small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon
its surface, even at mid-day, the blackness of Acheron.

Camors's first reflection at viewing this prospect was an exceedingly
painful one; and the second was even more so.

At another time he would doubtless have taken an interest in searching
through these souvenirs of the past for traces of an infant nurtured
there, who had a mother, and who had perhaps loved these old relics. But
his system did not admit of sentiment, so he crushed the ideas that
crowded to his mind, and, after a rapid glance around him, called for his
dinner.

The old steward and his wife--who for thirty years had been the sole
inhabitants of Reuilly--had been informed of his coming. They had spent
the day in cleaning and airing the house; an operation which added to the
discomfort they sought to remove, and irritated the old residents of the
walls, while it disturbed the sleep of hoary spiders in their dusty webs.
A mixed odor of the cellar, of the sepulchre, and of an old coach, struck
Camors when he penetrated into the principal room, where his dinner was
to be served.

Taking up one or two flickering candles, the like of which he had never
seen before, Camors proceeded to inspect the quaint portraits of his
ancestors, who seemed to stare at him in great surprise from their
cracked canvases. They were a dilapidated set of old nobles, one having
lost a nose, another an arm, others again sections of their faces. One
of them--a chevalier of St. Louis--had received a bayonet thrust through
the centre in the riotous times of the Revolution; but he still smiled at
Camors, and sniffed at a flower, despite the daylight shining through