It was literally nothing but a heap of ruins, the still magnificent ruins of a seignorial abode built at different periods. The courtyard, overgrown with weeds, through which the infrequent going and coming of a family reduced to the strict necessaries of life had worn only two or three narrow paths, from the large tower to the small one, and from the well to the main entrance, was surrounded opposite his window by crumbling walls which could be recognized as the foundations and lower courses of several buildings, among others a dainty chapel, of which the pediment, with a pretty rose-window surrounded by festoons of ivy, was still standing. At the end of the courtyard, in the centre of which was a large well, rose the dismantled skeleton of what had once been the principal abiding-place of the lords of Châteaubrun from the time of François I. to the Revolution. This once sumptuous edifice was now naught but a shapeless skeleton, open on all sides, a strange mass of ruins to which the crumbling away of the interior partitions imparted an appearance of enormous height. Neither the towers in which the graceful spiral staircases were enclosed, nor the great frescoed rooms, nor the beautiful mantels of carved stone had been respected by the hammer of the demolisher, and some few vestiges of this splendor, which they had been unable to reach, some fragments of richly decorated friezes, some garlands of leaves carved by the skilful craftsmen of the Renaissance, and an escutcheon bearing the arms of France crossed by the baton of bastardy--all of fine white stone, which time had not yet been able to darken--presented the melancholy spectacle of a work of art remorselessly sacrificed to the brutal law of necessity. When young Cardonnet turned his eyes toward the small pavilion occupied by the last scion of a once wealthy and illustrious family, he felt a thrill of compassion as he reflected that there was in that pavilion a young woman whose ancestresses had had pages, vassals, fine horses and packs of hounds, whereas this inheritress of a ghastly ruin was destined perhaps, like the Princess Nausicaa, to wash her own linen at the fountain. As he made this reflection he saw a little round window on the upper floor of the square pavilion open gently, and a woman's head, supported by the loveliest neck imaginable, lean forward as if to speak to some one in the courtyard. Emile Cardonnet, although he belonged to a generation of myopes, had excellent sight, and the distance was not so great that he could not distinguish the features belonging to that graceful blond head, whose hair the wind tossed about in some confusion. It seemed to him what in fact it was, an angel's head, arrayed in all the bloom of youth, sweet and noble at the same time. The tone of the voice was fascinating and the pronunciation was remarkably elegant.