An Historical Mystery | Page 5

enlarged the estate by the purchase of others, and united
the several domains, solely for the purposes of a hunting-ground. He
also built the Simeuse mansion at Troyes, not far from that of the
Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses and the bishop's palace were long
the only stone mansions at Troyes. The marquis sold Simeuse to the
Duc de Lorraine. His son wasted the father's savings and some part of
his great fortune under the reign of Louis XV., but he subsequently
entered the navy, became a vice-admiral, and redeemed the follies of
his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis de Simeuse, son of this
naval worthy, perished with his wife on the scaffold at Troyes, leaving
twin sons, who emigrated and were, at the time our history opens, still
in foreign parts following the fortunes of the house of Conde.
The /rond-point/ was the scene of the meet in the time of the "Grand
Marquis"--a name given in the family to the Simeuse who built
Gondreville. Since 1789 Michu lived in the hunting lodge at the
entrance to the park, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and called the
pavilion of Cinq-Cygne. The village of Cinq-Cygne is at the end of the
forest of Nodesme (a corruption of Notre-Dame) which was reached
through the fine avenue of four rows of elms where Michu's dog was
now suspecting spies. After the death of the Grand Marquis this
pavilion fell into disuse. The vice-admiral preferred the court and the

sea to Champagne, and his son gave the dilapidated building to Michu
for a dwelling.
This noble structure is of brick, with vermiculated stone-work at the
angles and on the casings of the doors and windows. On either side is a
gateway of finely wrought iron, eaten with rust and connected by a
railing, beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha, full of vigorous trees,
its parapets bristling with iron arabesques, the innumerable sharp points
of which are a warning to evil-doers.
The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the /rond-
point/; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes planted
with elms; on the other, within the park, a corresponding half-circle is
formed by groups of rare trees. The pavilion, therefore, stands at the
centre of this round open space, which extends before it and behind it
in the shape of two horseshoes. Michu had turned the rooms on the
lower floor into a stable, a kitchen, and a wood-shed. The only trace
remaining of their ancient splendor was an antechamber paved with
marble in squares of black and white, which was entered on the park
side through a door with small leaded panes, such as might still be seen
at Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that Chateau into an asylum
for the glories of France. The pavilion is divided inside by an old
staircase of worm-eaten wood, full of character, which leads to the first
story. Above that is an immense garret. This venerable edifice is
covered by one of those vast roofs with four sides, a ridgepole
decorated with leaden ornaments, and a round projecting window on
each side, such as Mansart very justly delighted in; for in France, the
Italian attics and flat roofs are a folly against which our climate protests.
Michu kept his fodder in this garret. That portion of the park which
surrounds the old pavilion is English in style. A hundred feet from the
house a former lake, now a mere pond well stocked with fish, makes
known its vicinity as much by a thin mist rising above the tree-tops as
by the croaking of a thousand frogs, toads, and other amphibious
gossips who discourse at sunset. The time-worn look of everything, the
deep silence of the woods, the long perspective of the avenue, the forest
in the distance, the rusty iron-work, the masses of stone draped with
velvet mosses, all made poetry of this old structure, which still exists.

At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a
mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief,
screw-driver, and rags,--in fact, all the utensils needed for his
suspicious occupation. His wife's chair was against the wall beside the
outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms of the
Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, "Cy meurs." The
old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front of Madame
Michu, so that the latter might put her feet upon the rungs and keep
them from dampness.
"Where's the boy?" said Michu to his wife.
"Round the pond; he is crazy about the frogs and the insects," answered
the mother.
Michu whistled in a way that made his hearers tremble. The rapidity
with which his