“It froze last night,” said Branchu; “and it’s going to be a hard frost.”
“Well, you must cover the stone-work with litter or straw, and we shall have to stop. Put some scaffold planks on the walls, the straw over them, and slabs with stones at intervals. Take care that the planks project beyond the faces of the walls. If you have not straw enough, put soil on the slabs, or turf clods. As to the cellar vaults, spread a good layer of mould over them, and contrive some openings in the haunches, so that the rain or melted snow may run off. Come, set to work! Let all this be arranged for and finished to-morrow evening; then we will stop till the end of the cold weather.”
“So much the better,” said Master Branchu, “for all the young fellows are gone, and none but poor creatures are left at the works.”
“This suspension of the building,” said Eugène, when they were returning to the château, “will permit us to work out the details of construction without having to hurry over them.”
“Yes,” replied Paul; “but I should much like to know how you set about it when you have to draw one of the details.”
“You must have learnt that in the two months we have been doing this sort of work.”
“Not quite; I perceive that you say what you intend, and that what you intend shows itself drawn on paper; now, I have tried to do the same, but though I knew well what I intended, I could bring nothing to paper; or if I did draw anything, it made me forget what I had in my mind. Yet, surely, for everything one wants to do in architecture, there must be a method, a process, a—what should I call it?—a recipe.”
“Ah! now I see what you mean. But you must perceive, my young cousin, that people often fancy they understand and intend, while they really do not always know what they intend, and do not clearly understand the question in hand. All this morning, for instance, you have been revolving in your mind this question which you have only just put to me; and I have wished to give you leisure to present it in a definite form—to do which your brain has been obliged to work. Now, thanks to the effort you have made, you will comprehend the answer I am able to give you better. You remember those two lines of Boileau’s—
“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément,”