the middle of
courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds, and
distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or
scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps
drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows,
whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms
of bottles. Against the plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black
joists, a meager pear-tree sometimes leans, and the ground floors have
at their door a small swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come
pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the
courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences
disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a
broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's,
with two or three new carts outside that partly block up the way. Then
across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound
ornamented by a cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at
each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons blaze upon the door. It is
the notary's house, and the finest in the place.

The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that
surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves
that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous
pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green
squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of
Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here
and there has black hollows in its blue color. Over the door, where
the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase
that reverberates under their wooden shoes.

The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely
upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there
with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr.
So-and-So's pew." Farther on, at the spot where the building narrows,
the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed
in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars,
and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands, and,
finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the
Interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks,
closes in the perspective. The ch