from which to throw a flanking fire upon
any who should raise a ladder against the great curtains, built of that
smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantome and on the banks of
the Dordogne. The fourth side of the enceinte stands on a solid rock,
above the little river that loses itself in the flat-lands bordering the
Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary of that wide water.
A moss-grown path round the walls will give a quick walker ten minutes'
exercise to make the round from one tower of the gateway to the other.

Within the enceinte are the remains of the old castle, still solid
and upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their long
occupation of this country. A more modern chateau, built after the final
expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure, and in the
centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls, stands a square
house, in the Italian style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and
never yet completed. There are, also, gardens and shaded walks and vast
stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many crumbling remains inside the
walls, that offered a passive resistance to the foe in olden time,
and as successfully hold their own to-day against the prying eye of a
democratic curiosity.

Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in
the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that
the Abbe Touvent directed his tremulous steps.

Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the
middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half
garden, half hayfield. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the new
stack, standing against the walls of the oldest chateau and under its
leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the
evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill-defined
borders. The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker
enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers
the fact--which must, however, have been known to them--that the Marquis
de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the
hay with no other help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that
capable, brown-faced bonne-a-tout-faire, who is assuredly the best man
in France to-day.

In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has twice the strength of
that to which we are accustomed in mistier lands, and the Abbe looked
about