HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE.

THE OLD CHÂTEAU.

HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE:
AN ARCHITECTURAL NOVELETTE.
BY
E. VIOLLET-LE-DUC.
TRANSLATED BY BENJAMIN BUCKNALL,
ARCHITECT

LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, LOW, AND SEARLE,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1874.
[All Rights Reserved.]

LONDON
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

Among the voluminous and invaluable published works of M. Viollet-le-Duc, none perhaps will have greater interest for the amateur or for the practical architect than the “Histoire d’une Maison.” Of all the architectural problems of the day there is not one of greater importance or difficulty than that of building a house which shall fulfil the various needs and conditions of a modern dwelling; and the author has brought the results of a long course of study, observation, and experience, to bear upon this problem in a most practically instructive and fascinating shape. A lively narrative introduces the reader to the minute and thorough discussion of every stage of the processes involved, so that his attention is agreeably relieved; and each step is illustrated by plates and diagrams, which render the details intelligible even to the least informed student.

As the scene of this architectural novelette is laid in France, there is much both in the general remarks and in the arrangements of the building described which only applies to the social conditions and requirements of the French. But the value of the principles laid down and the practical instruction conveyed is not thereby materially lessened, since every page of the book exhibits important truths or excellent methods, which are of general application. By following out those principles it would be easy to obtain the same admirable adaptation of arrangement, soundness of construction, and charm of design for an English house, which the author has so ably laid down and fully illustrated in reference to its French counterpart.

It may be interesting to the reader to know that the “Histoire d’une Maison” was written and illustrated by M. Viollet-le-Duc during the evenings of two months—July and August—of last year (1873), which were spent by him in the Alps for the purpose of surveying and mapping for the French Government the whole of the French Alps—a task accomplished by him, alone and unassisted, with minute accuracy and beauty of delineation, and in a marvellously brief time.

Benjamin Bucknall,
Architect.

Oystermouth, Swansea,
April 1st, 1874.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE.

CHAPTER I.
PAUL GETS AN IDEA.

Who is happier than the young student from the Lyceum when he comes home for the summer vacation, bringing with him proofs of a well-spent year? Everything smiles upon him. The sky is serene, the country wears its loveliest dress, and the fruit is ripe.

Everyone congratulates him on his success, and predicts for him, after his six weeks’ repose, an energetic recommencement of congenial labour, crowned by a brilliant career in the future.

Yes, our student is a happy fellow; the air seems preternaturally light, the sun shines more brightly, and the meadows wear a richer green. Even the unwelcome rain is laden with perfume.

As soon as the morning breaks he hastens to revisit his favourite haunts in the park—the stream, the lake, and the farm—to see the horses, the boat, and the plantations.

He chats with the farmer’s wife, who smilingly presents him with a nice galette, hot from the oven. He walks with the gamekeeper, who tells him all the news of the neighbourhood while going his rounds. The sound of the sheep bells is musical—nay, even the monotonous song of the shepherd-boy, now grown a tall fellow, and aspiring to the full dignity of shepherd.

It is indeed a happy time. But in a few days the shade of the noble trees, the lovely scenery, the long walks, the gamekeeper’s stories, and even the boating, become wearisome, unless some congenial occupation presents itself to occupy the mind. It is the privilege of old age alone to delight in memories, and always to find fresh pleasure in the contemplation of woods and fields.

The stores of memory are soon exhausted by youth; and quiet meditation is not to its taste.

Monsieur Paul—a lively youth of sixteen—did not, perhaps, indulge in these reflections in the abstract; but as a matter of fact, after a week passed at the residence of his father, who cultivated his considerable estate in the province of Berry, he had almost exhausted the stock of impressions which the return to the paternal domain had excited. During the long scholastic year how many projects had he not formed for the next vacation! Six weeks seemed too short a time for their accomplishment. How many things had he to see again; how much to say and do. Yet in eight days all had been seen, said, and done.

Besides, his eldest sister, who had been lately married, had set out on a long journey with her husband; and as to Lucy, the youngest, she seemed too much occupied with her doll and its wardrobe to take an interest in the thinkings and doings of her respected brother.

It had rained all day; and the farm, visited by M. Paul for the fifth time, had presented a sombre and mournful aspect. The fowls crouching under the walls had a pensive look; and even the ducks were dabbling in the mud in melancholy silence. The gamekeeper had indeed taken M. Paul with him on a hare-hunting expedition, but they had returned without success, and pretty well soaked. To his disappointment, M. Paul had found the keeper’s stories rather long and diffuse—not the less so as they were being repeated for the third time with few variations. Moreover, the veterinary surgeon had announced that morning, to M. Paul’s vexation, that his pony had caught a cold and must not quit the stable for a week. The paper had been read after dinner, but M. Paul was little attracted by its politics, and the miscellaneous intelligence was deplorably uninteresting.

Monsieur de Gandelau (Paul’s father) was too much taken up with agricultural matters, and perhaps also with the treatment of his gout, to seek to relieve the ennui of which his son was the victim; and Madame de Gandelau, still suffering from the depression caused by her eldest daughter’s departure, was working with a kind of desperation at a piece of tapestry, whose destination was a mystery to all about her, and perhaps even to the person who was so laboriously adding stitch to stitch.

“You have had a letter from Marie?” said M. de Gandelau, putting down the newspaper.

“Yes, my dear, this evening. They are enjoying themselves excessively; the weather has been charming, and they have had the most delightful excursions in the Oberland. They are on the point of passing the Simplon for Italy. Marie will write to me from Baveno, Hôtel de——”

“Capital! and how are they?”

“Quite well.”

“And they still mean to go to Constantinople on that important business?”

“Yes, N—— has had a letter urging him to go; they will take Italy only en route. They hope to embark at Naples in a month, at latest. But Marie tells me they cannot return within a year. She does not appear to think much of so long an absence, but it gives me a pang which no arguments for its necessity can alleviate.”

“Ah! well, but do you expect our children to marry for our advantage? And was it not settled that it should be so? They say affection seldom stands the test of living constantly together on a journey. N—— is a good, noble fellow, hard-working, and a little ambitious, which is no bad thing. Marie loves him; she has intelligence and good health. They will pass the trial successfully, I have not a doubt, and will return to us well-tried companions for life, thoroughly acquainted with each other, and having learned how to further and to suffice for one another’s happiness; and with that spice of independence which is so necessary for preserving a good understanding with one’s neighbours.”

“I daresay you are right, my dear; but this long absence is not the less painful to me, and this year will seem a long one. I shall certainly be glad when I begin to prepare their rooms for them here, and have only a few days to reckon till I may hope to see them again.”

“Certainly, certainly; and I too shall be delighted to see them at home. Paul, too! But as it is certain they will be a year away, it would be a fine opportunity for resuming my plan.”

“What, my dear? Do you mean building the house you were thinking of, on that bit of land which is part of Marie’s dowry? I beg of you to do nothing of the kind. We have quite enough room for them here, and for their children, if they have any. And, after this long absence, it will be a new trial to me to have Marie settled at a distance from us—not to have her near me. Besides, her husband cannot stay three-quarters of a year in the country. His engagements do not allow of it. Marie would then be alone. What can she do in a house all to herself, with her husband absent?”

“She will do, my love, as you did yourself, when my business called me—as it did too often—away from home; yet we were young then. She will have her house to see after; she will get into the way of managing her property; she will have occupation and responsibilities; and so she will be satisfied with herself and with the result of her thought and work. Believe me, I have seen the warmest family affections weakened and destroyed by the habit of married children living with their parents. The wife likes to be mistress in her own house; and this is a sound and just feeling; we should not run counter to it. A woman who has been wisely educated, having a house to look after and the responsibility and independence which responsibility in every form brings with it, is more capable of maintaining her own dignity of character than one who has been kept all her life in a state of tutelage. Marie would be very comfortable here, very happy to be with us, and her husband would be not less satisfied in knowing that she was with us; but she would not have a home of her own. An unmarried daughter is only in her place when with her mother; but a wife is only in her place in her own house. A married woman in her mother’s house takes her place only as a guest. And even if we suppose no mutual irritation to arise from this life in common—and this can hardly fail to arise—it is certain that indifference to practical interests, nonchalance, and even ennui, and all the dangers thence ensuing, are sure to be caused by it.

“You have brought up your daughter too well for her not to be ardently desirous of fulfilling all her duties; you have always shown her an example of activity too conspicuous for her not to wish to follow it. Let us, then, afford her the means of doing so. Will you not be better pleased to see her managing her own house, and delighted to entertain us there, than to have her here incessantly at your elbow, with nothing to do; a judge, silent and respectful, if you like, but still a judge, of all your ways and doings? Do you think that her husband, when he can snatch a few moments from business, will enjoy as much pleasure in finding her constantly here, as he will experience at seeing her in her own house, delighted to show him all she has done during his absence; engaged in rendering their common abode more and more agreeable and convenient from day to day? If you reflect, you will observe that those who in our day have given, though in high social position, the most occasion for scandal, have been, for the most part, women whose early married life was passed thus, without a home of their own, leading that nondescript life which is neither that of the daughter nor the mistress of the house—the responsible housekeeper, to call things by their right names.”

Some tears had moistened Madame de Gandelau’s embroidery.

“You are right again, my dear,” said she, pressing her husband’s hand; “your plan is just and reasonable.”

Paul, though turning over the leaves of an illustrated periodical, had not lost a word of this conversation. The idea of seeing a house built for his eldest sister was very agreeable to him. Already, to his youthful imagination, this house in the future seemed, as compared with the old family mansion, a fairy palace, elegant and splendid, full of light and gaiety.

It must be confessed that M. de Gandelau’s habitation had nothing to charm the eyes. Enlarged by successive additions, two long wings of gloomy aspect were clumsily patched on to the main body,—formerly a castle, two towers of which, dismantled and crowned by low roofs, flanked the angles. Between the two wings and this main building, there extended a courtyard, always damp, enclosed by old iron railings, and the remains of a moat now converted into a kitchen garden. A third wing, the prolongation of the old castellated building, erected by M. de Gandelau soon after his marriage, contained the private apartments of the family—the most attractive part of the château. The drawing and dining rooms, the billiard-room, and M. de Gandelau’s study formed part of the old main building. As to the two parallel wings, they contained rooms opening into irregular passages, which, not being all on a level, were somewhat perilous to unwary feet.

Next morning, Paul, going to inquire how his pony was, met old Master Branchu coming into the yard with a little cart full of pieces of wood, bags of plaster, and tools.

“What are you going to do with that, Master Branchu?”

“I am going to mend the pigeon-house, Monsieur Paul.”

“How I should like to help you!”

“No, Monsieur Paul, you would dirty your clothes; you might hurt yourself; it is not your business. But you may see us work, if you like.”

“It must be a capital amusement to build!”

“As to amusement, it’s no amusement; yet it isn’t so disagreeable neither, when you have to work for a good gentleman like your father; when you have your pay regular, and a bottle of wine when it’s hot; and when the people you work for do not grudge you what’s reasonable—that’s comfortable. You do your work, and pick up your tools at the end of the day with a merry heart. But when you have to do with close-fisted people, it’s a miserable business, for you must pay for what you have to work with. This plaster in the cart, and the bricks, and so on, cost money of course. And if you can’t get paid yourself, you must find money somewhere, and get into no end of trouble. But I must be off; there’s my lad waiting for me.”

“Could you build a large house, Master Branchu?”

“I should think so, Master Paul. Why, I built the mayor’s, which is big enough in all conscience!”

Meantime, Paul no longer finds the hours hang heavily, as they did the day before; he has got an idea.

This house in prospect for his sister has seized on his imagination; he figures it to himself sometimes as a palace, sometimes as a turreted manor-house of the old style, sometimes as a Swiss cottage, covered with ivy and clematis, with innumerable carved balconies. He has a grown-up cousin who is an architect; he has often seen him at work at a drawing-board; under his hand buildings rose as by enchantment. It did not appear very difficult work. His cousin Eugène has the necessary instruments in the room he occupies when he comes to the château. Paul will try to put on paper one of those plans of which his imagination has given him a glimpse. But there is a difficulty at the outset. He must know what would suit his sister best; a baronial castle, with towers and battlements, a Swiss cottage, or an Italian villa. If it is to take her by surprise, the surprise must be at any rate an agreeable one. After a good hour’s meditation, M. Paul thinks, and with some reason, that he ought to go and consult his father.

“Oh, oh! you are in a great hurry,” said his father, after Paul’s first words. “But we are not quite so far advanced as that. You want to draw a plan for Marie’s house. Well, try then. But in the first place, we must know what your sister wants—how she would like her house arranged. After all, I am not sorry to hasten forward things a little. We will send her a telegram.”

Telegram.

“Baveno. Italy. From X—— Mad. N——, Hôtel de ——. Paul wants to build a house here for Marie. Send programme.”

Twenty hours afterwards the following telegram reached the château:—

“X——. From Baveno. To M. de Gandelau. Arrived this morning—all well. Paul has an excellent idea. Ground-floor—entrance-hall, drawing-room, dining-room, pantry, kitchen not underground, billiard-room, study. First-floor—two large bedrooms, two dressing-rooms; baths; small bedroom, dressing-room; linen-room, closets, attic-bedrooms; cupboards plenty; staircase not break-neck. Marie N——.”

Without doubting for a moment that his sister had taken in earnest the despatch addressed to her, and had replied accordingly, Paul set himself resolutely to work, and, installed in Eugène’s room, and making the best of his skill in drawing, endeavoured to realize on paper the programme given above. The difficulties of this undertaking were however serious enough to make it necessary to tell M. Paul twice that breakfast was on the table. The afternoon passed rapidly away, and on assembling for dinner, Paul presented a fine sheet of paper fairly covered with plans and elevations.

“A creditable piece of work,” said M. de Gandelau unrolling it; “but your cousin is coming to-morrow, and he will be able to criticize your plan better than I can.”

