"And I should like to see how the bride is dressed," said Josephine, "and if the bridegroom is handsome." "Well, let us go--not forgetting to thank Monsieur _le Perruquier_ for his polite information." Monsieur _le Perruquier_ fell into what dancing-masters call the first position, and bowed elaborately. "Most welcome, Mademoiselle--and Monsieur," said he. "Straight up the road--past the orchard about a quarter of a mile--old iron gates--can't miss it. Good-afternoon, Mademoiselle--also Monsieur." Following his directions, we came presently to the gates, which were rusty and broken-hinged, with traces of old gilding still showing faintly here and there upon their battered scrolls and bosses. One of them was standing open, and had evidently been standing so for years; while the other had as evidently been long closed, so that the deep grass had grown rankly all about it, and the very bolt was crusted over with a yellow lichen. Between the two, an ordinary wooden hurdle had been put up, and this hurdle was opened for us by a little blue-bloused urchin in a pair of huge _sabots_, who, thinking we belonged to the bridal party, pointed up the dusky avenue, and said, with a grin:-- "_Tout droit, M'sieur--ils sont passés par là!_" _Par là_, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," we went accordingly. Far away on either side stretched dim vistas of neglected park-land, deep with coarse grass and weeds and, where the trees stood thickest, all choked with a brambly undergrowth. After about a quarter of a mile of this dreary avenue, we came to a broad area of several acres laid out in the Italian style with fountains and terraces, at the upper end of which stood the house--a feudal, _moyen-âge_ French chateau, with irregular wings, steep slated roofings, innumerable windows, and fantastic steeple-topped turrets sheeted with lead and capped with grotesque gilded weathercocks. The principal front had been repaired in the style of the Renaissance and decorated with little foliated entablatures above the doors and windows; whilst a double flight of steps leading up to a grand entrance on the level of the first story, like the famous double staircase of Fontainebleau, had been patched on in the very centre, to the manifest disfigurement of the building. Most of the windows were shuttered up, and as we drew nearer, the general evidences of desolation became more apparent. The steps of the terraces were covered with patches of brown and golden moss. The stone urns were some of them fallen in the deep grass, and some broken. There were gaps in the rich balustrade here and there; and the two great fountains on either side of the lower terrace had long since ceased to fling up their feathery columns towards the sun. In the middle of one a broken Pan, noseless and armless, turned up a stony face of mute appeal, as if imploring us to free him from the parasitic jungle of aquatic plants which flourished rankly round him in the basin. In the other, a stalwart