, and in
the wall are large windows, through which the whole surrounding country
can be viewed; the woods, the fields, the river, the long, white road,
the mountains with their uneven peaks, and the great meadow, which
separates them through the middle.

A crumbling flight of steps leads to a dilapidated tower. Here and there
stones crop out among the grass, and the rock shows amid the stones.
Sometimes it seems as if this rock assumed artificial shapes, and as if
the ruins, on the contrary, by crumbling more and more, had taken on a
natural appearance and gone back to original matter.

A whole side of the wall is covered with ivy; it begins at the bottom
and spreads out in an inverted pyramid, the color of which grows darker
towards the top. Through an aperture, the edges of which are concealed
by the foliage, one can see a section of the blue sky.

It was in these parts that the famous dragon lived, which was killed in
olden times by knight Derrien, who was returning from the Holy Land with
his friend, Neventer. Derrien attacked it as soon as he had rescued the
unfortunate Eilorn who, after giving over his slaves, his vassals and
his servants (he had no one left but his wife and son), had thrown
himself headlong from the top of the tower into the river; but the
monster, mortally wounded, and bound by the sash of its conqueror, soon
drowned itself in the sea, at Poulbeunzual,[4] like the crocodile of
Batz island, which obeyed the behest of Saint Pol de Leon and drowned
itself with the stole of the Breton saint wound around it. The gargoyle
of Rouen met a similar fate with the stole of Saint Romain.

How beautiful those terrific old dragons were, with their gaping,
fire-spitting jaws, their scales, their serpent-tails, their bat-wings,
their lion-claws, their equine bodies and fantastic heads! And the knight
who overpowered them was a wonderfully fine specimen of manhood! First,
his horse grew frightened and reared, and his lance broke on the scales
of the monster, whose fiery breath blinded him. Finally he alighted, and
after a day's battle, succeeded in sinking his sword up to the hilt in
the beasts belly. Black blood flowed in streams from the wound, the
audience escorted the knight home in triumph, and he became king and
married a fair maiden.

But where did the dragons come from? Are they a confused recollection of
the monsters that existed before the flood? Were they conceived from the
contemplation of the ca