bles, which showed how enormous the
colossal structure must have been as, when first built, it commanded
the two valleys. The donjon remained, nearly two hundred feet in height,
discoloured, cracked, but nevertheless firm, upon its foundation pillars
fifteen feet thick. Two of its towers had also resisted the attacks
of Time--that of Charlemagne and that of David--united by a heavy wall
almost intact. In the interior, the chapel, the court-room, and certain
chambers were still easily recognised; and all this appeared to have
been built by giants, for the steps of the stairways, the sills of the
windows, and the branches on the terraces, were all on a scale far out
of proportion for the generation of to-day. It was, in fact, quite a
little fortified city. Five hundred men could have sustained there a
siege of thirty months without suffering from want of ammunition or of
provisions. For two centuries the bricks of the lowest story had been
disjointed by the wild roses; lilacs and laburnums covered with blossoms
the rubbish of the fallen ceilings; a plane-tree had even grown up in
the fireplace of the guardroom. But when, at sunset, the outline of the
donjon cast its long shadow over three leagues of cultivated ground,
and the colossal Chateau seemed to be rebuilt in the evening mists, one
still felt the great strength, and the old sovereignty, which had made
of it so impregnable a fortress that even the kings of France trembled
before it.

"And I am sure," continued Angelique, "that it is inhabited by the souls
of the dead, who return at night. All kinds of noises are heard there;
in every direction are monsters who look at you, and when I turned round
as we were coming away, I saw great white figures fluttering above the
wall. But, mother, you know all the history of the castle, do you not?"

Hubertine replied, as she smiled in an amused way: "Oh! as for ghosts, I
have never seen any of them myself."

But in reality, she remembered perfectly the history, which she had read
long ago, and to satisfy the eager questionings of the young girl, she
was obliged to relate it over again.

The land belonged to the Bishopric of Rheims, since the days of Saint
Remi, who had received it from Clovis.

An archbishop, Severin, in the early years of the tenth century, had
erected at Hautecoeur a fortress to defend the country against the
Normans, who were coming up the river Oise, into which the Ligneul
flows.

In the following ce