At this point the good curé stopped short in horror. “Mercy on us! If my parishioners heard me!”
THE LEGEND OF SAINT JULIAN HOSPITATOR
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
I
Julian’s father and mother lived in a castle in the midst of woods on the slope of a hill.
Its four corner-towers had pointed roofs covered with scales of lead, and the base of the walls rested on masses of rock which went down abruptly right to the bottom of the moat.
The pavements of the court were as clean as the flagged floor of a church. Long gutters, shaped like dragons with down-drooped jaws, vomited the rain-water into the cistern; and on the window-ledges at every storey, in a pot of painted earthenware, a plant of basil or heliotrope opened to the sun.
A second line of defence, formed of stakes, enclosed first an orchard of fruit-trees, then a parterre, where the combinations of the flowers formed patterns, and next a trellis with bowers in which to take the air, and a mall which served to amuse the pages. On the other side were the kennel, the stables, the bakery, the wine-press and the barns. A meadow of green grass extended all around, itself enclosed by a strong hedge of thorns.
They had lived in peace so long that the portcullis was never let down; the moats were full of water; the swallows made their nests in the openings of the battlements; and the archer who walked up and down upon the walls all day long retired into his turret as soon as the sun shone too strongly, and slept there like a monk.
Indoors, the ironwork shone everywhere; tapestries in the rooms gave protection from the cold; and the presses were crammed with linen; the wine-tuns were piled up in the cellars, the oaken coffers groaned with the weight of bags of silver.