142 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
from the director of the Natural History Museum at 
Nantes. After various messages had been shouted back 
and forth, I was led through another passage to the 
tenant, who was talking with the peddler in the garden. 
Julien Lebréton, who was a farmer dn a small scale, 
received me kindly and answered my questions to the 
best of his ability; it did not surprise me that he was 
both puzzled and suspicious, or that his first thought was 
of our coming to look over the place with a view to its 
purchase. 
The decayed villa, which stands in the midst of scat- 
tered farmhouses of a humble order, reproduces a style 
characteristic of many parts of France. The original 
house, of two stories, was built of cream-colored lime- 
stone, similar to that for which many French towns are 
famous. It has a swelled slated roof with beveled 
gables. Surmounting the roof is a cupola which sug- 
gests a third story, carried out in harmony with the 
lower structure. A narrow balcony, resting upon a 
molding of stone and protected by an iron grill, with- 
out which no such house would be considered complete, 
runs the length of the second story, and is accessible 
from every room by glass doors. From the main en- 
trance below one passes directly through to the court, 
about which are now grouped various stables and other 
low buildings, not all of which date from Audubon’s 
day. 
What was once a small formal garden is still marked 
by solid boundaries of cut limestone. This was evi- 
dently constructed by Jean Audubon, since it occupies 
the area in front of the original house and the easterly 
extension which is attributed to him. The remaining 
available land was devoted to fruit, vegetables, and pos- 
sibly to the greenhouses which the naturalist mentioned, 