All the night Paul was in a state of excitement. He dreamed of a palace rising under his direction. But there was always some defect in his building. There were no windows; the staircase was only a shaky ladder, and his sister Marie would not venture to mount it. In one place the ceilings were so low that you could not stand upright; elsewhere they were of terrific height. Old Branchu was laughing and shaking the walls with his hand to show they were not firm. The chimney smoked horribly, and his little sister was impetuously demanding a room for her doll.

Paul had looked at his plan again as soon as he got up, and it appeared to him much less satisfactory than it had done the night before; in fact, he blushed at the thought of showing it to his cousin, who was coming to breakfast; he was hesitating, and thinking of destroying the painful labour of a whole day.

“Father, I think my cousin will laugh at me if I show him my drawing.”

“My dear boy,” replied M. de Gandelau, “when we have done what we can, i.e., the best we can, we must not shrink from criticism, which is the only means of ascertaining the insufficiency of our knowledge and supplying its defects. You would be very silly if you thought you could become an architect in a single morning; but if, after having made an effort to express an idea which you think good, either in drawing or otherwise, you should hesitate to submit your essay to some one more skilful than yourself, for fear of eliciting more criticism than applause—it would not be modesty, but a very reprehensible vanity, for it would deprive you of advice which cannot fail to be useful to you, at your age especially.”

When his cousin had come it was nevertheless necessary for M. de Gandelau to tell his son to bring his attempt, to induce our architectural tyro to unroll again the paper he had covered the day before with such painfully elaborate designs.

“Well, my young cousin,” said the visitor, “so you want to become an architect. Take care! all is not couleur de rose in that profession, as it would appear on your paper.”

In a few words Eugène was informed of what was intended.

“Very good! Here is the drawing-room and the entrance-hall. I don’t quite understand the staircase, but that is a matter of detail. And the elevations? But it’s a palace!—columns, balustrades! Well, we can set to work at once.”

“Could we, cousin? Suppose we tell Master Branchu; he is at work close by.”

“A little patience—this is only a sketch. How about the definitive plans; and the estimates; and the details of execution? We must go methodically to work. You must know, cousin, that the more rapidly we want a building erected, the more desirable it is that everything should be perfectly arranged beforehand. Remember the trouble your neighbour, Count —— has had, who has been beginning his château again and again every spring for six years, without being able to get it finished, because he could not indicate all that he wanted at first, and his architect had not the courage to insist upon adopting a well-planned design once for all; and because he has listened to all the whims, or rather to all the officious advice which friends of the family did not fail to offer, one respecting the size of the rooms, another about the placing of the staircases, a third on the style and decoration. We have only a year before us, we must therefore not begin till we are certain of not taking false steps; besides, your sister must approve the plan. Let us consider a little; and first let us come to an understanding about the means of construction you decide to adopt. As we are in a hurry we have hardly a choice; we cannot think of building the house with worked stone from top to bottom; that would take too long, and cost too much. We must adopt a method of construction that is simple, and can be rapidly executed. Does that meet your ideas? You introduce columns in your front; for what purpose? If they form a portico, they will make the rooms dark and gloomy; if they are attached to the walls, they are of no use here. And this balustrade on the upper cornices—what does that mean? Do you suppose your lady sister will walk among the gutters? That is for the service of the cats, I suppose. And please to explain this: on the plan I observe that from the entrance-hall you have to go through the dining-room to reach the drawing-room. But if visitors come while you are at table, you will have to ask them to wait at the door, or invite them to see you and your friends eat.

“And so the kitchen opens on the billiard-room. Come, we must go a little more deeply into the matter; shall we set to work to do so? Between us we shall perhaps get through the business a little faster, and you will give me ideas; for you know your elder sister’s tastes and habits better than I do. You will thus be able to supplement the scantiness of the programme given us. Think about it, and early to-morrow morning we will proceed to work out our plan.”

CHAPTER II.
WITH A LITTLE HELP, PAUL’S IDEA IS DEVELOPED.

In fact, early in the morning Paul might be seen going into his cousin’s room. Everything was ready: drawing-board, T-squares, compasses, and pencils.

“Take your seat here, cousin; you are going to render on paper the result of our meditations, since you know so well how to make use of our instruments. Let us proceed methodically. In the first place, you doubtless know the ground on which your father intends to have your sister’s country house built.”

“Yes, it is down there below the wood, about two miles off—that little valley at the bottom of which runs the brook which turns Michaud’s mill.”

“Just show me that on the plan of the estate. Oh, I see it.”

“You see, cousin, it is here. On the south side of the plateau are the arable lands, then the ground slopes a little to the north towards the brook. Here there is a fine spring of fresh water issuing from the wood, which is on the west. On the declivity of the plateau, and at the bottom of the valley, are meadows with a few trees.”

“On which side then is the pleasantest view?”

“Towards the bottom of the valley, on the south-east.”

“How do you get to the meadow from your father’s house?”

“By crossing the wood; then you go down to the bottom of the valley by this road; you cross a bridge here, then you ascend along the plateau obliquely by this path.”

“Very good; we must therefore build the house almost on the summit of the incline facing the north—sheltering it from the north-west winds under the neighbouring wood. The entrance will have to front the ascending road; but we must arrange for the principal apartments to command the most favourable aspect, which is south-east; moreover, we must take advantage of the open view on the same side, and not disregard the spring of fresh water that flows on the right towards the bottom of the valley; we shall therefore approach it and locate the house in that resting-place which nature has arranged so favourably to our views, some yards below the plateau. We shall thus be tolerably sheltered from the south-west winds, and shall not have the dull-looking plain, which extends as far as the eye can reach, in front of the house. This settled, let us look at the programme. No dimensions of rooms are mentioned; we shall therefore have to determine this. According to what your father has told me, he intends this house to be for constant residence, habitable in summer as well as in winter, and consequently to contain all that is suitable for a large landed proprietor. He means to spend about £8000 upon it; it is therefore a matter which demands serious study, especially as your sister and her husband make a great point of ‘comfort.’ I was at their house in Paris, and found it admirably fitted up, but nothing sacrificed to vanity or mere appearances. We may therefore start from these data. Let us begin by the plan of the ground-floor. The principal apartment is the drawing-room, where the family assemble. We cannot give it less than 16 or 17 feet in width, by 24 to 28 feet in length. First draw a parallelogram to these dimensions. Ah, stay! not mere guess-work. Take your scale.”

Paul looked at his teacher in some perplexity.

“I forgot; perhaps you don’t know what a scale means. Indeed your plan seems to have taken no account of anything of the kind. Listen to me, then: When you wish to build a house, or any edifice, you give the architect a programme, i.e., a complete list of all the rooms and accessories that are wanted. But this is not enough; you say such or such a room must have such or such a width by such or such a length, or have such or such an area so as to accommodate so many persons. If it is a dining-room, for instance, you will mention that it must accommodate 10, 15, 20, or 25 persons at table. If it is a bedroom, you will specify that besides the bed (which is a matter of course) it must accommodate such or such pieces of furniture or occupy an area of 300 feet, 400 feet, &c. Now you know that an area of 400 feet is equivalent to a square whose side is 20 feet, or a parallelogram of about 24 feet by 16 feet 8 inches, or of 30 feet by 13 feet 4 inches. But these last dimensions would not suit a room; they are rather the proportions of a gallery. Independently, therefore, of the area of a room, its breadth and length must bear certain relations according to its purpose. A drawing-room or a bedchamber may be square; but a dining-room, if it is to accommodate more than ten persons at table, must be longer than it is broad, because a table increases in length but not in width, according to the number of the guests. You must therefore add ‘leaves’ to the dining-room as you do to the table. Do you understand? Good. At this point then the architect, in preparing the plan, even if it is only a sketch, adopts a scale, i.e., he divides a line drawn upon his paper into equal parts, each representing a foot. And to save time, or to simplify the work, he takes for each of these divisions the 192th, or the 96th, or the 48th part of a foot. In the first case we call it a scale of ¹/₁₆th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 16 feet to an inch; in the second, a scale of ⅛th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 8 feet to an inch; in the third, a scale of ¼th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 4 feet to an inch. Thus you prepare a plan one hundred and ninety-two, ninety-six, or forty-eight times smaller than its realization will be. I need not say that we may make scales in any proportion ad infinitum—one, two, or three hundredths of an inch to a foot, or to 10, 100, or 1,000 feet, as we do for drawing maps. In the same way we may give details on a scale of 6 inches to a foot, or half the actual size; 2 inches to a foot, or a sixth of the actual size, &c. Having chosen his scale, the architect is enabled to give to each part of the plan exact relative dimensions. If he has adopted the scale of one-eighth of an inch to a foot, and wishes to indicate a door 4 feet in width, he takes 4/8ths. Do you understand? I am not quite sure that you do; but a few hours’ practice will render you au fait at it. To show you distinctly the utility of a scale, I will take your plan. Your drawing-room is an oblong. I will suppose it 20 feet by 27 feet; that is pretty nearly the relative proportion of the sides. A ninth of the longer side measured by the compass is 3 feet. I measure your façade by this and find that your lower story is 30 feet high. Now fancy to yourself how (I will not say your drawing-room, but) your entrance-hall, whose sides are only 13 feet, would look with a height of 30 feet between the floor and the ceiling. It would be a well. Your elevation therefore is not on the same scale as your plan. Take for your sister’s drawing-room ¹⁸/₁₆ths on this graduated rule, which will give 18 feet on a scale of ¹/₁₆th of an inch to a foot. Just so; that gives us the shorter side of the drawing-room. Now take ²⁷/₁₆ths on the same rule, which will give 27 feet; that will be the longer side. Now your oblong is drawn with dimensions perfectly exact. You will have to surround this room with walls, for we can scarcely give ordinary floors a greater width; you must therefore have walls to receive the joists. A rubble wall through which flues have to pass, can hardly be less than 1 foot 8 inches in thickness. Your drawing-room will therefore support itself. Next in importance to the drawing-room is the dining-room. Where are we to place it? We ought, especially in the country, to be able to enter it directly from the drawing-room. Is it to be on the right, or on the left? You have not the least idea; nor I either. But chance cannot settle the question. Let us think about it a little. It would seem natural to put the kitchen near to the dining-room. But the position of the kitchen is a matter presenting some difficulties. When you are not at table you don’t like to have the smell of the viands, or hear the noise of those engaged in kitchen work. On the one hand, the kitchen ought not to be far from the dining-room; on the other hand, it ought to be far enough from the chief rooms for its existence not to be suspected. Besides, the back-yard, the outbuildings, the poultry-yard, a small vegetable garden, wash-houses, &c., ought to be near the kitchen. It is a matter of importance too that the kitchen should not have a south aspect. And we must not forget that your sister, who knows how a house ought to be managed, has taken the precaution to say in her laconic programme: ‘Kitchen not underground.’ She is right: underground kitchens are unhealthy for those who live in them, present difficulties in the way of surveillance, and diffuse their odour through the ground floor. We shall put it therefore on a level with the dining-room, but without direct communication with the latter, to avoid odours and noises. Let us examine our ground, its position and aspects. The most undesirable aspect, and that which in the present case offers the least agreeable prospect, is the north-west. We shall therefore place the drawing-room with its exterior angle towards the south-east; on the right we shall put the dining-room; and next the kitchen, which will thus face the north. Do not be in a hurry to draw the plan of these subordinate apartments, for we must know first what position they are to occupy in relation to the drawing-room and the entrance-hall. We are required to provide a billiard-room. It will be well to place it on the south-east, as a pendant to the dining-room. The hall and your brother-in-law’s study must be near the entrance. If we place the dining-room and the billiard-room, whose dimensions are to be nearly equal to those of the drawing-room, in juxtaposition and continuation with the latter, the drawing-room will be lighted only on one of its shorter sides, for we must put the entrance-hall in front. The drawing-room would in that case be gloomy, and would command a view of the country only in one direction. Let us then put the dining-room and the billiard-room at right angles to the drawing-room, allowing the latter to jut out on the sides of the favourable aspect. Let us give each of these two apartments a length of 24 feet by a width of 18 feet. These are convenient dimensions. Then mark in front of the drawing-room an entrance-hall, whose area we shall determine presently.

“We will try next to give to the walls of those apartments the position required by the general construction. The entrance to the dining-room and the billiard-room—which is also a place of assembly—is to be from the drawing-room. The opening from the drawing-room into the billiard-room must therefore be wide enough for those who may be in either of those apartments to assemble without inconvenience. But we ought to be able to reach the entrance-hall from the billiard-room without going through the drawing-room; and so with the dining-room. We observe that lateral prospects were required for the drawing-room, whose length is 27 feet. If we take 8 feet for the side-lights, and 1 foot 6 inches for the thickness of the wall of the billiard-room or the dining-room, there will remain 17 feet 6 inches to the entrance partition of the drawing-room; our billiard-room and dining-room being 18 feet wide, these apartments will reach 8 inches beyond the entrance-partition of the drawing-room. That does not matter. Let us mark out the second wall, also 1 foot 6 inches thick. Thus we have the three chief apartments determined. In the central line of the billiard-room we will make an opening into the drawing-room of 8 feet 6 inches. On the side of the wall separating it from the dining-room we will open a door of 4 feet 6 inches into the dining-room, within 8 inches of the partition separating the drawing-room from the entrance-hall. Thus we shall enter this dining-room, not in the centre, but on one side, which is more convenient; for you know that in going to or leaving it the gentlemen offer their arms to the ladies. It is therefore desirable that in going out or coming in there should be no obstacle in their way. The door leading from the drawing-room to the dining-room will be also out of the central line of the opening from the drawing-room into the billiard-room; but that I do not mind. This door will balance with the window on this side looking outwards, and we will put the fireplace between them. We will open a central door from the entrance-hall into the drawing-room.

“In front, against the wall of the billiard-room, let us put your brother-in-law’s study, with a small anteroom, where people who have business with him can wait, so as not to be wandering about in the hall. On the dining-room side (of the hall) we will put the pantry. The study must be at least 12 feet 6 inches wide. We will make the entrance-hall jut out a little to form a projection.

