number of farm
buildings, proving his intention to draw some profit from the hitherto
uncultivated soil of the plains. Six journeyman-gardeners, who were
lodged in the offices, were now at work under orders of a head gardener,
planting and completing certain works which Monsieur Bonnet had
considered indispensable.

The ground-floor apartments of the chateau, intended only for
reception-rooms, had been sumptuously furnished; the upper floor was
rather bare, Monsieur Graslin having stopped for a time the work of
furnishing it.

"Ah, Mons