He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of
his inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall,
which gave an out-look between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show
the outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills.
By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a
place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles
and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of
flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the
door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and
overhung by two long gargoyles. The windows of the chapel gleamed
through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and
threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense
blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great
family of the neighbourhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town
house of his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it
and mentally gauging the skill of the architects and the
consideration of the two families.
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