CHAPTER IV
"In the Bosom of Wild Nature"
The Chateau du Glandier is one of the oldest chateaux in the Ile de
France, where so many building remains of the feudal period are
still standing. Built originally in the heart of the forest, in the
reign of Philip le Bel, it now could be seen a few hundred yards
from the road leading from the village of Sainte-Genevieve to
Monthery. A mass of inharmonious structures, it is dominated by a
donjon. When the visitor has mounted the crumbling steps of this
ancient donjon, he reaches a little plateau where, in the seventeenth
century, Georges Philibert de Sequigny, Lord of the Glandier,
Maisons-Neuves and other places, built the existing town in an
abominably rococo style of architecture.
It was in this place, seemingly belonging entirely to the past, that
Professor Stangerson and his daughter installed themselves to lay
the foundations for the science of the future. Its solitude, in
the depths of woods, was what, more than all, had pleased them.
They would have none to witness their labours and intrude on their
hopes, but the aged stones and grand old oaks.
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