Chapter X: Paul Begins to Understand

In spite of the news of the war, which was daily assuming a more threatening character, M. de Gandelau insisted on the works not being interrupted; and the inhabitants of the _château_ found in the execution of the plans prepared by Eugène and Paul a beneficial distraction from the sad forebodings which oppressed them.

In the evening, after reading the paper, which recorded, alas! only a succession of disasters, everyone remained silent, with eyes fixed on the hearth; but soon, with a determined effort, M. de Gandelau started the inquiry how the house was getting on. It was for Paul, as Clerk of the Works, to give an account of the operations of the day, and he began to perform his task with a fair amount of exactness and clearness. He showed his memorandum books, which, thanks to Eugène’s corrections, were not very badly drawn up, and which, by the help of a daily summary of accounts, indicated the expenses that had been incurred.

The excavations had hitherto furnished enough materials to obviate the necessity of sending for any from the neighbouring quarries. About the 15th of September the cellar walls were already beginning to make their plan visible, and it was time to think of the exterior plinths in elevation, and of the cellar vaultings, for whose construction wooden centres were required. The carpenter was therefore commissioned to send for timber-sawyers, to convert some trunks of poplars, which having been cut some time before, were put by for the purpose. The best part of the wood was sawn into thin boards for battens, to be employed when required; and the slabs—that is, the part near the bark—were cut up for centring for the cellars. As the plans gave only two barrel-vaults whose arches were different, the curves were soon struck out, and the carpenter prepared the centres, which were fixed up as soon as the cellar walls reached the level of the spring of the vaults These centres were formed in the manner shown in Fig. 25—that is, consisted each of a tie-piece, A, a king-post, B, two blades, C, and clips, D, which held fast the curves formed of slabs of poplar nailed together, as shown at E, and fixed at G and H on to the king-post by means of a notch, F, and to the tie-piece by an iron staple. On these centres, supported by props K, and set five feet apart, they laid a covering composed of planks, L, 3 inches thick, to receive the vaults, which were made of blocks of tufa extracted from the banks of the rivulet, 8 inches in thickness, with a good layer of mortar over all. The openings for the air-holes had to be contrived in the haunches of the vault, a piece of work which gave Paul considerable trouble—or rather, he had some difficulty in understanding it and sketching it in his note-book; for, as to Branchu, he did not seem to find any particular difficulty in it.

Eugène had given the sketch for the air-holes at the same time as the section of the plinth, 5 feet in height above the ground level.

This drawing presented, in section at A, and in plan at B, the figure 26. Eugène had to explain this sketch to his clerk-of-works, who did not understand it at the first glance. “As the light comes from the sky, at the mean angle of 45°, the cellars must be lighted accordingly,” said Eugène. “The plinth consists of a course, D, half sunk in the ground, two clear courses, E F, and a course bearing the set-off. We give the cellar wall bearing the spring of the vaults, 3 feet. The wall above the floor-level being 2 feet, this wall gives one foot on each side of the fixed centre-line, but as the plinth has 4 inches of projection outside, there will be 16 inches from the centre to the exterior face of this plinth. Within, the wall descends plumb as far as the skew-back which carries the vaults. A width of 8 inches is needed to receive the latter. Thus, from the centre-line below the spring of the vaults there will be 20 inches in the interior, and 16 inches on the exterior: total, 3 feet. The lower course rising above the surface 6 inches, and the height of the plinth being 5 feet, there remains above these 6 inches, 4 feet 6 inches, which divided by three gives for each course 18 inches. I take the opening of the air-hole in the second course; out of the third, I take a chamfer of 4 inches, to admit the light, as the exterior, M, and the section indicate. I cut the first course to a slope of 45°, as shown at I, leaving a flat, _a_, of 12 inches, as you see in the plan. Then, behind this sill, I place a lintel, with a chamfer in the same way, as drawn at O, and take care to leave at _b_, two rebates of 2 inches, for casements or gratings, at discretion. At the back of these rebates, I splay the air-hole, which has only 2 feet 8 inches of exterior opening, to 3 feet 4 inches. I draw in section an inclined line, _m n_, 8 inches above the lintel O, which 8 inches will be the rise of the arched opening that will penetrate into the barrel-vault, and whose curve in horizontal projection will give the outline X. Thus this arch, X, will receive the thrust of the courses of the barrel-vault, and will throw it on the two cheeks, P. Branchu will only have to mark the curve X on the covering of the centres to form his arched opening.”

It was not quite certain that Paul perfectly caught this explanation, though repeated several times; and he did not understand it completely till he saw Branchu construct the air-holes and the centres were removed (Fig. 27).

