_Par là_, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," we went accordingly.
Far away on either side stretched dim vistas of neglected park-land,
deep with coarse grass and weeds and, where the trees stood thickest,
all choked with a brambly undergrowth. After about a quarter of a mile
of this dreary avenue, we came to a broad area of several acres laid out
in the Italian style with fountains and terraces, at the upper end of
which stood the house--a feudal, _moyen-âge_ French chateau, with
irregular wings, steep slated roofings, innumerable windows, and
fantastic steeple-topped turrets sheeted with lead and capped with
grotesque gilded weathercocks. The principal front had been repaired in
the style of the Renaissance and decorated with little foliated
entablatures above the doors and windows; whilst a double flight of
steps leading up to a grand entrance on the level of the first story,
like the famous double staircase of Fontainebleau, had been patched on
in the very centre, to the manifest disfigurement of the building. Most
of the windows were shuttered up, and as we drew nearer, the general
evidences of desolation became more apparent. The steps of the terraces
were covered with patches of brown and golden moss. The stone urns were
some of them fallen in the deep grass, and some broken. There were gaps
in the rich balustrade here and there; and the two great fountains on
either side of the lower terrace had long since ceased to fling up
their feathery columns towards the sun. In the middle of one a broken
Pan, noseless and armless, turned up a stony face of mute appeal, as if
imploring us to free him from the parasitic jungle of aquatic plants
which flourished rankly round him in the basin. In the other, a stalwart
river-god with his finger on his lip, seemed listening for the music of
those waters which now scarcely stirred amid the tangled weeds that
clustered at his feet.

Passing all these, passing also the flower-beds choked with brambles and