“Capital!” said M. Durosay, when they had explained the plans to him, and he had examined them. “I have seen houses in Belgium something like this. There are very good ideas here; it will be a very pleasant habitation if our friends the Prussians let you finish it.... Will you allow me to make one or two remarks about it?”
“Certainly.”
“Not that I presume for a moment to suggest any change in these plans, which appear to me admirable.... But I have had the opportunity of a wide field of observation and comparison.... Well, then, to tell you frankly my first impression, this seems to me to have rather the character of a town-house, what we call a hôtel, than a country-house.... You will excuse my saying so, will you not?... I do not understand a country-house thus shut in: I should like to see a portico round it, or at least a wide veranda;—windows opening out—a more decided reflex of exterior life.”
“But, my dear friend,” said M. de Gandelau, “I expect that my children will come and spend a good part of the year here; it is no object with them to have one of those habitations in which people reside only for the two or three summer months, and where they entertain the idlers of the city; they want a good house, which will perfectly exclude wind and wet, where they can live comfortably at every season of the year.”
“Certainly—a very proper consideration; but what do you think of those North Italian villas, where the climate is pretty severe in winter and spring, but which are not the less charming with their porticos, terraces, wide open entrance-halls, and their balconies looking out over the country? All these habitations have a dignified aspect; they ennoble life, we may say, and enlarge those narrow ideas to which our age is only too prone.... And then, does it not seem to you that there is a too manifest want of symmetry, at least in one of the façades? Doesn’t this make the house look a little like those edifices which have been built piecemeal, with a view to satisfy successive requirements—in short, is there not a want of that unity which ought to be found in every work of art?”
“But it is not a work of art that I wish to leave my daughter; it is a good house—convenient and substantial.”
“Very good. But you will allow that if we can secure both kinds of excellence, so much the better. For a person of such extreme refinement and so charming in every respect as your daughter, it is but proper that a habitation should be provided reflecting in its exterior the charms and graces of its occupant. It would be a pleasure to you, in visiting Madame Marie, to see in the distance her little family grouped around her under a portico of delicate architecture, or under a loggia.... But this seems to me more like the house of some grave Flemish alderman. In these gables there is a kind of severity which——”
“Come, come, my dear friend, gables are not severe; they are gables—that’s all.”
“But indeed these gables with their high roofs have a severe aspect, which by no means agrees with the idea one forms of a house built for pleasure.”
“But it is not a house built for pleasure; it is a house built for people who are going to live in it, not for summer loungers—especially as we never have such people in our neighbourhood.”