the estate, some twenty, or five-and-twenty years ago, but lost his cause for want of sufficient proof.  In the meantime, it had passed into the hands of a wealthy republican family, descended, it is said, from General Dumouriez.  This family held it till within the last four years, when two or three fresh claimants came forward; so that it is now the object of a lawsuit which may last till every brick of it falls to ruin, and every tree about it withers away.  At present, a man and his wife have charge of the place, and visitors are permitted to see it any day between twelve and four.”

“I should like to see the old place,” said I.

“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 passes par la!”

Par la, “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-age 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