"Evidently, he's a monomaniac," said Emile.
"What's that?" queried the carpenter.
"I mean that his mind is absorbed by a fixed idea."
"Yes, I believe that you are right; but what is that idea? that is what no one can say. He is known to have only one attachment. That is for the park you see yonder, which he laid out and planted himself, and which he almost never leaves. Indeed I think he sleeps there, on his feet, walking about; for he has been seen walking in the paths like a ghost at two o'clock in the morning, and he frightened some people who had crept in there to purloin a little fruit or firewood."
As they had reached a point opposite the park, and from the high path they were following could look over into it and see a part of it, Emile was charmed by the beauty of that pleasure-ground, the magnificence of the trees, the happy arrangement of the shrubbery, the freshness of the turf and the graceful shape of the different levels, which descended gradually to the bank of a small stream, one of the bubbling affluents of the Gargilesse. He thought that no idiot could have created that species of earthly paradise and turned the charms of nature to account so successfully. It seemed to him, on the contrary, that a poetic mind must have guided that arrangement; but the aspect of the château soon gave the lie to these conjectures. One can imagine nothing uglier, colder, more unpleasant to the eye than the manor-house of Boisguilbault. Additions to the original structure had deprived it of something of its antique character, and the excellent state of repair in which it was kept made its surroundings all the more repellent.
Jean stopped at the end of the path where it entered the park, and his young friend, having given him some of his best cigars to encourage him to be patient, rode toward the house along a path of discouraging neatness. Not a blade of grass, not a twig of ivy covered the nakedness of those high walls, painted an iron-gray, and the only architectural bit that caught his eye was an escutcheon over the iron gate, bearing the arms of Boisguilbault, which had been scraped and retouched more recently than the rest, perhaps at the time of the return of the Bourbons; at all events there was a marked difference between this crest and its ponderous framework. Emile drew the inference that the marquis set much store by his titles and ancient privileges.
He rang a long while at an enormous gate before it opened; at last a spring was pressed somewhere in the distance that made it turn on its hinges, although nobody appeared; and, the young man having passed through after tying his horse, the gate closed behind him with little noise, as if an invisible hand had caught him in a trap. A feeling of depression, almost of terror, took possession of him when he found himself imprisoned as it were in a large, bare, gravelled courtyard, surrounded by buildings of uniform size, and as silent as the graveyard of a convent. A number of yews, trimmed to a point and planted in front of the main doorways, added to the resemblance. For the rest, not a flower, not a breath of fragrance from a plant, not a sprig of vine about the windows, not a spider's-web on the panes, not a broken pane, not a human sound, not even the crowing of a cock or the bark of a dog; not a pigeon, not a patch of moss on the roofs; I verily believe that not even an insect ventured to fly or buzz in the courtyard of Boisguilbault.
Emile was looking about for some one to speak to, seeing not even a footprint on the freshly raked gravel, when he heard a shrill, cracked voice call to him in a far from pleasing tone:
"What does monsieur want?"
After turning about several times to see where the voice came from, Emile finally discovered at an air-hole of a basement kitchen, an old, well-powdered white head, with light, expressionless eyes; and, drawing nearer, he tried to make himself heard. But the old butler's hearing was as weak as his sight, and he answered the visitor's questions at random.