Publisher's Synopsis
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 itlasts hardly more than two centuries. Numberless irregular holes, capriciously bored or eaten out bythe inclemency of the weather, gave an appearance of the vermiculated stonework of Frencharchitecture to the arch and the side walls of this entrance, which bore some resemblance to thegateway 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 projectingplinth, 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.The door of the archway was made of solid oak, brown, shrunken, and split in many places;though frail in appearance, it was firmly held in place by a system of iron bolts arranged insymmetrical patterns. A small square grating, with close bars red with rust, filled up the middle paneland made, as it were, a motive for the knocker, fastened to it by a ring, which struck upon thegrinning head of a huge nail. This knocker, of the oblong shape and kind which our ancestors calledjaquemart, looked like a huge note of exclamation; an antiquary who examined it attentively mighthave found indications of the figure, essentially burlesque, which it once represented, and whichlong usage had now effaced. Through this little grating-intended in olden times for the recognitionof friends in times of civil war-inquisitive persons could perceive, at the farther end of the darkand slimy vault, a few broken steps which led to a garden, picturesquely shut in by walls that werethick and damp, and through which oozed a moisture that nourished tufts of sickly herbage. Thesewalls were the ruins of the ramparts, under which ranged the gardens of several neighboring ho