Chapter 1

There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires
melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary
moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is,
perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the
skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a
stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters
suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose
half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an
unaccustomed step.

Such elements of sadness formed the physiognomy, as it were, of a
dwelling-house in Saumur which stands at the end of the steep street
leading to the chateau in the upper part of the town. This street--now
little frequented, hot in summer, cold in winter, dark in certain
sections--is remarkable for the resonance of its little pebbly
pavement, always clean and dry, for the narrowness of its tortuous
road-way, for the peaceful stillness of its houses, which belong to
the Old town and are over-topped by the ramparts. Houses three
centuries old are still solid, though built of wood, and their divers
aspects add to the originality which commends this portion of Saumur
to the attention of artists and antiquaries.

It is difficult to pass these houses without admiring the enormous
oaken beams, their ends carved into fantastic figures, which crown
with a black bas-relief the lower floor of most of them. In one place
these transverse timbers are covered with slate and mark a bluish line
along the frail wall of a dwelling covered by a roof _en colombage_
which bends beneath the weight of years, and whose rotting shingles
are twisted by the alternate action of sun and rain. In another place
blackened, worn-out window-sills, with delicate sculptures now
scarcely discernible, seem too weak to bear the brown clay pots from
which springs the heart's-ease or the rose-bush of some poor
working-woman. Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where
the genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of
which the meaning is now lost forever. Here a Protestant attested his
belief; there a Leaguer cursed Henry IV.; elsewhere some bourgeois has
carved the insignia of his _noblesse de cloches_, symbols of his
long-forgotten magisterial glory. The whole history of France is there.

Next to a tottering house with roughly plastered walls, where an
artisan enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman,
on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial
bearings may still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have
shaken France since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of
the merchants are neither shops nor