the crumbling tops of which appear one above another.

One follows a hedge, climbs a path, and enters an open portal which has
sunken into the ground to the depth of one third of its ogive. The men
who used to pass through it on horseback would be obliged to bend over
their saddles in order to enter it to-day. When the earth is tired of
supporting a monument, it swells up underneath it, creeps up to it like
a wave, and while the sky causes the top to crumble away, the ground
obliterates the foundations. The courtyard was deserted and the calm
water that filled the moats remained motionless and flat under the
pond-lilies.

The sky was white and cloudless, but without sunshine. Its bleak curve
extended far away, covering the country with a cold and cheerless
monotony. Not a sound could be heard, the birds did not sing, even the
horizon was mute, and from the empty furrows came neither the scream of
the crows as they soar heavenward, nor the soft creaking of plough-wheels.
We climbed down through brambles and underbrush into a deep and dark
trench, hidden at the foot of a large tower, which stands in the water
surrounded by reeds. A lone window opens on one side: a dark square
relieved by the grey line of its stone cross-bar. A capricious cluster
of wild honeysuckle covers the sill, and its maze of perfumed blossoms
creeps along the walls. When one looks up, the openings of the big
machicolations reveal only a part of the sky, or some little, unknown
flower which has nestled in the battlement, its seed having been wafted
there on a stormy day and left to sprout in the cracks of the stones.

Presently, a long, balmy breeze swept over us like a sigh, and the trees
in the moats, the moss on the stones, the reeds in the water, the plants
among the ruins, and the ivy, which covered the tower from top to bottom
with a layer of shining leaves, all trembled and shook their foliage;
the corn in the fields rippled in endless waves that again and again
bent the swaying tops of the ears; the pond wrinkled and welled up
against the foot of the tower; the leaves of the ivy all quivered at
once, and an apple-tree in bloom covered the ground with pink blossoms.

Nothing, nothing! The open sky, the growing grass, the passing wind. No
ragged child tending a browsing cow; not even, as elsewhere, some
solitary goat sticking its shaggy head through an aperture in the walls
to turn at our approach and flee in terror through the bushes; not a