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A wicket gate, all green with a film of vegetation over the decaying wood, opens under the very eaves of a cottage, and the path goes by the door across a narrow meadow where deep and broad trenches, green now, show where ancient stews or fishponds existed, and then through a farmyard into a lane.
One could there distinguish, very well, though cleverly united with the principal building by long galleries, decked with painted glass and slender columns, the three Hotels which Charles V. had amalgamated with his palace: the Hotel du Petit-Muce, with the airy balustrade, which formed a graceful border to its roof; the Hotel of the Abbe de Saint-Maur, having the vanity of a stronghold, a great tower, machicolations, loopholes, iron gratings, and over the large Saxon door, the armorial bearings of the abbe, between the two mortises of the drawbridge; the Hotel of the Comte d' Etampes, whose donjon keep, ruined at its summit, was rounded and notched like a cock's comb; here and there, three or four ancient oaks, forming a tuft together like enormous cauliflowers; gambols of swans, in the clear water of the fishponds, all in folds of light and shade; many courtyards of which one beheld picturesque bits; the Hotel of the Lions, with its low, pointed arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron gratings and its perpetual roar; shooting up above the whole, the scale-ornamented spire of the Ave-Maria; on the left, the house of the Provost of Paris, flanked by four small towers, delicately grooved, in the middle; at the extremity, the Hotel Saint-Pol, properly speaking, with its multiplied facades, its successive enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excrescences, with which the fancy of the architects had loaded it during the last two centuries, with all the apses of its chapels, all the gables of its galleries, a thousand weathercocks for the four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose conical roof, surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those pointed caps which have their edges turned up.
The bath was, however, considered a luxury, and at a later date it was held a capital offence to indulge in one on a religious holiday, and the public baths were closed when any misfortune happened to the republic. On the tops of the houses, after a while, terraces were planned for the purpose of basking in the sun, and sometimes they were furnished with shrubs, fruit-trees, and even fishponds.
Sometimes the garden might be extended into a park, with fishponds and great abundance of game; Hortensius had such a park near Laurentum, fifty jugera enclosed in a ring-fence, and full of wild beasts of all sorts and kinds.
Hualalai, owing to the vegetation sparsely sprinkled over it, looks as if it had been quiet for ages, but it has only slept since 1801, when there was a tremendous eruption from it, which flooded several villages, destroyed many plantations and fishponds, filled up a deep bay 20 miles in extent, and formed the present coast.
"Never does a stroke o' work for nobody, sir. And how he lives is just one o' them mysteries that can't be dived into. He's a poacher, a snarer, and a robber of the fishponds any one of 'em when he gets the chance; leastways it's said so; and he looks just like a wild man o' the woods; wilder than any Robison Crusoe! And he but you might not like me to mention that, sir."
Let me add, that the sailor-fellow has been tampering with my Kitty, and offered a bribe, to find where to direct to you. Next time he comes, I will have him laid hold of; and if I can get nothing out of him, will have him drawn through one of our deepest fishponds. His attempt to corrupt a servant of mine will justify my orders. I send this letter away directly.
The sumptuous palace to which the populace of London gave the name of Dunkirk Mouse, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth.
We need not summon Octavianus, and when he is here let him take what he will if he only spares the lives of my mother, the twins, and little Alexander, whom I love, and bestows on me the estate the main thing is that it must be full of fishponds of which I spoke.
Built in the sixteenth century by that distinguished prelate, scholar, and courtier Abbot Richard Beere, the house had boasted its chapel, hall, parlour, chambers, storehouses and offices; its fishponds and orchards; and a park in which might be kept some four hundred head of deer.
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