“In Gallows-Tree House, everything was sad and grandiose. Its name immediately brought to mind the primitive cruelties of feudal justice; its four dark avenues echoed with an ocean-swell of lamentations; black swans swam among the broken reeds of its moat; menacing hemlocks and a host of yellow flowers opened their petals like deadly suns.

[...]

“There was also a most curious spectre to which I had never really become accustomed: a tame heron, which roamed freely between the rooms, rapping with its beak until the doors were opened. This funereal creature was always present; it followed us in to every meal, foraging in the bowl where its food was thrown. At regular intervals it made a clicking noise like a loose tile blown across a roof by the wind. It was called the Missionary because it resembled, by virtue of its oblique and paternal expression, a certain Capuchin friar who had come to say mass in the house–and whose death, which followed unexpectedly a few days after, had coincided with the appearance of the bird. It had been found on the moat by a gamekeeper, wounded by a rifleshot.”

Remy de Gourmont, 1891