“The staircase is a very important point in every house. It should be proportioned to the house,—neither too spacious nor too scanty. It must not occupy space uselessly; it must give easy access to the upper stories, and be sufficiently conspicuous. If we take a part of the staircase out of the entrance-hall, which is very large—18 feet by 16 feet—it will be very conspicuous, and we shall gain room. The width of a staircase in a house of this style and size should be at least 4 feet. But the hall ought to communicate directly with the dining-room, the pantry, and all the offices to the right of the plan. Let us reserve a passage of 4 feet and mark the first step. The height of the lower story between floor and floor should be, reckoning the size of the rooms, 15 feet; which will give them a clear height of 14 feet, reserving 1 foot for the thickness of the floor of the chamber story. The steps of an easy staircase should be about 6 inches high. To ascend 15 feet we require thirty steps. Each step should be 10 to 12 inches wide. The staircase should have an extension of 25 feet for steps of 10 inches in width, or 30 feet for steps of 12 inches, reckoning thirty steps. Let us take a mean—say 27 feet. We must find room for this extension of 27 feet at the least. We will therefore place a staircase projection at the angle of the entrance-hall prominent enough to bring us, in winding round a newel (which will be in the prolongation of the wall on the right of the drawing-room), to the first floor, passing out into the antechamber of this floor.... I mark out this staircase for you: we shall have to return to it. The first fifteen steps come into the length of the newel and the wall, and allow us to place below the last half flight of the stairs the water-closet for the family on the ground floor. Opening from the passage we will next put the pantry. Then the servants’ staircase in a tower; then the serving-room; then the kitchen in the wing; a bakehouse and scullery, a wash-house, and a way out from the kitchen to the kitchen garden. Forming a return, we will put a stable for three horses, a coach-house for two carriages, a harness-room, and a small flight of stairs to reach the rooms for the coachman and groom, and the hay-loft in the roof. Near the stable we will leave a way into the yard and the larder and servants’ conveniences.

“We will separate all these offices from the main building by a plinth wall and trellis-work at the right of the round tower servants’ staircase, which will give us a courtyard for the kitchen, stable, and coach-house. In front we will reserve a space for the poultry-yard, the fowl-house, and the manure pit....

“Now that we have traced out the general plan of our ground floor, let us try to improve it in detail.

“It would be very nice to have a bay window at the end of the drawing-room looking out on the garden. Nothing prevents us from planning another at the end of the billiard-room, with a divan where the gentlemen might smoke, and a third at the end of the dining-room, which would allow the dishes to be passed in through a turn from the serving-room, and afford room for the sideboard and carving tables.

“We shall find these projections useful on the first floor.

“But we ought to have a way out from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into the garden. I must confess that I am not very fond of those flights of steps, which are scorching under a hot sun and very disagreeable in wind and rain; if, then, in the angle formed by the billiard-room with the drawing-room, and along it, we were to place a conservatory inclosing a flight of steps, I think it would be a convenient arrangement. Thus we could pass from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into this conservatory, and could take coffee there in wet weather, and have a covered approach to the garden. Some flowers and shrubs placed along the glazed side would enliven the billiard-room without darkening it. But in front of the entrance-hall we will have a flight of steps in the usual style, which we shall take care to put under shelter, the position of the staircase allowing us to do so without difficulty.

“Let us draw out all this as nearly as we can; we shall have to revise it when we have studied the first floor, whose arrangements may oblige us to modify some of those on the ground floor (Fig. [1]).

“As the walls must rise from the bottom, you will put a piece of tracing paper over this ground-plan to avoid loss of time. You will thus have beneath your eyes and pencil the walls to which you must accommodate the superstructure, and we shall presently see whether there is reason to modify some parts of this ground-plan.

Fig. 1.—Plan of the Ground Floor.

A, entrance-hall; B, drawing-room; C, dining-room; D, billiard-room; E, study; F, conservatory inclosing flight of steps; G, butler’s pantry; H, kitchen; I, serving-room; K, L, bakehouse and wash-house; M, office-yard; N, S, poultry-yard; O, stable; P, coach-house; R, harness-room; a, servants’ staircase; b, cellar steps; c, groom’s staircase; V, W, water-closets.

“Just so. Let us first trace the termination of the staircase; the last of the thirty steps we shall require is in a line with the wall on the right of the entrance-hall; it is the landing which will open on the antechamber above the hall. Over the drawing-room we shall place Madame N.’s room; but as this area would be too large, we shall take advantage of the space to put a second partition, which will give double doors and a capital space for closets, which ladies never find superfluous. To give light in this space we shall glaze an upper portion of the partition next to the antechamber. These double doors will insure greater privacy in the bedroom, and prevent the passage of sounds. Besides, this second antechamber will enable us to provide a direct communication with Monsieur N.’s apartment, which we shall place in the favourable aspect, that is over the billiard-room.

“As this area also is too large, we shall take out of the space thus available a lady’s dressing-room, and a bathroom; and provide an entrance to Monsieur N.’s room direct from the antechamber through a private passage, which will also open into the lady’s dressing-room, that for your brother-in-law over the study, his bedchamber and the closets for these apartments. Thus when the two doors leading to the antechamber are shut, these rooms will be completely cut off. With a corridor answering to that of the ground floor on the right we shall establish a communication between the antechamber, the servants’ staircase, the linen-room (an important matter), which we shall place over the kitchen, with a large wardrobe for your sister on the right of her bedroom, and a nursery (for we must provide for every contingency), which, as well as the wardrobe, will be over the dining-room. The recess or bay window of the ground floor will afford us the means of giving a nice dressing-room for the children’s or guests’ room on the first floor; and that of the billiard-room will furnish a very agreeable addition to Monsieur N.’s room. As to the bay window in the drawing-room, we will cover with a flat, with a balustrade, which will give your sister’s room a handsome balcony, where an awning and flowers can be placed in the summer. (Fig. [2].)

“You see, Paul, our plan begins to assume a definite shape. Breakfast will soon be ready: go and take a walk, and in the afternoon we will resume our work, that is to say, we will proceed to the elevations.”

Fig. 2.—Plan of the First Floor.

A, antechamber; B, Madame N.’s bedroom; C, dressing-room and bathroom; D, wardrobe; E, Monsieur N.’s bedroom; F, dressing-room and bathroom; G, nursery; H, dressing-room; I, linen-room; P, lumber-room; W, water-closets.

On going down to the garden, Paul began to examine the family mansion with an attention he had never yet bestowed upon it. He had never thought before of observing how its apartments were arranged. He began to calculate the space lost in those interminable passages; he perceived here and there dark and useless corners. The staircase started badly. On the ground floor it could not be found without knowing the arrangement of the house. The kitchen was at a vast distance from the dining-room, and to get from the one to the other you must cross a carriage road, go down two steps and mount six. For the first time in his life this struck him as barbarous. Walking about waiting for the breakfast bell, Paul began to ask himself whether his father would not do well to pull down his old mansion and build one on a new plan devised by himself with his cousin’s advice. He began to reckon up the several faults in the arrangement of the house, not forgetting its too numerous break-neck passages. He considered the sombre drawing-room, flanked on two sides by the two old towers that masked the side views, his father’s little study lighted by a narrow window and entered by a pretty large room, generally unused, and which served as a fruit-room in the autumn; many other defects besides....

“Well,” said his father, as soon as they were seated at table, “you have been already at work this morning?”

Paul, full of the subject that had engaged him, gave an exact description of the plan which had been prepared; but could not finish without indulging in some critical remarks on the family mansion.

CHAPTER III.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

His mother looked at him with astonishment; his father became serious, and said: “Paul, this house satisfies your mother just as it is, and me too; you three—your two sisters and yourself—were all born here; my father left it to me, and I have added to it only what has been necessary. There is not a corner in this house but is associated with some happy or mournful reminiscence; it has been consecrated by the labours of three generations of honourable occupants. All the people of the neighbourhood, who please to give it the name of the Château, know that they may look for bread here when they want it, clothes for their little ones, advice in their differences, and relief if they are ill. They do not need to be shown the staircase that leads to your mother’s room or my study, for they know it as well as we do; they know as well as we do those ‘break-neck places’ on which you are so severe, and do not get lost in the long passages. If the kitchen is a little too far from the dining-room, it is large enough to hold the harvest-men when they come to supper, and the shepherds when they come to settle their accounts. I do not think I should be justified in altering all this, for this house belongs, I may say, to the neighbourhood; and you should not forget any more than I do that, in 1793, my grandfather remained here alone with his wife and my father without molestation, while all the neighbouring châteaux were abandoned and pillaged.

“When we are gone—your mother and I—you will do what you think fit with this house; but if there is one piece of advice I would impress upon you, it is—Keep it as it is, for it may outlast you and your children. Keep it, for you must have committed many faults before it can cease to be a shelter for our family.

“I know as well as you—perhaps better—all that it needs to adapt it to the taste of the day; and if I were to sell it to some wealthy proprietor, he would probably soon demolish it and build a house or a château more comfortable, and better suited to modern habits. What such a purchaser might do I cannot, I ought not to do.

“The good people with wooden shoes on their feet and woollen cloaks on their backs who come here to talk with me, and who would protect my old house, if need were (I have had proof of it), would cease to come into a new dwelling with which they were not familiar,—where everything would have a tendency to repel them, if not to arouse envious reflections in them. I should become unaccustomed to see them; and while it seems to me quite natural to see them at any time in this house—which only recalls the past, and where all is simple and somewhat rough, like themselves—it would probably appear to me strange to introduce them into apartments arranged and decorated in modern taste.

“It is undesirable to disturb visual associations; our simple-minded neighbours connect in thought the inhabitant with the house: change the latter, and they will no longer recognize the former.

“Your cousin knows still better than you or I what are the defects of our old mansion, and how it might be rendered much more attractive; yet he has never suggested modifications to me, because he perceives, as I do, that by making any change in such buildings acquired habits among those around us would be disturbed in a way that could only be injurious.

“And here are you—an architect of two or three hours’ standing, and before you know whether you could improve on the house as it is—thinking of pulling it down. Be a little more modest; when you have studied some time and seen more, you will know that a dwelling ought to be, to a man and his family, a well-suited dress, and that when a residence is perfectly adapted to the manners and habits of those it shelters, it is excellent. How many proprietors have I seen who, while destroying their ancestral mansion, to replace it by a habitation conformable as they thought to the requirements of the moment, have by the same act ruptured the tie which attached their family to the humble inhabitants of the neighbourhood!”

The only reply Paul offered to these arguments was to go and embrace his mother and father; and no better could have been thought of.

“I don’t exactly see,” said Paul to his cousin, when they were both in the park after breakfast, “why my father should wish to have a house built for my sister, since he thinks it so desirable to keep for himself and for us the old mansion in which we were born.”

“It is not a matter of very easy explanation; but you are old enough, Paul, to understand it. In the first place, your sister Marie now bears another name than yours; and a well-known respected name has a similar standing in the neighbourhood with the old house to which, so to speak, it is attached. If you had not been born, and your parents were no longer living, Madame N——, your sister, on coming to live on this estate, might safely pull down the old house and build a new one, for it would not be more difficult to introduce the new house than the name of a new proprietor. She would have to create new ties with all this little world that surrounds you, and consequently to establish between this world and her new family relations differing probably from those which now exist between your father and the people of your neighbourhood. Your father’s connection with the peasants of Berri, among whom he has always lived, is intertwined with traditions handed down through several generations without interruption. He can therefore obtain services from them, and inspire them with a confidence which would not be accorded to new-comers, or to any name but his; while these peasants on their part unsuspectingly accept favours which they know from long experience to be disinterested. The old manor-house, occupied by a stranger bearing a new name, would lose the prestige which your father so justly appreciated; there would in that case be no advantage in preserving its time-honoured aspect. M. de Gandelau, therefore, who does nothing without consideration, perceives that some day or other, by the pressure of circumstances, his house might be no longer suitable for his children, so that before its possible disappearance, he builds a new one for your sister; a house to which the neighbourhood will become gradually accustomed, and which will form a new family centre; for Madame Marie is beloved and esteemed throughout the neighbourhood. People will become accustomed to the more modern habits of the new manor-house, and no one will then think it strange that the old one should be demolished. Your father is preparing a gradual transition from a social condition, which, though on the decline even in the country districts, still exists, to that which is destined to replace it. You see, then, that though he values the past, and endeavours to preserve its advantages, he does not believe in its perpetuity, and foresees the time when it must vanish before the habits and requirements of the present. Natural as is your father’s mode of living, because it is the result of habits that have not been interrupted for many generations, it would be difficult for a new-comer to conform to these habits. Besides, this estate which M. de Gandelau has rendered so productive, and which he has increased in extent, will have to be divided at his decease amongst his three children. Already he has detached a portion of it to form your sister’s dowry. He intends, then, by the residence we are going to build, to have this part now brought into harmony with the habits of the new proprietors, who are young, and whose mode of life must be different from that which still suits your father. When you are older you will appreciate all these things better. Let us go and resume our work.”

Paul was endeavouring to gain a clear view of the grave subjects his cousin had been discussing. He recalled the conversation of the preceding days between his father and mother, and his mind was evidently full of ideas, new to him, which had been thus suggested. At any rate, the old house began to assume in his eyes a venerable appearance, and he was no longer inclined to censure its inconvenient arrangements and somewhat inelegant exterior.

CHAPTER IV.
PAUL’S IDEAS RESPECTING ART, AND HOW THEY WERE MODIFIED.

“Before resuming our pencil,” said Eugène, as soon as they were seated once more in his study, “you must know how you are going to proceed. We have sketched the ground plans. We know that they can be realized, that the construction will present no special difficulties; that the partition walls of the upper stories stand vertically on those of the lower ones; that the bearings of the floors are reasonable, and that the openings are conveniently placed. That is satisfactory so far.... But now, do you realize these plans in elevation? That is, can you fancy the house as standing, with its stories, its roofing, its windows, &c.?”

“Well, I can’t say I do.”

