han aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted trunks and hoary
heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes, gave them a certain
grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets. These ugly growths seemed
to waken and talk to each other when the frogs deserted them with much
croaking, and the water-fowl, startled by the sound of the wheels,
flew low upon the surface of the pools. The courtyard, full of rank and
seeded grasses, reeds, and shrubs, either dwarf or parasite, excluded
all impression of order or of splendor. The house appeared to have
been long abandoned. The roof seemed to bend beneath the weight of the
various vegetations which grew upon it. The walls, though built of the
smooth, slaty stone which abounds in that region, showed many rifts and
chinks where ivy had fastened its rootlets. Two main buildings, joined
at the angle by a tall tower which faced the lake, formed the whole of
the chateau, the doors and swinging, rotten shutters, rusty balustrades,
and broken windows of which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest.
The north wind whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her
indefinite light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre.
But the colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and
tawny schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly
a spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the
building. Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, the battered tower
and broken roofs gave it the aspect of a skeleton; the birds of prey
which flew from it, shrieking, added another feature to this vague
resemblance. A few tall pine-trees standing behind the house waved their
dark foliage above the roof, and several yews cut into formal shapes at
the angles of the building, festooned it gloomily like the ornaments on
a hearse. The style of the doors, the coarseness of the decorations,
the want of harmony in the architecture, were all characteristic of the
feudal manors of which Brittany was proud; perhaps justly proud, for
they maintained upon that Gaelic ground a species of monumental history
of the nebulous period which preceded the establishment of the French
monarchy.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, to whose imagination the word "chateau"
brought none but its conventional ideas, was affected by the funereal
aspect of the scene. She sprang from the carriage and stood apart gazing
at in terror, and debating within herself what action she oug