"At about a hundred paces from Vendome, on the banks of the Loir,"
said he, "stands an old brown house, crowned with very high roofs, and
so completely isolated that there is nothing near it, not even a fetid
tannery or a squalid tavern, such as are commonly seen outside small
towns. In front of this house is a garden down to the river, where the
box shrubs, formerly clipped close to edge the walks, now straggle at
their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have grown up
quickly like an enclosing fence, and half hide the house. The wild
plants we call weeds have clothed the bank with their beautiful
luxuriance. The fruit-trees, neglected for these ten years past, no
longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The
espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown
with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no trace of a path.

"Looking down from the hilltop, to which cling the ruins of the old
castle of the Dukes of Vendome, the only spot whence the eye can see
into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to
determine, this spot of earth must have been the joy of some country
gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but
above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the
wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely
destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the
negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as
we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph
on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which
seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with
this homely Christian motto, '_Ultimam cogita_.'

"The roof of this house is dreadfully dilapidated; the outside