“You must then first picture the building to yourself as if it actually existed.... I know that this is hardly possible for you, since there are many architects who are as far off as you from being able to do so when they have drawn horizontal plans on paper, and who in drawing these plans do not see the building for which they are designed. Reflect a little; examine their outlines well, and endeavour to give them in elevation some definite form in your mind’s eye before making use of the pencil.... Take your time. I have a letter to write, and some accounts to attend to; so while I am engaged, try to give me the elevation of one of the fronts of the house,—the entrance-front, for example, on the north side,—and we will discuss your design. I only give you one piece of advice,—that is, to put nothing upon paper without having previously considered whether your design is appropriate and useful.

“Come, try your best; and don’t forget the scale of proportions.”

Paul was much embarrassed, and found the work by no means easy. The ideas which had suggested themselves in abundance at his first attempt were not forthcoming now. However, at the end of a good hour and a half he presented a sketch to his cousin.

“It might be worse,” said Eugène. “You have given the ground floor 15 feet from floor to floor,—that was about what we said; but why the same height for the first floor? The rooms are smaller, and more airy; there is therefore no need to give an equal height to this story, and 13 feet 6 inches would be quite enough. And why put round arched windows on the ground floor? Arched windows are difficult to fit with casements, and there is a difficulty with shutters, jalousies, or outside blinds. Again, the windows of your principal staircase do not ramp with the stairs, and would be cut in the middle by it; which would prevent their being opened, and expose them to danger from the feet in ascending or descending. In the next place, your stair turret does not rise above the cornice, and would not enable you to enter the attics. And so with the servants’ staircase. Your roofs are double pitched; that is, with two angles of inclination. That is not quite the thing for this district. The roofs should be simply triangular, and without hips, which are difficult to keep in repair. Gables are preferable. You have marked quoins of stone at the angles. I see no harm in that; but how would you form your window reveals thus enframed by a kind of pilaster? None of your chimney-stacks rise above your roof; yet you are aware that they usually show. Your attic windows are too low, and you would run your head against the top in looking out of them. The lintels of these dormer windows must be at least 6 feet 6 inches above the floor. And why make your dormer windows oval? It is a very inconvenient shape, and they are difficult to open and shut. You have drawn the entrance flight of steps in perspective, as the Chinese do ... but that is a trifle. What will you build your walls with? Masonry, rubble-work, masonry and rubble mingled, or stone and bricks?

Fig. 3.—Roof Plan.

“Let us study this together. When you draw a horizontal or ground plan, independently of the arrangements, you have to consider how your buildings shall be covered in. For the most important question in a building is that of the manner of roofing it, as every building intended for internal use is a shelter. That is unquestionable, is it not? Well, then, in your building, the plans of which you have now before you, what is observable in the general form of the main block? Two parallelograms intersecting—so (Fig. [3]). One parallelogram, a b c d, intersected by another, e f g h. We do not now take into account the bay windows and staircases. If then we raise gables upon the walls, a c, b d, with a length of slope equal to the line a c, we shall have two equilateral triangles whose bases will be a c and b d, and the angles of inclination 60°, which is the most suitable pitch for slating, inasmuch as it gives no hold to the snow or opportunity for mischief to the wind. If in like manner we erect upon the walls e f g h two gables having a similar inclination, these walls being less in length than those marked a b c d, the triangles will be smaller and their summits less elevated than the first. Consequently the roof raised upon the smaller parallelogram will penetrate that raised upon the larger, and will form by its penetration internal angles which we call valleys; I draw these valleys i k, k l, m n, m o. The inclination of the two roofs being equal, these valleys will, in plan, divide the right angle into two equal angles: you know enough of geometry to understand that.

“Here, then, we see the simplest way of roofing our building; and when roofing is in question, the simplest methods are always the best. Now, in order that our two stairs may give access to the third story, it is necessary that their walls should rise above the cornice of the building and form for them alone an additional story. We will then raise these stair-walls and will give them roofs of their own. One—that of the principal stairs—shall be pyramidal; and the other—that of the small stairs—conical.

“There is no reason why we should not erect upon the two walls g z, s t, of the bay windows, small gables, always with the same inclination of 60°, and cover these projections with two small roofs abutting against the great gables a c, b d. As to the building appropriated on the ground floor to the kitchen and on the first floor to the linen-room, we will follow the same method, and, erecting a gable on the wall u v, we shall have upon this wing a triangular roof, which will also abut against the great gable b d. We shall then have a meeting of two slopes at the bottom of the roof of the bay window s t, and of that of the linen-room wing. We shall form a lean-to (so as to do without inner gutters,) which will penetrate these two roofs and discharge the water at t. The horizontal projection, therefore, of this assemblage of roofs, will be as the drawing shows in Fig. [3]. The chimney-stacks will pass through these roofs, as I indicate to you; and in order to prevent the chimneys from smoking, these stacks should rise at least to the level of the ridge, that is, a little above the topmost crest of the highest roof. With regard to the roofs of the outbuildings, as they are lower—being only one story in height—we need not trouble ourselves about them just now.

“Observe that, as these gables rise perpendicularly, we are enabled to get in the roof a third story, affording some very convenient bedrooms for guests, besides the servants’ rooms (in the attics), which we must provide, and light by means of dormer windows; while we shall be able to provide for the bedrooms in the gables handsome windows with balconies, if we wish.

“That settled, in principle, it will be as well to arrange the divisions of this story in the roof. Lay a piece of tracing-paper upon the plan of the first floor. Good: now trace all the thick walls which must of necessity be carried up under the roof, since they contain fireplaces. Draw 3 feet 3 inches within the eave walls—i.e. those which do not carry gables—a line that indicates the space rendered useless by the slope of the roof; thus you will get the space of which you are able to make use. The principal stairs reach to this floor, as well as the servants’ stairs. To the left of the thick division wall, which, from the principal staircase, goes to join the angle of the main building towards the south-east—the desirable aspect—we are going to dispose the bedrooms for guests, which will thus form a separate quarter communicating with the chief apartments by the principal stairs. We can in this part get two good bedrooms, A and B, with their dressing-rooms a and b; and two smaller bedrooms C and D, all having fireplaces. We must not forget the water-closet for these rooms, at W. On the other side, in immediate communication with the servants’ stairs, we can easily get four servants’ bedrooms, E, F, G, H, a lumber-room I, and a water-closet L, for the servants. (Fig. [4].)

Fig. 4.—Plan of the Second Floor.

“In the upper part of the coach-house and stable building and over the wash-house, we shall also be able in the roofs to arrange three or four bedrooms for the coachman, groom, &c.

“And now for the elevations.

“We will raise the ground floor 4 feet above the exterior ground level, in order to give air to our cellars, and to preserve the ground floor from the moisture of the earth. We will give the lower rooms a height of 14 feet to the ceiling. Draw at this level a horizontal string course 12 inches deep, which will be the thickness of the floor. To the rooms of the first floor, which are smaller than those of the ground floor, we will give a height of 12 feet in the clear. Now, mark the thickness of the cornice, with its tabling, 1 foot 9 inches. Then will begin the roofs, whose height will be fixed by that of the gables. Taking the entrance front we project the angles of the building, the doors and the windows from the plan. Here, then, we have the outline of the façade arranged.”

Eugène then took the board and sketched the façade. (Fig. [5]).

Fig. 5.—The Entrance Front

A fair copy on a small scale of all this was soon made, to be sent to Madame Marie N——, that they might know what she thought of it, and might proceed to execute the plan as soon as her reply was received.

Paul was beginning to perceive some of the difficulties accompanying even the most modest architectural undertaking, and to ask himself how Master Branchu, who could but just manage to write and cipher, had been able to build the Mayor’s house, which was not such a bad one to look at.

His cousin, to whom he referred the question, replied as follows:—

“Branchu has a practical knowledge of his business; he is a good country mason, who began by carrying the hod: he is the son of a mason, and does what he has seen his father do before him. Besides this, he is intelligent, laborious, and honest. By practice alone he has succeeded in building as well as is usual in the country—perhaps a little better, because he sets himself to work to reason about what he is doing. He observes; he is no simpleton, nor is he vain; he avoids faults, and copies excellences wherever he sees them. You shall see him at work, and you will sometimes be surprised at the justness of his observations, the persistency with which he defends his opinions, and the practical methods of which he is master. If you give him instructions, and he does not quite understand them, he says nothing, but comes again next day to explain to you what he supposes was intended; thus obliging you to repeat one by one all the doubtful points, and to complete what seemed to him incomplete or vague in your statements. I like Branchu because of his persistent determination to understand the orders given him; and what makes him seem troublesome to some appears to me a virtue; for if you have to do with him, you must have foreseen everything, have an answer to every objection, and know exactly what you wish in every particular. He gave up working for Count ——, your neighbour, because he had to undo next day what he had been ordered to do the day before. Ask him about it—the story is worth hearing. This good man, who has had only the most elementary experience in his business, but is thoroughly master of it so far, who knows the materials of the district well, and how to make use of them, will tell you that the architect of that interminable château is an ignoramus, and will prove it to you, after his fashion. Yet it is evident that the architect in question is a much more learned man than Master Branchu.

“As a general rule, in giving an order, you should have thought seven times of the objections to which it is liable, otherwise some Master Branchu may start up who, with a single word will demonstrate your thoughtlessness. An architect may, indeed, if he chooses, stop the mouth of objectors when placed under his authority; but to impose silence on people is not to prove that they are wrong, especially if a few days afterwards the director of the works gives contrary orders. Every one has his share of amour-propre, which must not be disregarded. As a subordinate takes kindly and is flattered by the attention you give to his observations when they are well founded, so, on the other hand, he is disposed to doubt your capability if you reject them without examination; especially if, a short time afterwards, facts seem to prove that he might have been right. There is only one means of establishing discipline among a body of workmen; and that is proving to all that you know more about matters than they do, and that you have duly taken account of difficulties.”

CHAPTER V.
PAUL PURSUES A COURSE OF STUDY IN PRACTICAL ARCHITECTURE.

Meantime, letters and newspapers were daily bringing the most distressing intelligence. The enemy had crossed the French boundary a week ago. Building was a matter scarcely to be thought of. M. de Gandelau was visited almost incessantly by country people coming to impart to him their fears and to ask his advice. The able-bodied youths of the district were summoned to be incorporated in the mobile. The manufactories of the neighbourhood were being closed for want of hands. Groups of peasants—men and women—might be met on the roads, who, contrary to the quiet habits of this province, were speaking in excited tones; some of the women were crying. The labours of the fields were suspended; a painful shudder seemed to pass through the country; lights were seen in the cottages at a late hour of the night; voices were heard calling to each other. The cattle were brought in earlier than usual, and were driven afield later in the morning. When people met each other on the roads they would stay long talking. Sometimes, instead of returning to their own abodes, they would walk rapidly on together in the direction of the neighbouring town.

It was the 20th of August, 1870, when, going into his father’s room early in the morning, Paul found him still more depressed than on the previous days and it was not merely his aggravated gout that caused the depression. Eugène was there.—“Some are too old, others too young. If this boy was four or five years older,” said M. de Gandelau, embracing his son, “I would send him with all these young fellows who are summoned to the service; but he is too young, happily for his mother. It will be a long struggle, they say; God only knows what will become of our poor country engaged in an insensate war; but our duty is clear—to remain here among all these families, distressed as they are, and bereaved of their children; to wait, and try to calm down this distracted multitude. Do not let us surrender our self-possession, or give way to useless disquietude; let us work—that is the remedy for all evils; and misfortune will not find us more destitute of courage after days of labour than after a period of feverish inactivity. I see that Paul will not be able to return so soon to college. As to yourself, Eugène, nothing obliges you just now to stay in one place rather than another. Your business will be suspended in every quarter; remain here, where you can make yourself useful as long as the country does not require your services.

“Who knows what may happen! But even if this state of things continues, we will try to build Marie’s house; it will give employment to those who have been thrown out of work. You will be able to give Paul practical lessons in the elements of construction. We shall, perhaps, run short of the one thing needful for building—money. Ah, well! that will oblige us to discover the means of doing without it. We have the raw material; we have hands, and enough to keep them for some time to come. Let us, then, not give way to despondency and useless recriminations; let us work; we shall be only the better prepared if in one last effort we have to call upon all—old men and children with the rest—to defend our native soil.”

Madame de Gandelau uniting her entreaties with those of her husband, it was not difficult to persuade Eugène to take up his quarters at the château. In fact, three days subsequently, after having gone away to settle some affairs, he was on his way back with an ample store of paper and instruments required for the details of a building plan.

They could not set to work till the sketch sent to Paul’s sister should be returned, approved or amended. It was decided that during the interval Eugène should give Paul the first notions of the building of a house, that the morning should be the time for instruction, and that in the afternoon our architectural tyro should reproduce the lesson in writing, and have his work corrected at the family gatherings in the evening. Thus the days would be well occupied.

Lesson the First.

“If you please, Paul, we will take our lessons walking, and for a good reason.”

This arrangement was quite satisfactory to Paul, who was certainly not accustomed to this mode of teaching at the Lyceum. The prospect of a course of lessons delivered, re-produced in writing by the pupil, and corrected indoors, had not seemed to him at the first blush quite to harmonize with the idea which a youth of sixteen forms of hours consecrated to recreation; and although after his first attempts architecture seemed to him a very noble study, and he was proud enough to think that his plan was perhaps at this moment being inspected by his sister Marie and her husband, yet, at the moment he was directing his steps towards his cousin’s apartment, he had looked with a somewhat longing eye at the fine old trees in the park, and the brilliant green of the meadows between their dark trunks. A sigh of satisfaction escaped him as he tripped down the steps.

“Let us proceed leisurely towards that part of the estate where we are to build the house,” said his cousin, as soon as they were outside; “a knowledge of the ground is indispensable to the architect’s further progress. There are, as you know, several kinds of soils; some resisting, others soft and compressible in various degrees. Rocks form the firmest foundation—one on which we may build with confidence—provided they have not been excavated or disturbed. The name of virgin soil is given to that which presents itself in the condition in which geological phenomena have placed it; that of ‘made ground’ to soil which has been disturbed or deposited by man, or produced by vegetation, or brought to the spot by the sudden violence of torrents. As a general rule, we should give an exclusive preference to virgin soils; yet even some of these must be mistrusted, as I shall explain to you directly.

