“After leaving the cross-way, which was covered with fine, carefully-rolled grass, you had then to pass beneath a curious piece of foliage architecture ornamented with fire-pots, pyramids and rustic columns, all wrought with the assistance of shears and hedgebills in an enormous clump of box. In different perspectives to right and left might be seen now a half-ruined rock-work castle, now the moss-eaten staircase of a dried-up waterfall, or perhaps a vase, or a statue of a nymph and shepherd with nose and fingers broken and some pigeons perched on their shoulders and head.
“A large flower-garden, laid out in the French style, stretched before the mansion; all the divisions were traced with box and holly in the most rigorously symmetrical manner; it had quite as much the appearance of a carpet as of a garden: large flowers in ball-dress, with majestic bearing and serene air, like duchesses preparing to dance a minuet, bent their heads slightly to you as you passed; others, apparently less polished, remained stiff and motionless, like dowagers working tapestry. Shrubs of every possible shape, always excepting the natural one, round, square, pointed and triangular, in green and grey boxes, seemed to walk in procession along the great avenue, and lead you by the hand to the foot of the steps.
“A few turrets, half entangled in more recent constructions, rose above the line of the building by the whole height of their slate extinguishers, and their dove-tailed vanes of sheet-iron bore witness to a sufficiently honorable antiquity. The windows of the pavilion in the centre all opened upon a common balcony ornamented with a very rich and highly-wrought iron balustrade, and the rest were surrounded with stone facings sculptured in figures and knots.
“Four or five large dogs ran up with open-mouthed barkings and prodigious gambols. They frisked about the horses, jumping up to their noses, and gave a special welcome to my comrade's horse, which probably they often visited in the stable or followed out-of-doors.
“A kind of servant, looking half laborer and half groom, at last appeared at all this noise, and taking our beasts by the bridle led them away. I had not as yet seen a living soul, with the exception of a little peasant girl, as timid and wild as a deer, who had fled at the sight of us and crouched down in a furrow behind some hemp, although we had called to her over and over again, and done all we could to reassure her.
“No one was to be seen at the windows; you would have thought that the mansion was not inhabited at all, or only by spirits, for not the slightest sound could be heard from without.
“We were beginning to ascend the steps, jingling our spurs, for our legs were rather numb, when we heard a noise inside like the opening and shutting of doors, as if some one were hastening to meet us.
“In fact, a young woman appeared at the top of the steps, cleared the space separating her from my companion at a single bound, and threw herself on his neck. He embraced her most affectionately, and putting his arm round her waist, and almost lifting her up, carried her in this way to the top.
“'Do you know that you are very amiable and polite for a brother, my dear Alcibiades? It is not at all unnecessary, sir, is it, to apprise you that he is my brother, for he certainly has scarcely the ways of one?' said the young and fair one turning towards me.
“To which I replied that a mistake might possibly be made about it, and that it was in some measure a misfortune to be her brother and be thus excluded from the list of her adorers; and that were this my case, I should become at once the happiest and most miserable cavalier on the earth. This made her smile gently.
“Talking thus we entered a parlor, the walls of which were decorated with high-warped Flanders tapestry. There were large trees, with sharp-pointed leaves, supporting swarms of fantastic birds; the colors, altered by time, showed strange transpositions of tints; the sky was green, the trees royal blue with yellow lights, and in the drapery of the figures the shadow was often of an opposite color to the ground formed by the material; the flesh resembled wood, and the nymphs walking beneath the faded shades of the forest looked like unswathed mummies; their mouths alone, the purple of which had preserved its primitive tint, smiled with an appearance of life. In the foreground bristled tall plants of singular green, with broad-striped flowers, the pistils of which resembled peacocks' crests. Herons with serious and thoughtful air, their heads sunk between their shoulders, and their long beaks resting on their plump crops, stood philosophically on one of their thin legs in black and stagnant water streaked with tarnished silver threads; through the foliage there were distant glimpses of little mansions with turrets like pepper-boxes and balconies filled with beautiful ladies in grand attire watching processions or hunts pass by.
