The houses about the court still keep something of their "grand air." They are of all the colours that time in the south gives to stones, saffron and amber and gold, as if the stone were soft for the sunshine to sink into.
On the left of the court there is a wide high door under an escutcheon.
The sound of the bronze knocker is very stately.
The wine merchant has a blackbird that whistles all day in its osier cage, and the children of the carpenter are always laughing and calling, as they play with the fresh curled wood shavings.
But everybody seems to stop and listen when you lift the bronze knocker.
A lame man-servant comes to open the door. He fought through '70 with his master and was wounded at Sedan, where his master was killed.
There is a wide stone stairway, with a wrought-iron railing, and with walls discoloured where the tapestries have been taken away.
The tapestries are gone also from the corridor, and from the room to which the man-servant opens the door.
The old portraits are left in the walls of that room, and the exquisite wood-carving of the time of the Sun King, but the three or four chairs and the table on the right by the great carved hearth, are such as one would find at the Bazar of the Nouvelles Galeries.
The room is empty, except for these chairs and the table, and the little altar.