certain writers, landowners were at that period afraid of expenses
which the lack of competition and skilled workmen rendered serious.

The corner towers, which have three stories with a single window in
each, looking to the side, are covered with very high-pitched roofs
surrounded by granite balustrades, and on each pyramidal slope of
these roofs crowned at the top with the sharp ridge of a platform
surrounded with a wrought iron railing, is another window carved like
the rest. On each floor the corbels of the doors and windows are
adorned with carvings copied from those of the Genoese mansions. The
corner tower with three windows to the south looks down on Montegnac;
the other, to the north, faces the forest. From the garden front the
eye takes in that part of Montegnac which is still called Les
Tascherons, and follows the high-road leading through the village to
the chief town of the department. The facade on the courtyard has a
view of the vast plains semicircled by the mountains of the Correze,
on the side toward Montegnac, but ending in the far distance on a low
horizon. The main building has only one floor above the ground-floor,
covered with a mansarde roof in the olden style. The towers at each
end are three stories in height. The middle tower has a stunted dome
something like that on the Pavillon de l'Horloge of the palace of the
Tuileries, and in it is a single room forming a belvedere and
containing the clock. As a matter of economy the roofs had all been
made of gutter-tiles, the enormous weight of which was easily
supported by the stout beams and uprights of the framework cut in the
forest.

Before his death Graslin had laid out the road which the peasantry had
just built out of gratitude; for these restorations (which Graslin
called his folly) had distributed several hundred thousand francs