As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to Poitiers.  The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine and across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring deepened about him as he went.  But he had never made a journey during which he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land.  He obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove in a couple of hours to the village of Fleurieres.  But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of the place.  It was what the French call a petit bourg; it lay at the base of a sort of huge mound on the summit of which stood the crumbling ruins of a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as that of the wall which dropped along the hill to inclose the clustered houses defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.  The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard.  Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away.  The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles.  It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend it, on the arm of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other.  Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who murmured “Madame la Comtesse” as a tall figure veiled in black passed before them.  He stood in the dusky little church while the service was going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked down the hill.  He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days in which patience and impatience were singularly commingled.  On the third day he sent Madame de Cintre a note, saying that he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in accordance with this he again took his way to Fleurieres.  He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street, and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for finding the chateau.

“It is just beyond there,” said the landlord, and pointed to the tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses.  Newman followed the first cross-road to the right—­it was bordered with mouldy cottages—­and in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers.  Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars.  The chateau was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but its aspect was extremely impressive.  Newman learned afterwards, from a guide-book of the province, that it dated from the time of Henry IV.  It presented to the wide, paved area which preceded it and which