life visible about the whole place, like the little cloud upon the
mirror from the breath of a dying man, which alone gives evidence that
he still lives.

Upon pushing open the practicable leaf of the great worm-eaten door,
which yielded reluctantly, and creaked dolefully as it turned upon
its rusty hinges, the curious visitor entered a sort of portico, more
ancient than the rest of the building, with fine, large columns of
bluish granite, and a lofty vaulted roof. At the point of intersection
of the arches was a stone shield, bearing the same coat of arms that was
sculptured over the entrance without. This one was in somewhat better
preservation than the other, and seemed to bear something resembling
three golden storks (cigognes) on an azure field; though it was so much
in shadow, and so faded and dingy, that it was impossible to make it out
clearly. Fastened to the wall, at a convenient height from the ground,
were great iron extinguishers, blackened by the smoke from torches in
long by-gone years, and also iron rings, to which the guests' horses
were made fast in the olden times, when the castle was in its glory. The
dust that lay thick upon them now showed that it was long since they had
been made use of.

From this portico--whence a door on either side opened into the main
building; one leading into a long suite of apartments on the ground
floor, and the other into what had probably been a guard-room--the
explorer passed into an interior court, dismal, damp, and bare. In the
corners nettles and various rank weeds were growing riotously amid the
great heaps of rubbish fallen from the crumbling cornice high above, and
grass had sprung up everywhere in the crevices of the stone pavement.
Opposite the entrance a flight of dilapidated, shaky steps, with a heavy
stone balustrade, led down into a neglected garden, which was gradually