II

It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, "the house
of Monsieur Grandet,"--that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing
above the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two
pillars and the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door
opened, were built, like the house itself, of tufa,--a white stone
peculiar to the shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly
more than two centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously
bored or eaten out by the inclemency of the weather, gave an
appearance of the vermiculated stonework of French architecture to the
arch and the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance
to the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in
hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling
away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting
plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,--yellow
pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little
cherry-tree, already grown to some height.

The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and
split in many places; though frail in appearance, it was firmly held
in place by a system of iron bolts arranged in symmetrical patterns. A
small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the
middle panel and made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened
to it by a ring, which struck upon the grinning head of a huge nail.
This knocker, of the oblong shape and kind which our ancestors called
_jaquemart_, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who