It was a plain-looking house, built of brick, with brick-work arches
above the windows, and bright green Venetian shutters to make it gay.
Through the glass door you could look straight across the house to the
opposite glass door, at the end of a long passage, and down the
central alley in the garden beyond; while through the windows of the
dining-room and drawing-room, which extended, like the passage from
back to front of the house, you could often catch further glimpses of
the flower-beds in a garden of about two acres in extent. Seen from
the road, the brick-work harmonized with the fresh flowers and shrubs,
for two centuries had overlaid it with mosses and green and russet
tints. No one could pass through the town without falling in love with
a house with such charming surroundings, so covered with flowers and
mosses to the roof-ridge, where two pigeons of glazed crockery ware
were perched by way of ornament.
M. Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand livres derived
from land, besides the old house in the town. He meant to avenge his
wrongs legitimately enough. He would leave his house, his lands, his
seat on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he
meant to do. He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as
far as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disinheriting
one child to benefit another; and what was more, he had been putting
by money for the past fifteen years to enable his lout of a son to buy
back from Emile that portion of his father's estate which could not
legally be taken away from him.
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