BIRTH, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER 5 



left his duties in the schoolroom, and accompanied 

 us to the ancient structure. 



The modest chdteau stands a few rods to the west- 

 ward of the little village, and was evidently the seat 

 of the leading family of the place. It faces east and 

 is a two-storied house of the shape seen everywhere 

 in France, with its high, incurved roof; the walls, 

 nearly a foot and a half thick, built of brick ; the cor- 

 ners and windows of blocks of white limestone. It is 

 about fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. 

 Above the roof formerly rose a small tower. There 

 is no porch over the front door. Within, a rather nar- 

 row hall passes through the centre, and opens into a 

 large room on each side. What was evidently the 

 drawing-room or salon was a spacious apartment with 

 a low white wainscot and a heavy cornice. Over the 

 large, roomy fireplace is a painting on the wood 

 panel, representing a rural scene, in which a shep- 

 herdess and her lover are engaged in other occupa- 

 tions than the care of the flock of sheep visible in the 

 distance. Over the doorway is a smaller but quaint 

 painting of the same description. The house is unin- 

 habited, and perhaps uninhabitable — indeed almost a 

 ruin — and is used as a storeroom for wood and rub- 

 bish by the peasants in the adjoining house to the 

 left, on the south. 



The ground in front was cultivated with vegetables, 

 not laid down to a lawn, and the land stretched back 

 for perhaps three hundred to four hundred feet be- 

 tween the old garden walls. 



Here, amid these rural scenes, even now so beau- 

 tiful and tranquil, the subject of our sketch was 



