These two houses, built on a line with the church, and seeming to belong to it by their gardens, faced a piece of open ground planted by trees, which might be called the square of Blangy,—­all the more because the count had lately built, directly opposite to the new parsonage, a communal building intended for the mayor’s office, the home of the field-keeper, and the quarters of that school of the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, for which the Abbe Brossette had hitherto begged in vain.  Thus, not only were the houses of the ex-monk and the young priest connected and yet separated by the church, but they were in a position to watch each other.  Indeed, the whole village spied upon the abbe.  The main street, which began at the Thune, crept tortuously up the hill to the church.  Vineyards, the cottages of the peasantry, and a small grove crowned the heights.

Rigou’s house, the handsomest in the village, was built of the large rubble-stone peculiar to Burgundy, imbedded in yellow mortar smoothed by the trowel, which produced an uneven surface, still further broken here and there by projecting points of the stone, which was mostly black.  A band of cement, in which no stones were allowed to show, surrounded each window with a sort of frame, where time had made some slight, capricious cracks, such as appear on plastered ceilings.  The outer blinds, of a clumsy pattern, were noticeable for their color, which was dragon-green.  A few mosses grew among the slates of the roof.  The type is that of Burgundian homesteads; the traveller will see thousands like it when visiting this part of France.

A double door opened upon a passage, half-way down which was the well of the staircase.  By the entrance was the door of a large room with three windows looking out upon the square.  The kitchen, built behind and beneath the staircase, was lighted from the courtyard, which was neatly paved with cobble-stones and entered by a porte-cochere.  Such was the ground-floor.  The first floor contained three bedrooms, above them a small attic chamber.

A wood-shed, a coach-house, and a stable adjoined the kitchen, and formed two sides of a square around the courtyard.  Above these rather flimsy buildings were lofts containing hay and grain, a fruit-room, and one servant’s-chamber.

A poultry-yard, the stable, and a pigsty faced the house across the courtyard.

The garden, about an acre in size and enclosed by walls, was a true priest’s garden; that is, it was full of wall-fruit and fruit-trees, grape-arbors, gravel-paths, closely trimmed box-trees, and square vegetable patches, made rich with the manure from the stable.