“We must then endeavour to distinguish a virgin soil from ‘made’ or disturbed ground; and to do so, some acquaintance with elementary geology is indispensable. Thus, the crystalliform rocks, granites, gneiss, and crystalline schists remain in the condition in which the cooling of the globe and the upheavals of its crust have placed them. The sandstones, the calcareous rocks, the marls, the gravels, even the clays deposited by water under an enormous pressure, are stratified—that is to say, deposited in layers, like the courses of a building, and present an excellent foundation. The hill there on the right, in whose direction your sister’s wood extends, presents, as you see from this point, escarpments laid bare by the waters of the brook we are going to cross; observe that the stone, which seems denuded, presents itself in almost horizontal layers. It is an oolitic limestone, excellent for building, and on which you may confidently rely as a foundation also. In these strata, therefore, we may excavate cellars, and make use of what we have taken from the excavations to raise the walls. Here we are walking on sandy clays, intermingled with millstone grit. This also forms a good and incompressible foundation. It is otherwise with pure clays; not that they are compressible, but, if they are not secured—if, for instance, they lie on a declivity—they are liable to slip in consequence of the infiltration of water between their layers, and the house built on them goes down with them. And thus you may sometimes see whole villages built on clayey declivities, descending into the valley. Great attention, therefore, must be paid to the method in which you build in clays, if you would avoid these dangers. Sometimes also, when they are greatly compressed by a heavy building, the clays sink down under the weight, and rise proportionally at a little distance, in see-saw fashion. Marine sands, pure, fine or gravelly, are well adapted to receive foundations, because the sand settles naturally, however slightly moistened it may be. To such a degree is this the case, that we can form an artificial foundation if needful by depositing good beds of sea-sand on a questionable soil, and moistening these beds thoroughly. The finer the sand is and the freer from clay the better, for its small, hard, equal grains leave only very slight intervals between them and touch on several points. If the weight compresses the layer of sand, and forces it to settle down, the settling down is regular, and consequently harmless. The building settles thus to the extent of some fractions of an inch, according to its weight; but it does not dislocate, because it settles uniformly. The alluvial deposits formed by slowly-flowing waters, such as rivers or lakes, also compose good foundations, because the layers of gravel or mud have been gradually deposited, and are closely heaped together by the liquid that transported them. It is quite otherwise with marshy soils, for the water, having no current, has allowed vegetables to grow in its bed. These vegetables on dying are annually replaced by others. Successive layers of detritus are then formed under very trifling pressure, leaving between them innumerable cavities, just like a heap of rotten hay. These deposits are called peat-bogs. Nothing can be safely placed on these deposits, for they sink down under the lightest burden. Stop! here we are near the stream, at a point which exhibits this phenomenon. Stamp on this closely-turfed soil. You perceive that the ground sounds hollow, and shakes beneath the shock. Sometimes these peat-beds reach to such a depth, through the accumulation of vegetable detritus, that the bottom can scarcely be reached. If you build upon these, your construction will gradually sink, often unequally, on account of the inclination of the sub-soil, so that the building will lean to one side. It is thus that at Pisa and at Bologna, in Italy, there are towers which inclined thus while they were being built, until the turf was completely compressed under their weight. When these soils occur, the turf must be removed, the rock or gravel must be reached, or piles must be driven in very close to each other, until they can be forced no deeper. Then, on the heads of these piles is placed what is called a raft, a kind of wooden framing, between the spaces of which concrete is poured, and on which the first courses of masonry are placed. Whole cities are built thus. Venice and Amsterdam rest only upon forests of piles driven in mud, which is spongy, because it was formed under a shallow sheet of water which had not power to compress it.

Fig. 6.

“But it is not enough to know the nature of the soil on which a building is to be erected; we must also examine the subjacent water-courses, and how the rain-water flows off on the surface of the ground, or beneath it. The presence of a bed of clay, however thin, between strata of limestone, grit or sand, is a most important fact to the builder; for such beds being impervious—that is, not allowing the rain-water to penetrate them—give rise to currents or sheets of water, which may occasion most disastrous consequences to the foundations. Examine this greenish layer just here, along the escarpment;—it is of clay; it is very thin, and cannot retain water; but suppose it were 20 inches thick. The rains, which will easily penetrate the gravel placed above, will be arrested by this layer of clay, and pursue their course along its plane of inclination, and they will gradually form cavities like small grottoes, and a concealed current. If you build a cellar wall or a foundation descending below that accumulation of water, it will reach your wall and penetrate it, in spite of your efforts, and will fill your cellars. It will consequently be necessary at the outset to divert this accumulation of water by collecting it in a drain to keep it away from your buildings. Give me your note-book, that I may show clearly what I mean by a sketch—(Fig. [6]). Let A B be the stratum of clay, C D the pervious stratum of gravel or sand. A sheet of water running from E to F will be formed after every shower. This sheet will be arrested by the foundation or cellar wall G H, and will soon permeate it, since it cannot reascend nor penetrate the clay. We must, therefore, provide, at I, a transverse drain, with openings on the upper side, through which water will find its way into the channel shown in sketch K. This drain will take the water thus collected wherever you like, and leave the wall G H perfectly dry. You understand, don’t you?

“But if you have to lay your foundations entirely in clay, you must adopt much more serious precautions: for, as I told you just now, the whole bed of clay may chance to slip.

Fig. 7.

“Banks of clay are apt to slip, especially when they present such a section as I have drawn—(Fig [7]). Let A be a bed of rock, B a bed of clay. Rain-water falling on the upper side from D to C, will pass at C below the bed of clay; and if the rain is persistent, it will form from C to E a soft, slippery, soapy stratum, so that the clay bed C B E will slide over it by its own weight, but especially if at G you have burdened it with a building.

“How, then, can we guard against the danger? First, by collecting the water at C into a sewer, or a dry stone drain, so that it may not pass under the clay bed,—in case the latter is very thick. Secondly, if it is only a few yards thick, by getting down to the rock or gravel for the foundation wall, and placing a collecting sewer at I, as above. Then the triangular bed of clay, C I K, will not be able to slide, being kept up by the firmly-planted and loaded wall. The part of the clay lying below, not being moistened from above, will not slip. But this wall, H, and its drain, I, must be thick enough to resist the pressure of the triangle C I K.

“You perceive, then, how important it is to understand the soils on which you have to build; and how essential it is for an architect to have some acquaintance with geology. Remember this well, for the architects of the preceding generation have shown a contempt for these studies, and have relied on their contractors in many instances where that knowledge was required.

“We shall also take into consideration muddy low-lying soils, permeated by water, which cannot be dug into, because their consistency is little better than that of compact mud, and in which the deeper you dig the less resistance you meet. When these soils are not of a turfy description, contain little vegetable detritus, and always retain the same quantity of water, you can build upon them, for water is not compressible. Your building is then a kind of boat; the only question is, how to prevent the water from escaping, from receding under the weight of the structure as it does under that of a boat. When you plunge into a bath half full of water, the liquid rises along the brim proportionately to the volume of your body. But suppose that a board cut out so as exactly to fit the outline of your body, prevents the water from rising around you, you will not be able to sink into the water, and it will bear you on its surface. Well, then, the problem of building in a muddy soil consists in preventing the mud from rising around the house in proportion to the pressure. I must once more give you a sketch, showing the method of securing a successful result in this particular case. (Fig. [8].)

Fig. 8.

“Let us suppose we have been digging in ‘made ground’ A, i.e., ground in which we cannot build with security. At B we reach the virgin soil, but it is very moist—mud of old formation, permeated by water, and in which one sinks in walking. The deeper we go into it the softer we find it. A bar thrust down to the depth of two or three yards discovers no bottom, and the holes made in it are immediately filled with water. Piles driven in sink up to the head. Now, there can be no doubt that for an ordinary building it will not do to spend in foundations double what the building itself would cost. We must consider, therefore. In this case we shall dig a trench of about 1 foot 6 inches to 2 feet deep, to receive the walls forming the perimeter of the house, as drawn at E; then, in these trenches, and over the whole area of the building, we shall pour concrete, having a thickness of 2 feet to 2 feet 6 inches, between the trenches, as at F. We shall thus have formed a cover of homogeneous material, which will prevent the mud, G H, comprised within its edges, from rising. The weight of the made ground A will suffice to keep down the rest. On a plateau of this kind you will be able to build securely.

“You will, perhaps, ask me what ‘concrete’ is, and how it is made. You will learn this later on.”

Talking and making sketches, Paul and his cousin had reached the slope of the hill on which the house was to be built.

“The situation is good,” said Eugène. “We have an excellent calcareous soil, from which we shall even be able to get stone or rubble fit for building. Here, on the lower slopes, we have fairly clean sandy clay, with which we shall make brick. And there is the spring of fresh water coming from the wood, and passing out below the lowest of the limestone beds; we shall easily secure it, and lead it along the house, where it will be doubly useful, for it will give us water for the requirements of the household, and carry off in a drain all the house sewage and impurities, which we will discharge into that old excavation which I see on our left.

“However, we must examine before we proceed, for it seems to me that these beds have already been worked at some points. We should be very likely to meet with some of those carelessly-conducted quarryings which are too common in this neighbourhood.”

“How,” asked Paul, “can good building-stone be distinguished from that of inferior quality?”

“It is not always easy to distinguish it, and in this, as in many other branches of knowledge, experience must confirm theory. Among calcareous stones, which comprise, with certain sandstones, the materials that can be easily quarried and worked, some are hard, others soft; but the hardest are not always those which best resist the effects of time. Many limestones contain clay, and as this retains water, when frosts supervene, these clayey parts swell, and burst blocks whose substance is composed of carbonate of lime, and also of silica, in larger or smaller quantity. Limestones free from clay are those which best resist moisture, and are least liable to be damaged by frost. When, as here, we have beds laid bare by erosion, it is easy to distinguish the good from the defective ones. Thus, observe that large dark-looking mass, whose smooth bare edge has been covered with lichens for centuries; it is of an excellent quality, for lichens spread over a rock very slowly; and to enable them to attach themselves to this stone and give it that grey speckled appearance, the limestone must have resisted the decomposing action of the atmosphere. Now, look at that bed of nearly pure white, and which seems so sound. Well; it has this fair appearance only because at every frost it has lost its skin; its surface has been decomposed. Touch this rock, and you will observe a white dust remaining on your hands. It is so, is it not? The quality of this block is consequently bad; in fact, you see that below it the grass is covered with small calcareous exfoliations, whereas the turf under the grey block is quite free from dust. It is then very desirable for an architect, when he intends to build, to go and see the quarries, and observe how the beds that compose them stand when exposed to the air, a thing—I may tell you—our brethren rarely do.”

Lesson the Second.

Paul was greatly pleased with the method adopted by his cousin for giving him the first notions of building. In the evening he presented as his day’s work a fair transcription of all that his teacher had explained to him on the ground. He even illustrated his text by some pretty good diagrams. The corrections were quickly made after dinner. But next day the incessant rain prevented them from going out, and Eugène decided that the second lecture should be given in the house. “We shall have illustrations enough before us; the château itself will supply them. We will go through it from cellar to attic, and study its materials and methods of construction—to criticize them if they are bad, or to take note of them if they are good.” When teacher and pupil had gone down into the cellars, Eugène began by saying, “Look how damp this cellar wall on the side of the courtyard is; and see how the mortar in the joints of the stones has fallen, owing to two causes:—first, in building these walls, the precaution was not taken of cementing them on the outside, so as to make the water in the ground run down to the bottom; second, the mortar employed in the building was not made with hydraulic lime. There are two principal kinds of lime: fat or rich lime and hydraulic lime. The first is obtained by burning the compact limestones usually found at the top of the beds; it is called fat because when slaked it is glutinous and sticks to the tool with which it is mixed; this lime, on being immersed in water, swells and sends forth a dense vapour, as you may have observed, and mixed with sand is slow in setting. Employed above ground, mortars made with this lime become at length very hard, but retain more or less for a time a certain plasticity. These mortars, however, as they are slow in setting, are readily softened by water, and cannot then ever harden. Hydraulic limes, on the other hand (obtained by burning the lias limestones), when mixed with sand, soon become very hard, and set all the better for being in a damp place. Hence this lime is called hydraulic, because it is employed for all masonry-work under water. In default of lias limestones, artificial hydraulic limes are made, by grinding a certain proportion of clay with a limestone suitable for making ordinary lime. Hydraulic lime is tested by slacking—that is to say, mixing it with water; when it slakes with the production of very little vapour.

“It is with hydraulic lime that concretes, of which I spoke to you yesterday, are made. The mortar being prepared, a certain proportion of hard gravel, about the size of eggs, is mingled with it; the whole is well mixed and thrown into the excavations, where it is rammed with wooden rammers. If the lime is good and the concrete well made, it forms a veritable rock, similar to the conglomerates or pudding-stone of natural formation. As, when set, water penetrates with difficulty through these concretes, they prevent that percolation of subjacent water to which cellars made in wet grounds are liable.

“If the wall you see there had been built with mortar made with hydraulic lime, it would have been sound, and the mortar joints would have been as hard as the stone itself. You will easily understand that when the water has gradually softened and liquefied the mortar in the beds and joints at the base of a wall, the stones which compose it settle, and all the rest of the building suffers. That is why the front of the house, towards the court, presents a considerable number of cracks, that are filled in from time to time, but of course with no result in doing away with the cause of the mischief.

Fig. 9

Fig. 10.

