Monsieur Grandet took
advantage of a cart returning by way of Froidfond to go and see his
chateau. Having cast a master's eye over the whole property, he
returned to Saumur, satisfied that he had invested his money at five
per cent, and seized by the stupendous thought of extending and
increasing the marquisate of Froidfond by concentrating all his
property there. Then, to fill up his coffers, now nearly empty, he
resolved to thin out his woods and his forests, and to sell off the
poplars in the meadows.
II
It is now easy to understand the full meaning of the term, "the house
of Monsieur Grandet,"--that cold, silent, pallid dwelling, standing
above the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts. The two
pillars and the arch, which made the porte-cochere on which the door
opened, were built, like the house itself, of tufa,--a white stone
peculiar to the shores of the Loire, and so soft that it lasts hardly
more than two centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously
bored or eaten out by the inclemency of the weather, gave an
appearance of the vermiculated stonework of French architecture to the
arch and the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance
to the gateway of a jail. Above the arch was a long bas-relief, in
hard stone, representing the four seasons, the faces already crumbling
away and blackened. This bas-relief was surmounted by a projecting
plinth, upon which a variety of chance growths had sprung up,--yellow
pellitory, bindweed, convolvuli, nettles, plantain, and even a little
cherry-tree, already grown to some height.
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