seen an iron socket, from which a few weak
plants are straggling. This detail, in harmony with the vestiges of
sculpture, proves to a practised eye that the mansion was built by a
Venetian architect. The graceful staff is like a signature revealing
Venice, chivalry, and the exquisite delicacy of the thirteenth century.
If any doubts remained on this point, a feature of the ornamentation
would dissipate them. The trefoils of the hotel du Guaisnic have four
leaves instead of three. This difference plainly indicates the Venetian
school depraved by its commerce with the East, where the semi-Saracenic
architects, careless of the great Catholic thought, give four leaves to
clover, while Christian art is faithful to the Trinity. In this respect
Venetian art becomes heretical.

If this ancient dwelling attracts your imagination, you may perhaps ask
yourself why such miracles of art are not renewed in the present day.
Because to-day mansions are sold, pulled down, and the ground they stood
on turned into streets. No one can be sure that the next generation will
possess the paternal dwelling; homes are no more than inns; whereas
in former times when a dwelling was built men worked, or thought they
worked, for a family in perpetuity. Hence the grandeur of these houses.
Faith in self, as well as faith in God, did prodigies.

As for the arrangement of the upper rooms they may be imagined after
this description of the ground-floor, and after reading an account of
the manners, customs, and physiognomy of the family. For the last fifty
years the du Guaisnics have received their friends in the two rooms just
described, in which, as in the court-yard and the external accessories
of the building, the spirit, grace, and candor of the old and noble
Brittany still survives. Without the topography and description of the
town, and without this minute depicting of the house, the surprising
figures of the family might be less understood. Therefore the frames
have preceded the portraits. Every one is aware that things influence
beings. There are public buildings whose effect is visible upon the
persons living in their neighborhood. It would be difficult indeed to be
irreligious in the shadow of a cathedral like that of Bourges. When the
soul is everywhere reminded of its destiny by surrounding images, it
is less easy to fail of it. Such was the thought of our immediate
grandfathers, abandoned by a generation which was soon to have no signs
and