CHAPTER VI

Arrival at the Castle of M. d'Asterac and Interview with the
Cabalist.


On the following day at an early hour we walked, my tutor and I, on
the St Germain road. The snow which covered the earth under the
russet light of the sky, rendered the atmosphere dull and heavy. The
road was deserted. We walked in wide furrows between the walls of
orchards, tottering fences and low houses, the windows of which
looked suspiciously on us. And, after having left behind two or
three tumbledown huts built of clay and straw, we saw in the middle
of a disconsolate heath the Cross of the Sablons. At fifty paces
farther commenced a very large park, closed in by a ruined wall,
wherein was the little door, and on it the knocker representing a
horrible-looking figure with a finger in her mouth. We recognised it
easily as the one the philosopher had described, and used the
knocker.

After some rather considerable time, an old servant opened it and
made us a sign to follow him across the untidy park. Statues of
nymphs, who must have seen the boyhood of the late king, secreted
under tree ivy their gloominess and mutilations. At the end of an
alley, the sloughs of which were covered with snow, stood a castle
of stone and brick, as morose as the one of Madrid, which, oddly
covered by a high slate roof, looked like the castle of the Sleeping