The Mysterious Mansion

About a hundred yards from the town of Vendôme, on the borders of the
Loire, there is an old gray house, surmounted by very high gables, and
so completely isolated that neither tanyard nor shabby hostelry, such
as you may find at the entrance to all small towns, exists in its
immediate neighborhood.

In front of this building, overlooking the river, is a garden, where
the once well-trimmed box borders that used to define the walks now
grow wild as they list. Several willows that spring from the Loire
have grown as rapidly as the hedge that encloses it, and half conceal
the house. The rich vegetation of those weeds that we call foul adorns
the sloping shore. Fruit trees, neglected for the last ten years, no
longer yield their harvest, and their shoots form coppices. The wall-
fruit grows like hedges against the walls. Paths once graveled are
overgrown with moss, but, to tell the truth, there is no trace of a
path. From the height of the hill, to which cling the ruins of the old
castle of the Dukes of Vendôme, the only spot whence the eye can
plunge into this enclosure, it strikes you that, at a time not easy to
determine, this plot of land was the delight of a country gentleman,
who cultivated roses and tulips and horticulture in general, and who
was besides a lover of fine fruit. An arbor is still visible, or
rather the débris of an arbor, where there is a table that time has
not quite destroyed. The aspect of this garden of bygone days suggests
the negative joys of peaceful, provincial life, as one might
reconstruct the life of a worthy tradesman by reading the epitaph on
his tombstone. As if to complete the sweetness and sadness of the
ideas that possess one's soul, one of the walls displays a sun-dial
decorated with the following commonplace Christian inscription:
"Ultimam cogita!" The roof of this house is horribly dilapidated, the
shutters are always closed, the balconies are covered with swallows'
nests, the doors are perpetually shut, weeds have drawn green lines in
the cracks of the flights of steps, the locks and bolts are rusty.
Sun, moon, winter, summer, and snow have worn the paneling, warped the
boards, gnawed the paint. The lugubrious silence which reigns there is
only broken by birds, cats, martins, rats and mice, free to course to
and fro, to fight and to eat each other. Everywhere an invisible hand
has graven the word mystery.