ight, pride and terror, a battle between one's
mind and one's nerves. You feel strangely happy; you would like to jump,
fly, spread out in the air and be supported by the wind; but your knees
tremble and you dare not go too near the edge.

Still, one night, in olden times, men climbed this tower with ropes. But
then, it is not astonishing for those times, for that wonderful
sixteenth century, the epoch of fierce convictions and frantic loves!
How the human instrument vibrated then in all its chords! How
liberal-minded, productive, and active men were! Does not this phrase of
Fenelon apply wonderfully well to that period: "A sight well calculated
to delight the eye?" For, without making any reference to the foreground
of the picture,--beliefs crumbling at their foundation like tottering
mountains, newly discovered worlds, lost worlds brought to light again,
Michael-Angelo beneath his dome, laughing Rabelais, observant
Shakespeare, pensive Montaigne,--where can be found a greater
development in passions, a greater violence in courage, a greater
determination in willpower, in fine, a more complete expansion of
liberty struggling against all native fatalities? And with what a bold
relief the episode stands out in history, and still, how wonderfully
well it fits in, thereby giving a glimpse of the dazzling brightness and
broad horizons of the period. Faces, living faces, pass before your
eyes. You meet them only once; but you think of them long afterwards,
and endeavour to contemplate them in order that they may be impressed
more deeply upon your mind. Was not the type of the old soldiers whose
race disappeared around 1598, at the taking of Vervins, fine and
terrible? It was a type represented by men like Lamouche, Heurtand de
Saint-Offange, and La Tremblaye, who came back holding the heads of his
enemies in his hand; also La Fontenelle, of whom so much has been said.
They were men of iron, whose hearts were no softer than their swords,
and who, attracting hundreds of energies which they directed with their
own, entered towns at night, galloping madly at the heads of their
companies, equipped corsairs, burned villages, and were dealt with like
kings! Who has thought of depicting those violent governors of the
provinces, who slaughtered the people recklessly, committed rapes and
swept in gold, like D'Epernon, an atrocious tyrant in Provence and a
perfumed courtier at the Louvre; like Montluc, who strangled Huguenots
with his