Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by flights of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew and hornbeam, were the usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in those days--roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles and the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the numberless seats and bowers which every where tempted to repose. Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf, dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the country as the "Devil's Drinking Cup." This dell, which was the limit of Count de St. Renan's demesnes in that direction, was divided from the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all over-run with luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep flagged roofs of the old chateau d'Argenson. This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated above the face of the surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance, from its general slope to the south-eastward, was lower than the great rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which had in distant times obeyed the rule of its almost princely dwellers.