These
ugly growths seemed to waken and talk to each other when the frogs
deserted them with much croaking, and the water-fowl, startled by the
sound of the wheels, flew low upon the surface of the pools. The
courtyard, full of rank and seeded grasses, reeds, and shrubs, either
dwarf or parasite, excluded all impression of order or of splendor.
The house appeared to have been long abandoned. The roof seemed to
bend beneath the weight of the various vegetations which grew upon it.
The walls, though built of the smooth, slaty stone which abounds in
that region, showed many rifts and chinks where ivy had fastened its
rootlets. Two main buildings, joined at the angle by a tall tower
which faced the lake, formed the whole of the chateau, the doors and
swinging, rotten shutters, rusty balustrades, and broken windows of
which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest. The north wind
whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her indefinite
light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre. But the
colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and tawny
schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly a
spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the
building. Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, the battered
tower and broken roofs gave it the aspect of a skeleton; the birds of
prey which flew from it, shrieking, added another feature to this
vague resemblance.
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