This noble structure is of brick, with vermiculated stone-work at the angles and on the casings of the doors and windows.  On either side is a gateway of finely wrought iron, eaten with rust and connected by a railing, beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha, full of vigorous trees, its parapets bristling with iron arabesques, the innumerable sharp points of which are a warning to evil-doers.

The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the rond-point; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes planted with elms; on the other, within the park, a corresponding half-circle is formed by groups of rare trees.  The pavilion, therefore, stands at the centre of this round open space, which extends before it and behind it in the shape of two horseshoes.  Michu had turned the rooms on the lower floor into a stable, a kitchen, and a wood-shed.  The only trace remaining of their ancient splendor was an antechamber paved with marble in squares of black and white, which was entered on the park side through a door with small leaded panes, such as might still be seen at Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that Chateau into an asylum for the glories of France.  The pavilion is divided inside by an old staircase of worm-eaten wood, full of character, which leads to the first story.  Above that is an immense garret.  This venerable edifice is covered by one of those vast roofs with four sides, a ridgepole decorated with leaden ornaments, and a round projecting window on each side, such as Mansart very justly delighted in; for in France, the Italian attics and flat roofs are a folly against which our climate protests.  Michu kept his fodder in this garret.  That portion of the park which surrounds the old pavilion is English in style.  A hundred feet from the house a former lake, now a mere pond well stocked with fish, makes known its vicinity as much by a thin mist rising above the tree-tops as by the croaking of a thousand frogs, toads, and other amphibious gossips who discourse at sunset.  The time-worn look of everything, the deep silence of the woods, the long perspective of the avenue, the forest in the distance, the rusty iron-work, the masses of stone draped with velvet mosses, all made poetry of this old structure, which still exists.

At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief, screw-driver, and rags,—­in fact, all the utensils needed for his suspicious occupation.  His wife’s chair was against the wall beside the outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms of the Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, “Cy meurs.”  The old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front of Madame Michu, so that the latter might put her feet upon the rungs and keep them from dampness.

“Where’s the boy?” said Michu to his wife.

“Round the pond; he is crazy about the frogs and the insects,” answered the mother.