“You observe that the cellar wall which receives the arch of the vault is very thick, much thicker than is the wall of the ground floor. The latter is scarcely 2 feet thick, whereas this is full 3 feet. This additional thickness is given to the inside principally to receive the springing of the vault. A sketch will enable you to understand the reason of this arrangement. Let A (Fig. [9]) be the thickness of the wall of a house on the ground floor—a thickness of 1 foot 8 inches if cellars are wanted beneath the ground floor; the floor line being at B and the outside ground line at C, it will be well first to indicate the floor line by a projection,—a greater thickness given to this wall on the outside, say of 2 inches. At A, then, the wall will have a thickness of 1 foot 10 inches. Your cellar arch being drawn at D, we must reserve a resting-place of at least 8 inches, to receive the first arch-stones of the spring of the vault; then it is well to give on the side next the ground a greater projection, to make a good footing for the plinth; this projection being 2 inches, we shall have at F a thickness of 2 feet and at G 2 feet 8 inches at least, as it will not do for the wall which rises to bear on the oblique beds of the vault, otherwise it would not have a solid footing, and would be weakened or reduced in thickness by this arch, which would penetrate it, as we see in the drawing I. But come here into this other cellar, which belongs to the oldest part of the château, and is built with good stones. The builder did not wish to lose space within, and as he built with worked stone he sought to economise material. What, then, did he do? (Fig. [10.]) He gave his cellar wall only the thickness of that of the ground floor; at regular distances he put massive corbels 2 feet above the floor; upon these corbels he carried arches projecting 10 inches, and on these arches, which replace the extra thickness or counter-wall of which I spoke to you just now, he carried his vaulting arch. This perspective sketch will enable us readily to understand this method of construction. The upper wall thus leaves the vault perfectly free and rises plumb over its lower face.

“Is it all clear to you? Well, let us go and look at that little flight of steps which perhaps you have never attentively examined. It is 4 feet 3 inches wide, which was large enough to afford a passage to the queues of wine. Observe (Fig. [11]): the ramping vault is composed of as many arches, one above another, as there are steps; that is extremely well managed, solid and easily built. In fact, when the stone steps are laid, over above them is successively fixed the same wood centre which, of course, is raised at each step; and upon this centre an arch is built, which is quickly done, as the stones are worked ready. In this way the arches follow the section of the steps, and the centre being shifted—after each arch is keyed—to the next step commencing from the bottom, two men can turn five or six of these arches in one day, so that if there are twelve steps, this ramping vault may be built in two days. Look, I will show you how this construction should be denoted in perspective and geometrical section in your résumé to-day—A and B.

Fig. 11.

“Let us go up to the ground floor. Look at the efflorescence resembling cotton wool on the interior of the walls: it is the saltpetre which forms inside the stone, and, through the humidity of the ground, crystallizes on the surface. This saltpetre affects the stone injuriously, ultimately eats it away, and throws off any painting that we might endeavour to use as a counteractive on the interior surface. Mastic cements are made to stop the effects of the saltpetre, but these means only delay its appearance for a short time without curing the evil, and this cement soon falls off in a crust. It is therefore necessary in building, especially in the country, to prevent the damp of the ground from rising up in the walls, and to stop it at the ground level. The interposition of a layer of pitch beneath the plinth has sometimes been tried, in order to prevent the absorption of damp by the stones—or what is called capillary attraction—but this method is very inefficient. The pitch oozes out under the pressure, as it does not harden sufficiently to bear that pressure, or it decomposes and combines with the lime. The best plan is to lay a course of slates in the mortar-bed between the first lower courses of the plinth. The slate effectually hinders that effect of capillary attraction, and the damp is unable to rise in the walls.

Fig. 12.

“Now observe this front wall in the court: it forms a protuberance at the floor level of the first story. We call that a bulging of the wall. Instead of preserving its vertical plane, as it should have done, it has bulged out; and why? Because it has been thrust out by a force acting from within outwards. What is that force? It might be an arch; but there is no arching on the ground floor. It can therefore be only the floor. It is not clear at first sight how a floor, which is a horizontal plane, can thrust; for to thrust, we must suppose the floor to expand in one direction, which cannot be. But see what happens. Give me your best attention.... Formerly, to compose a floor, large beams were laid from wall to wall, and upon these beams lighter pieces of timber, called joists; then on these was laid a bed of earth, gravel, or sand, and upon that a surface of mortar to receive the tiling. This made a very heavy mass. Now, as a piece of timber, even of considerable section, bends in time under its own weight—that is to say, from being straight becomes curved—its tendency to bend will be proportionally greater when it is weighted. The more it bends, the more powerful its thrust upon the inner surface of the walls in which it has its bearing. It is this pressure upon the interior surface that tends to thrust the wall outwards. But if, as in this case, in order to relieve the bearing of the beams, struts of wood have been put underneath (Fig. [12]), this effect of thrust is all the more sensible because the arm of the lever is longer. You do not quite understand, I see. A sketch will make it clear to you. Let A be the section of the wall, or, if you will, its thickness. If the beam bends according to the line C D, there occurs a pressure at D, which produces a thrust at F and the rounding of the wall, as indicated by the dotted curves. Supposing even that in lieu of the strut E we have a stone corbel, the effect produced will be the same, though less forcible, unless the tail of the corbel reaches through the wall, as you see marked at I, and this tail K is weighted in such a manner that the weight neutralizes the pressure which the beam exerts at the end L. This has not been done here, where instead of the wood strut, a corbel was put. This corbel has but a middling hold in the wall, and the latter, formed of small stones not very well built, has not sufficient cohesion to resist the thrust exerted by the deflection of the beams. But why, you will ask me, has this effect been produced at the floor level of the first story and not above? Because, by the effect of the bulging we find here, the wall has inclined above towards the inside, and has thereby squeezed the second floor—its surfaces being placed, by their very inclination, perpendicularly to the curve line of the upper beams, as I indicate to you at M, exaggerating the effect for the purpose of making it clearer.

“You see that each detail merits attention, and that the builder ought to have a good reason for everything he does.

“In work of every kind we learn to avoid faults only by analysing and searching into their causes and ascertaining their effects. To become a good builder, therefore, it is not enough to familiarize one’s self with rules of construction, which cannot provide for all contingencies; we must see and observe much, and ascertain defective points in buildings that have been tested by time; just as physicians become able to determine what a good constitution is only by studying diseases and their causes. For the most part we appreciate what is good only through observing what is bad; if, in the absence of the bad, we are able to admit that there is such a thing as the good. An old proficient in architecture, who, when I was about your age, was so kind as to aid me with his advice, used often to say to me: ‘I can tell you, my dear fellow, what you must avoid in the art of building;—as to explaining to you in what the good and the beautiful consist, you must find out that yourself. If you are a born architect, you will know well enough how to discover it; if not, all that I could show you, all the examples I could place before you, would not give you talent.’ And he was right. The sight of the finest works in architecture may pervert the minds of students, if it’s not been explained to them how the authors of these works succeeded in making them beautiful by having avoided such or such faults.

“But you have enough to write out for to-day. Make a fair copy of these sketches opposite your text, and we will examine it this evening.”

CHAPTER VI.
HOW PAUL IS LED TO RECOGNIZE CERTAIN DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ETHICS AND ARCHITECTURE.

When, in the evening, Paul’s report of the lesson was read in the family circle, M. de Gandelau interrupted the reading at this phrase incorrectly given, “Good is only the absence of evil.”

“Oh, oh!” said his father; “Charity is something more than the absence of evil. If you give nothing to the poor man who asks bread of you; if, being able to swim, you do not try to save a drowning man, you do not do evil, but certainly you do not do good.”

“That is not exactly what I said to Paul,” replied Eugène, smiling. “Respecting defects discovered in building, I said, ‘I believe that the good is the absence of the bad;’ that is to say, in building operations, and perhaps in many other matters belonging to the purely material order of things, to avoid what is bad is to do well, but not to do good. I must, however, admit that I did not sufficiently develop my thought.

“Two things are needed to make a good builder: clear-sighted intelligence—which depends on our individual psychical nature—and the experience we acquire.

“Observation and experience thence resulting enable us to recognize what is defective and to avoid it; but if, notwithstanding the advantage thence derived, we are not endowed by nature with clear-sighted intelligence, experience, though enabling us to avoid the bad, does not of itself suffice for the discovery of the good.

“Moreover, though in morals the good is absolute and independent of circumstances, it is not the same with building. What is good here is bad elsewhere, on account of climate, habits, nature of materials, and the way in which they are affected by local circumstances. While, for instance, it is desirable to cover a roof with slates in a temperate and humid climate, this kind of roofing is objectionable in a warm, dry, and windy climate. Wooden buildings will be excellent in one situation and unsuitable in others. While it is desirable to admit the light by wide openings and to glaze large surfaces in northern climates, because the sun’s glare is subdued, this would be objectionable in southern countries, where the light is intense, and where it is necessary to procure shelter from the heat. A code of morals is possible, but we cannot establish absolute rules in building; experience, reasoning, and reflection must therefore always be summoned to our aid when we attempt to build. Very often young architects have asked me what treatise on building I should recommend as the best. There is none, I tell them; because a treatise cannot anticipate all contingencies,—all the special circumstances that present themselves in the experience of an architect. A treatise lays down rules; but ninety-nine times out of a hundred you have to encounter the exception and cannot rely upon the rule. A treatise on building is useful in habituating the mind to devise plans and have them put into execution according to certain methods; it gives you the means of solving the problems proposed; but it does not actually solve them, or at least only solves one in a thousand. It is then for intelligence to supply in the thousand cases presented what the rule cannot provide for.”

Lesson the Third.

“Yesterday,” said Eugène to Paul, when the latter came into his room, “we visited the cellars and the ground floor; now we shall take a walk among the garrets of the château. But first I must show you what is meant by a roof truss. The simplest truss (Fig. [13]) is composed of four pieces of wood: two principal rafters, a tie-beam, and a king-post. The two inclined pieces A are the blades; the horizontal piece B is the tie-beam, and the vertical piece C the king-post. The upper ends of the blades meet in the king-post, as I show you in the detail D,—namely, by the means of two tenons E, which fit into two mortises F, and a shoulder G, which make the whole pressure of the timber bear into the notch I. The lower ends of the blades are similarly connected at the two extremities of the tie-beam, as this other detail H shows us. The king-post is also connected by a tenon, in the centre of the tie-beam, but loosely, and without bearing upon this tie-beam. When the tenons are let into the mortises, pegs of wood are driven into the holes marked to fasten the whole well. The more pressure there is on the top, M, the more the two blades tend to spread at the foot; but these, being fixed at the two ends of the tie-beam, tighten the latter like the string of a bow. The more this tie-beam is strained, therefore, the less it is inclined to bend, and the object of the king-post is only to suspend it by its centre, and to connect the heads of the blades. But between M and N these rafters may bend under the weight of the roof covering; two struts, O P, therefore are added, which arrest this bending by bringing the pressure to bear on the king-post, so that the latter is in its turn strained between M and P. As wood will not stretch, the point P is fixed, and the two points O likewise.

Fig. 13.

“Now that you know what is the simplest roof-truss, let us go up into the roofs.”

These roofs were old, and had been repaired and strengthened many times, and formed a complication of timbers difficult enough to understand.

“Formerly,” said Eugène, “that is, more than a century ago, they used to make roofs such as you see here: every rafter was framed, that is, each of the rafters composed a truss, except the tie-beam, which was introduced only at intervals. Then wood was in plenty, and they scarcely thought of economising it. At present it is less abundant, and there is a difficulty in procuring a considerable number of pieces of large dimensions. The noble forests that covered the soil of France have been foolishly wasted, and long timbers of heart of oak are rare. It has therefore been necessary to economise them. The expedient has been adopted of placing strong trusses at a distance of about 12 feet from each other. On these trusses have been placed purlins, which are the horizontal pieces you see on this side; and on these purlins longer or shorter rafters have been placed to receive the lathing for the tiles, or the battens for the slates. But all timber roofing should be fixed upon sleepers, which are those horizontal pieces resting on the top of the walls, which bind and isolate the tie-beams from the masonry; for it is to be observed that timber is preserved for an indefinite time in the free dry air, but soon decays in contact with a moist body, such as stone is. Look here at this piece of wood, almost buried in the masonry; it is nearly reduced to touchwood, while the blade above, which is in the free dry air, is as free from rot as if it were new.

“Formerly upper floors were made by putting joists resting on beams and the walls. These joists and beams remained visible, as you may see still in the kitchen and the large hall on the ground floor, which serves as a store-room. The air therefore could circulate round these timbers, and they might last for centuries. But it was considered that thus exposed they were not pleasant to look at—that they were not clean, and allowed spiders to spin their webs in the interspaces. Laths were therefore nailed under these joists, and this lathwork plastered so as to form what we call a ceiling. Timbers thus inclosed and deprived of air, ‘heated’ (as carpenters call it), that is, they fermented and soon began to decay. In fact, floorings with exposed joists which had resisted the action of time for centuries decayed and broke down in a short time after being inclosed. I may add that formerly, before using timber in building, they took the precaution of leaving it exposed for some years to the action of the sun and rain. They even kept it for some time in water, to free it from the sap (for sap is the ferment which makes wood rot). When the timber, after having been barked and roughly squared, had remained in the open air for five or six years, it was used. But now-a-days we are in a hurry, and make use of timber that has not been cut more than a year. It is not dry, it retains its sap, and if it is then enclosed it ferments rapidly, so that in a few years the largest beams are completely rotten. Prudent architects therefore hesitate to use wood for floors. Yet its use—even if only partially dried—would not entail serious inconvenience if it was not covered with plaster. The worst that could happen would be the occurrence of cracks and shrinkings. It would dry when in use, as it would have dried in the open air.

“There is no great disadvantage, then, in employing wood newly cut for roof-timbers, which are generally left exposed. They dry where they are. They warp, but do not perish of dry-rot.

“As we shall not be able to find wood absolutely dry for your sister’s house, we shall leave the floor-joists visible, and endeavour by simple and economical means to render them not unsightly.

“But you ought to be well acquainted with the qualities of timber. I will not tell you that nature has caused these large vegetable growths which we employ to grow for our pleasure or use. Nature is, I think, very little concerned as to whether the oak or the fir would serve any of our purposes; and if human intelligence has been able to take advantage of these materials that spring up before us, it is after having recognized and verified their properties by experience. Unfortunately, it would seem as if the results of this experience did not tend to increase; and judging from the way in which building-timber is most frequently employed, we might be led to suppose that we are less informed than were our predecessors, or that we have lost that habit of observation with which they were familiar.