“I spare you the difficulties,” said Eugène, seeing that Paul was puzzled to comprehend the construction of the cellars, “for the structure of the vaults and their penetrations is a matter that requires long study. We have made only simple barrel-vaults, and you will observe that the cellar doors are all in the end walls, or tympanums, and not in the side walls bearing the springing of the vaults. With the difficulties, I also avoid useless expense. The courses which form the plinth will be of hard stone, but you will observe that, except at the angles and for the air-holes, they are only a facing,—they are not parpings, that is, do not form the whole thickness of the wall. We have excellent rubble-stone, which, with the good mortar we employ, offers greater resistance to pressure than is required to carry two stories and a roof. Letting these rough stones tooth out on the inside we tie them better into the haunches of the barrel-vaults (Fig. 28), and thus economise dressed stone. You will also see in elevation, above the plinth, how we can spare dressed stone if we wish, while preserving a perfectly sound construction. We find moreover, on the surrounding uplands, layers of thin limestone, which split in regular beds from 6 to 8 inches in thickness, and which make capital range-work. We call that range, or coursed work, in which the stone is laid with visible faces, beds, and joints somewhat roughly dressed. This range-work facing, which presents in its way an attractive appearance, and whose rusticity contrasts with the smooth finish of the dressed stone, is backed with ordinary rubble walling. Thus, in districts where stone occurs naturally of this shape in the quarries, we get an economical building material. But it is puerile to amuse one’s self with making thin coursed-work where soft freestone abounds, and where it must be cut into little bits to obtain this appearance. You will see that it is contrary to common sense to cut great blocks of stone into little bits, and that when the quarries supply those only, it is reasonable to employ them according to their natural dimensions, and to adapt the construction to the nature and height of the stones. Here we have large blocks, when we require them, but they are not common. In short, we ought to proceed, as far as possible, according to the nature of the materials which the soil furnishes us in abundance.”

The drain was made, the vaults were turned; the steps down to the cellars were laid; the plinth had risen more than a yard above the ground. It was time to think about studying the details of the elevations. That overlooking the garden was only roughly sketched out. Paul was hoping that it would present a more regular appearance than that of the entrance side. He made a remark to that effect, for Paul had seen in the environs of Paris, many country-houses that seemed to him charming, with their four pepper-boxes at the angles, their porch in the very centre of the façade, and their zinc cresting on the roof. He had too high an opinion of his cousin’s ability to allow himself to criticise the façade of his sister’s house, as designed for the entrance side; but in his heart he would have preferred something more conformable to the laws of symmetry. Those windows of all forms and dimensions shocked his taste a little. When the façade on the garden side (Fig. 29) was sketched—a frontage which, this time, presented a symmetrical aspect—Paul declared himself satisfied with it; and in the evening, the family being assembled, he asked why the entrance front did not present the symmetrical arrangements which delighted him on the garden side.

“Because,” said Eugène, “on the garden side our plan gives us rooms which are the counterparts of each other, of equal dimensions and corresponding purposes; while on the entrance side we have very diverse services in juxtaposition. The question you raise, Paul, is a very large one. Two methods may be followed. On the one hand, you may plan a symmetrical architectural casing, in which you try, as best you can, to accommodate the services required by a habitation. Or, on the other hand, you may arrange these services, in plan, according to their importance, their respective place, and the relations that are to be established between them, and erect the casing so as to suit these services, without troubling yourself to obtain a symmetrical appearance. When it is proposed to erect an edifice whose exterior aspect is destined to exhibit a grand unity of design, it is desirable to endeavour to satisfy the rules of symmetry, and to take care that the building shall not present the appearance of having been built piecemeal. In a private habitation it is imperative first to satisfy the requirements of its inhabitants, and not to incur needless expense. The habitations of the Ancients were not symmetrical, any more than those of the Middle Ages. Symmetry strictly applied to domestic architecture is a modern conceit—an affectation—a false interpretation of the rules observed during the best periods of art. The houses of Pompeii are not symmetrical: the country-house—the _villa_—of which Pliny has left us a complete description, did not present a symmetrical _ensemble_. The castles, manors, and houses built during the Middle Ages are anything but symmetrical. Lastly, in England, in Holland, in Sweden, in Hanover, and in a large part of Germany, you may see numbers of dwellings wonderfully appropriate to the needs of their inhabitants, which are constructed without regard to symmetry, but which are nevertheless very convenient and elegant in appearance, from the simple fact that they clearly indicate their purpose.

“I know that there are many persons quite disposed to put themselves to inconvenience every day, in order to have the vain pleasure of exhibiting regular and monumental façades outside; but I think your sister is not one of those persons, and therefore I have not hesitated to proceed according to what I conceive to be the law of common sense in making the designs for her habitation. I can fancy her asking me, with her quiet, and slightly ironical smile—

“‘Why, my dear cousin, did you make me so large a window in this small room? We shall have to stop up half of it.’... Or, ‘Why did you not give me a window on this side, where the view is so pretty?’

“If I replied that it was to satisfy the laws of symmetry, she would perhaps have laughed outright, and, _in petto_, might probably have thought that her respected cousin was after all a fool, with his ‘laws of symmetry.’”

“Alas!” said M. de Gandelau, “there are too many people in our country with whom considerations of vanity take precedence of everything else, and that is one of the causes of our misfortunes. Appearance is the great object. Every retired _bourgeois_ who has a country-house built, wishes to have his turrets regularly disposed at the corners of a building, symmetrical, indeed, but in which he is very indifferently lodged—satisfied if this inconvenient erection is called the _château_, internal comfort being sacrificed to the gratification of exhibiting outside bad stucco carvings, zinc ornaments on the roof, and a quantity of nonsensical decorations which have to be renewed every spring. Build us then, cousin, a good house, well sheltered from the sun and rain, thoroughly dry within, and in which nothing is sacrificed to that debased luxury which is a thousand times more offensive in our country districts than it is in the city.”