The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

REYNOLDS’ WORKS CHAPTER I THE CHATEAU THE scene now changes to the south of France. In the neighbourhood of one of those beautiful villages which ornament the valleys on the outskirts of the Pyrenees stood a large, old-fashioned, rambling, dark brick edifice, known as the chateau. [It had originally belonged to a noble and ancient family which had emigrated during the troubles of the first revolution, and that family had become extinct in a foreign clime. The chateau was once the centre of a spacious and fair domain, but this had become parcelled out into small farms and allotments, so that at the time of which we are writing — namely, a few years back—the lands which had once constituted the domain of a single individual were in the possession of at least a score of different proprietors. The chateau itself had long been shut up, and with only the garden remaining attached to it, it had become the property of a lawyer in the adjacent village. Having been neglected for a great number of years, the building had sustained considerable injury, and the lawyer, finding it dificult to obtain a wealthy tenant, had felt by no means inclined to lay out money in repairing a place which seemed destined to remain empty. It was only fitted from its dimensions for the occupation of a wealthy family having a large establishment of servants, but no family of such means was likely to take a mansion that had such a small patch of land attached, and this surrounded by the allot- 1 EOMINGIOOKS (CO)