“Wood, being composed of fibres more or less lax or compact, possesses a considerable power of resistance to a pressure exerted along these fibres, but is easily bent or crushed under a pressure exerted across these same fibres. Thus a log of wood 4 inches in diameter and a yard or so long, placed on end, will support, without being crushed or contorted, a pressure of 40,000 lbs.; whereas this weight will break or crush it if placed horizontally, as you would crush a reed under your foot. Take a thoroughly sound bit of straw, 4 inches long, and place your finger on one end of it, holding the straw vertically on a table; you will have to press pretty strongly on it to bend it, while the least pressure on the same straw placed horizontally will flatten it. The straw is a tube. A tree consists of a series of tubes, some enveloping others. The more numerous, close and fine these tubes are, the more does the trunk resist pressure, either in the direction of its length or its thickness. But this shows us that to enable the wood to retain its power of resistance we must employ it as nature gives it to us; and in fact this was done formerly. Each piece of timber was cut from a tree of larger or smaller size, as the case required, but they did not split the tree lengthwise to get several pieces of timber; for the heart being harder and more compact than the sap-wood (which is the spongy envelope beneath the bark), and the concentric layers of wood being the closer and tougher in proportion to their nearness to the bark, if you split a tree in two lengthwise one of its faces is much more resisting than the other, the equilibrium is disturbed, and flexure is easily produced under a weight. The outer layers, being the more recent, are more spongy and lax in texture than the older layers that are near the heart; consequently the process of drying makes these outer layers shrink more than the inner: hence curvature. Let A (Fig. [14]) be a split piece of wood; the layers B are harder and more compact than those marked C, which contain more moisture and whose fibres are softer. In drying, therefore, this piece of wood will present a hollow bend on the outer side, as I show at D. If the wood is left entire, as at E, the effects of drying will neutralize each other, and the piece will remain straight.

Fig. 14.

“Look at this old roof, whose rafters are framed (Fig. [15]): the wall plates, A, are cut from small trunks, the heart being in the centre. It is the same with the rafters B, the tie-beams C, the collars D, the king-posts E, the foot-pieces F, and the foot-posts G; all these pieces, therefore, have preserved their rigidity, and none of them has been bent, because they were used dry and were unsplit trunks. Observe, on the contrary, this purlin, H, placed on this truss, I, of recent date; it is bent not so much on account of the weight of the rafters it supports as because it is split and the carpenter has unadvisedly turned the heart on the inside. If he had done the contrary,—if the heart had been placed next to the rafters,—this purlin would probably not have bent, perhaps have even become more rigid—that is to say, it would be convex on the outer side. Carpenters, however, are but men, and they do not care to give themselves trouble when they think they can avoid it. The man that put this purlin here found it more convenient to place it on its sawn side than to turn it the other way with the flat under the rafters.

Fig. 15.

“Considering this quality of wood, and of oak especially (whose internal fibres are harder and closer than the outer layers), when we have to place a piece of wood horizontally on two points of support or posts, and wish to give it all the strength possible to bear a weight acting on its centre, we saw it in two lengthwise, and turning the flat faces outside, bolt these two pieces together, as shown here (Fig. [16]). Then as the heart-wood is outside, and the two pieces tend to become bent, forming two convex surfaces, as you see at A (Fig. [17]), if they are firmly held by bolts furnished with good heads and nuts, they must remain straight; the tendency to curvature in the one neutralizing that in the other, these two opposing forces tend to make the piece more rigid, so that, if you take a piece of timber that is slightly bent naturally and then place these two pieces with their hollow downwards,—that is, after having placed one upon the other, putting the tail of one against the head of the other,—you will have given this piece of wood all the resisting power of which it is capable.

Fig. 16.

Fig. 17.

“It is in this way that clips and all coupled pieces should be placed. Here, for example (Fig. [18]), you see a pair of clips where the sawn faces have been turned outside to replace a decayed tie-beam. We call clips those pieces of wood which, in pairs, usually clench two or more parts of a framing. These clips, A, hold fast by means of notchings, the blades B, the king-post C, and the two struts D. Iron bolts with screw-nuts tightly hold the notchings of the clips, like a pair of jaws, against the timbers which have to be kept in their place. But this is enough for to-day, and you will have plenty to do to make a fair transcript of this lesson in carpentry between now and this evening.”

Fig. 18.

CHAPTER VII.
SETTING OUT THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE HOUSE, AND OPERATIONS ON THE GROUND.

Next day a letter dated Naples was received from Madame Marie N——, expressing the liveliest and most patriotic apprehensions with regard to recent events. Paul’s sister wished to induce the family to join her at Naples; her husband could not return to France just at present; the business which called him to Constantinople allowed of no delay, and would oblige him to embark very shortly. The letter terminated thus: “We have received Paul’s designs; we suppose his cousin must have given him a little help. I should be delighted, and my husband too, if there was any chance of such a plan being realized; but who can think of building in the state in which our poor country is now! Rather make up your mind to come and join us.”

“Well,” said M. de Gandelau after reading the letter, “you see your plans are approved: let us set to work at once. If the Prussians should come as far as this and set our old house on fire, as their custom is, they will not burn the walls of a building only just begun, and what we have spent in its erection will not get into their pockets.”

Eugène, helped by Paul, who calculated the items—he had never undertaken such a task before—drew up the estimate, which amounted in all to 7,000l. The earthworks and masonry were expected to cost 3,400l.

Master Branchu was summoned: “A very good gentleman your father is,” said he to Paul, when it was settled that they should begin the following day; “he sets people to work when the best hands are being turned off everywhere, and old fellows like me, who cannot go soldiering, would have a hard time of it all the winter. I shall go and drink his health with Jean Godard the carpenter, who will be desperate glad like myself.”

The rest of the day was employed in marking the principal dimensions on the plan, so as to be able to set out the excavations.

Master Branchu was already on the ground next day, equipped with lines, stakes, nails, and broches, a large carpenter’s square, and a water-level, when Paul and his cousin arrived at an early hour in the morning.

“You see,” said Eugène to Paul, “that the figures indicate on this plan the distances between the centre-lines of the walls. Consulting these dimensions, we shall set out these centre-lines on the ground with the help of lines attached to what we call broches (Fig. [19]), which consist of two stakes firmly fixed in the earth, and a crosspiece. The direction of one of the centre-lines being determined according to the orientation it suits us to choose, the places of the other axes will follow according to the distance figured on the plan and the square returns.”

Eugène had soon settled the line of centre, A, for the dining and billiard-rooms, according to the desired orientation. Then on this first centre-line was set out by means of a small theodolite another at right angles, which was the centre-line of the entrance-hall. These two lines once laid down, the others were determined by means of the dimensions previously marked on the plan. The centres of the principal walls were thus traced on the ground by lines attached to the broches.

Fig. 19.

As cellars were to be made under the whole extent of the main building, Eugène contented himself with ordering Branchu to excavate the entire ground to a distance of about a yard beyond the lines of the perimeter. Two labourers with their picks set to work therefore at once to mark out the excavation. “If,” said he to the workmen, “you find stone, as may certainly be expected, at no great depth, and if it should prove to be of good quality, you will take care not to break it up; get it out for walling stone; we will make use of it and pay you for your extra trouble. If you find boulders, let them be blasted, and lay aside the best pieces for use. To-morrow or the next day we shall give you the plan and section of the cellars. Meantime lay in a good store of bricks, lime, and sand; you know that in this district it is desirable to arrange matters beforehand if we would have the materials when wanted. It is September already, and our cellars must be built at least before the first frosts.”

“This being settled then,” added Eugène, addressing Paul when they were returning to the house, “I appoint you clerk of the works, and these will be your duties: You will come to the ground every morning, and take care in the first place that the orders given in your presence are strictly executed. For instance, you will have to take account of the quantity of stone extracted from the excavation, and to have it properly stacked in a heap about one yard thick, two yards broad, and of a length depending on the yield of the quarry. Having thus verified the daily increase of the heap, we shall be secure against any abstraction from it. You will keep a note-book in your pocket, in which you will mark its daily augmentation, and you will take care to have every leaf countersigned by Branchu. Your business just now will be only overlooking; but it will become more complicated as the works advance. If materials are brought you will take account of the quantity,—in numbers if it is bricks, or by solid content if it is sand or lime. For this purpose I shall have brought to the ground one of those road-labourer’s boxes, which are a yard square and half a yard deep. Each measure when filled contains therefore half a cubic yard.

“You will tell Branchu to get a wooden shed built to keep his tools in, and to keep the lime under cover till it is slacked. If we had a contractor, or some one with whom a bargain had been made, we should not have to trouble ourselves about the quantity or content of the materials brought to the ground; but as it is, we must employ elementary means, for Branchu has not capital with which to provide materials. We shall therefore give him the materials we buy, or which the estate supplies, on account. You perceive the necessity of preventing these materials from being abstracted or wasted. We pay him only for the labour. This plan obliges us to be more attentive and vigilant, but we are at least secured from being deceived as to the quality of the materials by a contractor, who might think it his interest, if he bought them, to supply us with some of a quality inferior to that contemplated in the estimate.

“We shall make the same terms with the carpenter. Your father tells me he has some oak timbers that have been cut more than two years, and put in the wood-yard near the Noiret farm. Let us go and have a look at them, and mark those that can be employed. Our figured plan gives us the lengths of the flooring joists.”

Passing by the side of the rivulet that flows along the little valley, Eugène was looking attentively at its steep banks, and was striking the rock faces with the iron-shod end of his stick. “What do you observe there?” said Paul.

“I think we shall find here good materials for our cellar vaulting.... Look at this yellowish stone, porous like a sponge. It is a present to us from this little water-course. It brings down in its waters carbonate of lime, which is incessantly being deposited on the grasses and vegetable detritus on its banks and in its bed. This rivulet thus forms a light and very porous tufa, which is soft and friable as long as it is thoroughly moist, but which acquires a certain degree of hardness in drying. Formerly this rivulet was larger than it is now, and it appears to me to have deposited a considerable thickness of this tufa as presented on its banks in their actual condition. Take this bit, and look at it attentively. You see that it is filled with cavities,—little cylindrical passages; they represent the twigs around which carbonate of lime was deposited. The twigs themselves decayed and disappeared long ago; the coating has remained and been hardened in the air. Observe how light this kind of stone is, being composed of cells scarcely thicker than egg-shells. Yet, try to crush it under your heel. It resists, and the pressure scarcely blunts its asperities. Well, dry it, and in a week it will be even harder. A smart blow with a hammer will be required to break it.

“This material is perhaps the best for vaults, on account of its lightness, its toughness, its cavities, and that roughness of surface which makes the mortar adhere so closely to the joints that it cannot be separated, and the whole, when sufficiently dry, seems to form only a single piece.

“We shall send two excavators to get out a few cubic yards of it. It is no difficult operation; and when this tufa is in a damp state in its natural bed, it can be very readily cut up into brick-shaped pieces.”

They soon reached the Noiret farm; and there in fact, under a shed along the wall of the barn, were piled up pieces of timber roughly squared and blackened by damp. Eugène marked a certain number of them with his knife, leaving those that were crooked, knotty, or cross-grained.

“What is a cross-grained piece of timber?” asked Paul.

“Cross-grained timbers are those whose fibres form a spiral round the heart. You can understand how the fibres of the wood not being vertical, and forming spirals more or less complete, lose their resisting property; these fibres, on account of the circuit they make,—and which is not a regular one,—become disjoined, and leave deep cracks between them. These timbers, therefore, are rejected as defective, as are also those whose heart is unsound, or which have what they call soft rings; that is, diseased parts between their layers—a sort of interior ulcers which not only deprive the wood of its homogeneity of resistance but develop decay around them. It often happens that these soft rings are not observed, and that timbers which appear very sound fall rapidly to dust. And as these diseases are frequent or rare according to the soils in which the wood grew, it is essential to know whence the timbers employed in buildings came. One forest will produce oak admirable in appearance, but which rapidly decays; another furnishes timber that is always sound. Generally, timber grown on light and dry soils is good; the produce of damp, clayey ground is bad.

“You will have these cross-grained and crooked timbers put on one side; they will do to make the centres for the cellars; they are fit for nothing else, unless it be for firewood. As to these fir poles, they will serve for scaffolding.”

It was late, so the cousins asked for breakfast at the farm. While they were laying the table, Paul said, “I want to know how you use the theodolite.”

Fig. 20.