“Capriciously indented rockeries, with torrents of white wool falling from them, mingled with dappled clouds on the edge of the horizon.
“One of the things that struck me most was a huntress shooting a bird. Her open fingers had just released the string and the arrow was gone; but, as this part of the tapestry happened to be at a corner, the arrow was on the other side of the wall and had described a sharp curve, while the bird was flying away on motionless wings, and apparently desirous of gaining a neighboring branch.
“This arrow, feathered and gold-tipped, always in the air and never reaching the mark, had a most singular effect; it was like a sad and mournful symbol of human destiny, and the more I looked at it, the more I discovered in it mysterious and sinister meanings. There stood the huntress with her foot advanced, her knee bent, and her eye, with its silken lashes, wide open, and no longer able to see the arrow which had deviated from its path. She seemed to be looking anxiously for the mottled-plumed phenicopter which she was desirous of bringing down and expecting to see fall before her pierced through and through. I do not know whether it was a mistake of my imagination, but I thought that the face had as dull and despairing an expression as that of a poet dying without having written the work which he expected to establish his reputation, and seized by the pitiless death-rattle while endeavoring to dictate it.
“I am talking to you at length about this tapestry, certainly at a greater length than the importance of the subject demands; but that fantastic world created by the workers in high warp is a thing which has always strangely preoccupied me.
“I am passionately fond of its imaginary vegetation, the flowers and plants which have no existence in reality, the forests of unknown trees wherein wander unicorns and snowy caprimules and stags with golden crucifixes between their antlers, and commonly pursued by red-bearded hunters in Saracen costume.
“When I was a child, I scarcely ever entered a tapestried chamber without experiencing a kind of shiver, and when there I hardly dared to stir.
“All the figures standing upright against the wall, and deriving a sort of fantastic life from the undulation of the material and the play of light, seemed to me so many spies engaged in watching my actions in order to give an account of them at a proper time and place, and I would not have eaten a stolen apple or cake in their presence.
“How many things would these grave personages have to tell could they open their lips of red thread, and could sounds penetrate into the concha of their embroidered ears! Of how many murders, treasons, infamous adulteries and monstrosities of all kinds are they not silent and impassible witnesses!
“But let us leave the tapestry and return to our story.
“'Alcibiades, I will have my aunt informed of your arrival'
“'Oh! there is no great hurry about that, my dear sister; let us sit down first of all and talk a little. I have to introduce to you a gentleman, Theodore de Serannes, who will spend some time here. I have no need to recommend you to give him a hearty welcome; he is himself a sufficient recommendation,' (I am telling you what he said; do not accuse me unreasonably of conceit.)
“The fair one slightly bent her head as though to give assent, and we spoke of something else.
“While conversing; I looked at her minutely, and examined her with more attention than I had found possible until then.
“She was perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, and her mourning was most becoming to her; truth to tell, she had not a very lugubrious or disconsolate appearance, and I suspect that she would have eaten the ashes of her Mausolus in her soup like rhubarb. I do not know whether she had wept plenteously for her deceased spouse; if so, there was, at all events, little appearance of it, and the pretty cambric handkerchief which she held in her hand was as perfectly dry as it was possible to be.
“Her eyes were not red, but, on the contrary, were the brightest and most brilliant in the world, and you would have sought in vain on her cheeks for the furrow where her tears had flowed; there were in fact only two little dimples hollowed by an habitual smile, and it is right to say that, for a widow, her teeth were very frequently to be seen-certainly not a disagreeable sight, for they were small and very regular. I esteemed her at the very first for not having believed that, because a husband had died, she was obliged to discolor her eyes and give herself a violet nose. I was also grateful to her for not assuming a doleful little air, and for speaking naturally, with her
