ty attach themselves to a ruin; but
this house, still standing, though being slowly destroyed by an avenging
hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. At the very least,
it testified to a caprice. More than once in the evening I boarded the
hedge, run wild, which surrounded the enclosure. I braved scratches, I
got into this ownerless garden, this plot which was no longer public or
private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the disorder. I would not,
as the price of the story to which this strange scene no doubt was due,
have asked a single question of any gossiping native. On that spot I
wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself to little debauches of
melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known the reason--perhaps quite
commonplace--of this neglect, I should have lost the unwritten poetry
which intoxicated me. To me this refuge represented the most various
phases of human life, shadowed by misfortune; sometimes the peace of the
graveyard without the dead, who speak in the language of epitaphs; one
day I saw in it the home of lepers; another, the house of the Atridae;
but, above all, I found there provincial life, with its contemplative
ideas, its hour-glass existence. I often wept there, I never laughed.

"More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the dull
hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank; you
must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering about
with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no fear
of cold, for in a few moments you feel an icy cloak settle on your
shoulders, like the Commendatore's hand on Don Giovanni's neck.

"One evening I felt a shudder; the wind had turned an old rusty
weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry from the house, at
the very moment when I was finishing a gloomy drama to account for
this monumental embodiment of woe. I returned to my inn, lost in gloomy
thoughts. When I had supped, the hostess came into my room with an air
of mystery, and said, 'Monsieur, here is Monsieur Regnault.'

"'Who is Monsieur Regnault?'

"'What, sir, do you not know Monsieur Regnault?--Well, that's odd,' said
she, leaving the room.

"On a sudden I saw a man appear, tall, slim, dressed in black, hat
in hand, who came in like a ram ready to butt his opponent, showing a
receding forehead, a small pointed head, and a colorless face of the hue
of a glass of dirty water. You would have taken him for an usher. T