“In the case of an operation such as we have just been performing, it is the simplest thing in the world. I asked Branchu to send my instrument to the château, that I might not be troubled with it all the morning; but there is no need to have it here to show how to use it. You know that the theodolite consists of a graduated circle, divided into 360 degrees. This circle, movable on its centre, is furnished with an air-bubble level, and a telescope above, both of which turn horizontally on a pivot in the centre of the circle. The level and the centre of the telescope are perfectly parallel to the plane of the circle. This is placed upon a stand with three legs, and the circle is first fixed horizontally by means of three regulating screws, and by turning the level. The air-bubble must be always at the centre, to whatever degree of the circle the tube is directed. This being done, and the feet being placed at the point marked on the ground—verifying the position by means of a plumb-line passing through the centre of the plate—the glass is directed towards a fixed point where a ‘sight’ is placed. The glass of the telescope is crossed by two hairs at right angles, which mark its centre. The intersection of the two hairs must fall on the point on which the telescope is directed. But previously the indicator or vernier below the telescope is set to the zero of the circle. It is therefore the entire instrument that has been turned. If, then, for example, we wish to construct a right angle on the line joining the point where you are standing with the first sight, you turn the glass till its indicator stands at 90 degrees (the quarter of the circle). You send a man with another sight in the direction of the glass, and have this sight carried to right or left until its centre is exactly on the line of the vertical hair of the glass. You have this sight fixed. It is then certain that the line drawn from the point where you stand in the direction of the second sight forms a right angle with the first base line, since two diameters cutting a circle divided into 360 degrees at right angles give 90 degrees for each quarter of the circle. By the help of this instrument, having previously indicated on the plan of a building whose foundations you are laying out, the angles which certain lines, starting from any point, form with each other, you can transfer these angles to the ground. Suppose you have to lay the foundations of a semi-circular portico. Having fixed the centre, and traced the semi-circle on the ground, placing the theodolite on this centre, you will be able to direct lines that will cut this circumference at regular intervals, and which would mark, for instance, the centres of the columns or pillars. Since from point A to point B you have 180 degrees (Fig. [20]), you will divide these 180 degrees into as many parts as you choose on the circle of the theodolite, and the centre of the glass will give you, at a great distance, the same divisions on the semi-circular portico. In the same way as the theodolite serves the purpose of laying the foundations of a building, it enables us to take the bearings of a tract of country. For suppose the base, E F, to be a known length which you have measured: placing your instrument at E, you direct the glass on a point C,—a tree, a steeple, or a pole; you have then the number of degrees on the circle comprised by the angle C E F. You transfer this angle to your paper, then moving the instrument to the point F, you direct it thence on this same point C; you obtain similarly the angle C F E, which, transferred to the paper, gives you exactly the position of the point C, and the unknown distance from E to C and from F to C; then either of these lengths will serve you for a base in its turn, and operating from the point C and the point F, and sighting a fourth point D, you know the lengths C D and F D. Thus you can operate over a whole country; this is what is called triangulation, the first operation required for getting a map of the country. But we are getting into another region of knowledge. Let us go to breakfast!”

CHAPTER VIII.
PAUL REFLECTS.

The omelette au jambon despatched, Paul remained silent.

“Well, my young colleague, you seem to be looking at something outside the real world. Is it hunger that gives you that pensive look? Shall we have another omelette?”

“No, thank you. My hunger is quite satisfied. What bothers me is, that I don’t half understand all you have been so kindly explaining to me. There are points which I cannot catch; and I am asking myself whether I can be really of any use to you in overlooking the building. It seems to me that I should have much to learn; the little you have taught me is all in confusion in my head, and we haven’t even begun the work yet.”

“Discouraged already! Come, come! each day’s task can be finished in the day; and a house is not built so fast but that you can add something every day to your store of practical knowledge, without confusion.

“All you learn will find its place in your brain, for the head is a marvellous box; the more you fill it the more it enlarges; and everything classified in the compartment destined to receive it can always be found again. The great thing is to keep one’s bureau in good order, and only to place in it objects well studied and sorted.

“But each day you ought to make a complete transcript of the work done, and leave nothing for the morrow. The commission I give you—that is the daily record of all that is brought to the works, and of the employment of the materials—what we call ‘keeping account’ is only a question of exactness and care. The important point is not to let your work get beforehand with you. Two hours daily will suffice to take account on the spot. You see that you will still have three or four hours left to attend to the details of the execution, and to take your pleasure.”

“Did you begin to learn architecture in this way?”

“Oh! by no means. When I left college I was articled to an architect for two years, who set me to copy drawings of buildings, of which I was not told either the age, or the country, or the use; then to lay on tints. During this time, I took lessons in mathematics, geometry, and drawings from models. I was then prepared to enter the École des Beaux Arts, where not much is taught, but where they compete to obtain medals and the Grand Prix, if you can. I remained there three years, making five in all. Meantime, I was obliged to get my living, for I had no more than enough to pay for my lodging and to buy clothes. I was obliged, therefore, to get into an office—that is to say, to work for so much an hour at an architect’s, who was in large practice. There I used to trace plans and nothing else, except now and then to make some detail drawings.—Heaven knows how!—for I had never seen the smallest part of a building executed. But my employer was not exacting, and the master builders supplied by their experience what was wanting in these details. Seeing that all this would not put me in a speedy way to master my profession, and being so fortunate as to have had a few hundred pounds left me, I resolved to travel—to study architecture in actual buildings, and no longer in those shown me on paper. I set myself to observe, to compare, to see practical men at work, to examine buildings that were crumbling to pieces, that I might discover in animâ vili the causes of their ruin.

“At the end of five more years I was sufficiently acquainted with my profession to be able to practise it. Total—ten years; and I had not built even a dog-kennel. One of my patrons introduced me to an agency for government works, where I saw methods employed which scarcely agreed with the observations I had been able to make during my previous architectural studies. If at any time I allowed myself to make remarks on this discrepancy, I found they were not well received. This circumstance, and the fact that a fine opportunity offered itself for making use of what I had learned, occasioned my stay there to be of no long duration.

“A large commercial company was on the point of erecting manufacturing works on an extensive scale. They had engaged an architect who was proposing to erect buildings in the Roman style, which was not exactly what they wanted. They did not think it quite to the purpose to build in the plains of the Loire edifices recalling the splendours of Ancient Rome. I was introduced to the directors; they explained what they wanted to me. I listened; I worked indefatigably to acquire what I was ignorant of, in order to satisfy my clients. I visited factories, made the acquaintance of large contractors, studied building materials, and at length furnished the draft of a plan which pleased them, but which would scarcely satisfy me now. The work was begun; assiduous study, and constant attendance on the ground, enabled me to supply my deficiencies in point of knowledge, so that they were satisfied with my commencement. Most of these gentlemen had town and country-houses. I became their architect, and this soon obtained me large practice and more work than I could execute; especially as I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to be always studying, reasoning, and improving; so that (looking at the matter in this light) the further you advance the more difficulties you have to encounter.”

“How, then, should architecture be studied?”

“Why,—as I have shown you,—by practising it. In France, at any rate, no other method has been employed hitherto, and perhaps this is the best.”

“But how do those learn to build who do not travel, as you did, but simply study in the usual way?”

“They do not learn to build. They only learn to imagine and design impossible structures, under the pretext of preserving the traditions of ‘high art;’ and when they are tired of putting these fancies on paper, they have a place as clerk of works given them, where they do what you are going to do; the only difference being that they feel a disgust for the work because they were expecting something very different.”

“But, beginning as I am going to begin, shall I be able afterwards to study the—what shall I call it?”

“The theory,—the art, in short. Certainly, you will be able to study it much more easily; for the modicum of practical knowledge you will have acquired in building a house, or in seeing it built from foundation to roof, will enable you to understand many things which, without practice, are inexplicable in the study of the art. This will give you the habit of reasoning and of satisfying yourself as to the why and wherefore of certain forms and certain arrangements dictated by the necessities of practical building,—forms and arrangements which appear simply fanciful in the eyes of those who have no idea of those necessities.

“How are children taught to speak? Is it by explaining to them the rules of grammar when they are only three years old? No; but by speaking to them, and inducing them to speak to express their wishes or necessities. When they have learned to speak nearly as well as you and I do, the mechanism and rules of language are explained to them, and then they can write correctly. But before learning according to what laws words ought to be placed, and how they ought to be written to compose a phrase, they had become acquainted with the signification of each of them.

“If we had not in France the most singular ideas respecting teaching, we should begin with the beginning, not with the end, in the study of architecture. We should impart to students the practical elementary methods of the art of building, before setting them to work to copy the Parthenon or the Thermæ of Antoninus Caracalla, which, for want of those first practical notions are to them mere phantoms; we should thus train their young minds to reason and to become aware of all their deficiencies, instead of exciting their youthful vanity by exercises purely theoretical or artistic at an age when they cannot clearly understand the forms that are given to them as models.”

“A house such as we are going to build seems to me a very small affair. Surely such a construction can hardly supply the information necessary for erecting a great edifice.”

“Do not imagine that, Paul; construction, apart from certain branches of scientific and practical knowledge, which you will be able to study at leisure, is nothing but a method,—a habit of reasoning,—a compliance with the rules of common sense. Of course you must possess common sense and consult it. Unfortunately, there is a school of architects which disdains this natural faculty, asserting that it fetters imagination; for we have among us idealists, as there are in literature and among painters or sculptors; though if idealism is permissible among littérateurs and artists,—for there it is harmless,—in architecture it is quite another thing; it is expensive, and you and I have to pay for it. We have consequently the right to consider it at least out of place. The reasoning faculties and good sense have to be called into exercise quite as much in building a house as in constructing the Louvre, in the same way as you may show tact and intellect in a letter as well as in a large volume.

“The ability of an architect is not determined by the quantity of cubic feet of stone he uses. The size of the building makes no difference.”

“You maintain, then, that as much ability is required to build a moderate-sized house as to erect a vast palace?”

“I do not say that; I say that the faculties of the mind, reasoning, accuracy, the exact appreciation of the materials at our disposal, and their proper use, are manifested as well in the construction of the simplest habitation as in the erection of the most magnificent architectural monument.”

“I shall then be able to learn much in observing the building of my sister’s house?”

“Certainly. First, because one learns much when one has the wish to learn; secondly, because in a house, as in the largest of palaces, the entire architectural staff will have to present themselves before you, from the excavator to the decorative painter. Whether the carpenter makes twenty doors or two hundred, if you can get a clear notion of how a door is made, hinged, and hung, one alone is quite enough; you have no need to see a thousand.”

“But here we shall not be making doors (for example) such as those of royal apartments?”

“No; but the principles on which they are, or ought to be made, are the same for both; and it is by departing from these principles that we fall into mere whims and follies. When you know how a wooden door is made you will see that the structure is adapted to the nature of the material employed, viz., wood, and to the purpose it has to serve. This knowledge acquired, you will be able to study how clever men have made use of these elements, and how (without departing from fundamental principles) they have produced simple or splendid works; you will be able to do as they have done, if you have talent, and to seek new applications of principles. But you must, in the first place, know how a door is made, and not imitate at hazard, while destitute of this preliminary practical knowledge, the various forms that have been adopted, be they good or bad.”

Paul continued thoughtful all the rest of the day. It was evident that he was becoming aware of grave difficulties, and the building of his sister’s house was assuming in his mind disquieting proportions. Returning to the château, he began to look at the doors, the windows, and the wainscoting, as if he had never seen anything like them in his life; and the longer he looked, the more confused, complicated, and difficult to understand did it all appear to him. He had never asked himself by what contrivances these pieces of wood were combined and held together, and found hardly any satisfactory solutions of the questions he was putting to himself.

CHAPTER IX.
PAUL, CLERK OF THE WORKS.

“Go, my dear Paul, and see how far the excavations are advanced this morning,” said Eugène, two days after the visit to the ground, “and bring me your report. Take a rule and a note-book with you, and take notes and measurements of what has been done. You will examine the ground, and tell me if they find blocks of stone near the surface of the soil, or if the loose earth is deep. In the meantime I am going to draw the plan of the cellars. But take the tracing of the plan of the ground-floor of the house, and on this plan, mark out what they have begun to excavate, and what they find. The work cannot be far advanced; but some excavations will have been already made, since I have told Branchu to set as many labourers to work as he could find, so as to comply with your father’s intentions.”

A little embarrassed by his new duties, Paul soon reached the ground. Aided by Branchu, he took the measure of the diggings, indicated the depths as well as he could, and marked the spots where they found rock or loose earth. This took him two good hours.

“Well,” said Eugène, when they were settled in the study, after breakfast, “there is the plan of the cellars (Fig. [21]). Let us see how it will suit your report of the ground, and whether we shall have to make some modifications in this plan. Ah! I see the rock is nearly on the surface towards the south, and the loose soil reaches pretty uniformly a depth of three yards towards the north of our buildings. We shall, therefore, make the cellars under the drawing-room, the dining-room, and the billiard-room, in the limestone rock,—cutting the latter; and we shall make a foundation for the front part, especially for the stabling and coach-house, with good masonry.

Fig. 21.

“Here (Fig. [21]) is the plan of the cellars. You see these axial lines: they indicate the centres of the walls of the ground-floor, and must not be departed from. The figures denoting the thickness of the walls are always marked from these centres. Thus you see these dimensions are greater where the cellar-wall will have to carry the spring of the vaulting of the cellars—as I explained to you, the other day.

“We have a rivulet that will supply the services of the house, by means of a reservoir, which we will place as high as possible. We have not yet taken the levels; but judging by a glance, I should say (reckoning by the falls of the rivulet and the rapidity of its course) that at 100 yards from the house the reservoir will store the water so as to enable it to reach the level of the first floor by pipes. That we shall have to ascertain. Otherwise we shall have recourse to a pump worked by horse-power or by a windmill. We will afterwards conduct this stream of water into a drain along the walls at the north of the house, as you see at A, so that this drain may collect the waste water from the house by a conduit, B, and receive the closet discharges at C, D, and E. The running water will thus take off this sewage into a tank, which we will make down below in the kitchen-garden. This water when it has settled is excellent—let me tell you—for watering the vegetables.

“I have indicated on the plan at G the sections of the cellar barrel-vaults. The cellars will measure 5 feet from the floor to the spring of the vaults, and the vaults will have a rise of 5 feet. These cellars, therefore, will have a height of 10 feet under the crown, which will be very satisfactory, especially as the ground is dry. We shall then be able to make use of the cellars, not only for storing wines but vegetables, for a larder, &c. The level of our ground-floor being 5 feet above the general surface of the ground, we shall easily ventilate these cellars by air-holes, as I have marked at H. The descent to them will be by the steps on the right, situated near the wash-houses and by the servants’ stairs in the turret. The right-hand steps will serve for taking down stores, and the winding-stairs for carrying up the wines and other things to the pantry.

“Have you seen whether Branchu has taken care to have the materials extracted from the excavations regularly deposited?”

“Yes: but hitherto he has found only thin layers of what he calls rag; but he has them stacked, and tells me they will be very good for foundation walls.”

“He is right: this rag is liable to injury from frost in the open air, but it is hard, and does very well in cellars; and it makes good strong walling, because it is bedded,—that is, occurs in the natural state in thin parallel layers, 4 to 6 inches thick.”

“That is just about what he told me; but he added that it swallows up a great deal of mortar, and I did not quite understand what he meant by that.”