urret, is a cluster of chestnut-trees reaching up to the roof and
shading it.

After the key had been turned in the lock and the door pushed open with
kicks, we entered a dark hallway filled with boards and ladders and
wheelbarrows.

This passage led into a little yard enclosed by the thick interior walls
of the castle. It was lighted from the top like a prison yard. In the
corners, drops of humidity dripped from the stones. We opened another
door. It led into a large, empty, sonorous hall; the floor was cracked
in a hundred places, but there was fresh paint on the wainscoting.

The green forest opposite sheds a vivid reflection on the white walls,
through the large windows of the castle. There is a lake and underneath
the windows were clusters of lilacs, petunia-blossoms and acacias, which
have grown pell-mell in the former parterre, and cover the hill that
slopes gradually to the road, following the banks of the lake and then
continuing through the woods.

The great, deserted hall, where the child who afterwards wrote _Rene_,
used to sit and gaze out of the windows, was silent. The clerk smoked
his pipe and expectorated on the floor. His dog, which had followed him,
hunted for mice, and its nails clicked on the pavement.

We walked up the winding stairs. Moss covers the worn stone steps.
Sometimes a ray of light, passing through a crack in the walls, strikes
a green blade and makes it gleam in the dark like a star.

We wandered through the halls, through the towers, and over the narrow
curtain with its gaping machicolations, which attract the eye
irresistibly to the abyss below.

On the second floor is a small room which looks out into the inside
courtyard and has a massive oak door that closes with a latch. The beams
of the ceiling (you can touch them), are rotten from age; the
whitewashed walls show their lattice-work and are covered with big
spots; the window-panes are obscured by cobwebs and their frames are
buried in dust. This used to be Chateaubriand's room. It faces the West,
towards the setting sun.

We continued; when we passed in front of a window or a loop-hole, we
warmed ourselves in the warm air coming from without, and this sudden
transition rendered the ruins all the more melancholy and cheerless. The
floors of the apartments are rotting away, and daylight enters through
the fireplaces along the blackened slab where rain has left long green
streaks. The golden flowers on the drawing-room ceili