“Oh, as for them, Sir, they are invisible. Moreover, although I go to Fonval six times a week I do not remember when I last clapped eyes on the park. It’s Mr. Lerne himself who comes to the gate for his letters. Oh, what a change! Did you know old John? Well, he’s gone, and his wife too. It’s as true as I’m talking to you, Sir. No more coachman, no more housekeeper ... no more horses.” “That’s been so for four years, you say?” “Yes, Sir.” “Tell me, postman, there’s game about here, is there not?” “Faith, no. A few rabbits, two or three hares--but there are too many foxes.” “What, no roe-deer? no stags?” “Never.” * * * * * And now I felt a strange thrill of joy. “Here we are, Sir!” After a final bend, the road did open out on the old avenue of which Lerne had kept this little bit. It was fringed by two rows of limes, and from the end of the two rows they formed, the door of Fonval seemed to be coming towards us. In front of it, a carriage-sweep in the shape of a half moon widened the avenue, and beyond that one saw the outline of the blue roof of the _château_ against the green of the trees, and the trees themselves standing out on the somber flanks of the gully. In the midst of the wall which joined the cliffs on either hand stood the door with its tiled porch. It had aged, and the stone of the lintel was worn away; the wood of its panels was worm-eaten and crumbling into powder here and there; but the bell had not changed. Its sound came from my distant boyhood, so bright and clear that I could have wept at it. We waited for a few moments. At last some wooden shoes clattered. “Is that you, Guilloteau?” said a voice with a trans-Rhenish accent. “Yes, Mr. Lerne.” Mr. Lerne! I looked at my guide with eyes wide with wonder--What! Was that my uncle speaking like that? “You are early,” went on the voice. There was the metallic sound of moving bolts; then the door was opened ajar, and a hand was passed through it. “Give me them.” “Here they are, Mr. Lerne. But there is some one with me,” said the postman in an insinuating and timid way. “Who is it?” cried the other--and in the fissure formed by the hardly opened door, he appeared. It was my uncle Lerne. But life had laid hand on him, had made him much older, and turned him into this wild unkempt individual whose straggling gray hair covered his shabby clothes with dirty grease. He seemed smitten with premature old age, and there was an unfriendly gleam in the evil eyes which he fixed on me, from under their knitted eyebrows. “What do you want?” he asked me rudely. He pronounced the words like a German. I had a moment of hesitation. The fact was that his face could no longer be compared to that of a kind old woman; it was a Sioux visage, hairless and cruel, and at the sight of it I experienced the contradictory sensations of recognizing it and not recognizing it.