ey lifts its yellow walls--the
Benedictine abbey of Saint-Andre, at once a church, a monastery, and a
fortress. A large part of the crumbling enceinte disposes itself over
the hill; but for the rest, all that has preserved any traceable
cohesion is a considerable portion of the citadel. The defence of the
place appears to have been entrusted largely to the huge round towers
that flank the old gate; one of which, the more complete, the ancient
warden (having first inducted me into his own dusky little apartment and
presented me with a great bunch of lavender) enabled me to examine in
detail. I would almost have dispensed with the privilege, for I think I
have already mentioned that an acquaintance with many feudal interiors
has wrought a sad confusion in my mind. The image of the outside always
remains distinct; I keep it apart from other images of the same sort; it
makes, a picture sufficiently ineffaceable. But the guard-rooms, winding
staircases, loopholes, prisons, repeat themselves and intermingle; they
have a wearisome family likeness. There are always black passages and
corners, and walls twenty feet thick; and there is always some high
place to climb up to for the sake of a "magnificent" view. The views,
too, are apt to run together. These dense gate-towers of Philippe le Bel
struck me, however, as peculiarly wicked and grim. Their capacity is of
the largest, and they contain ever so many devilish little dungeons,
lighted by the narrowest slit in the prodigious wall, where it comes
over one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror that
wretched human beings once lay there rotting in the dark. The dungeons
of Villeneuve made a particular impression on me--greater than any
except those of Loches, which must surely be the most gruesome in
Europe. I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called a
dungeon; and I believe it is well established that in this manner, in
almost all old castles and towers, the sensibilities of the modern
tourist are unscrupulously played upon. There were plenty of black holes
in the Middle Ages that were not dungeons, but household receptacles of
various kinds; and many a tear dropped in pity for the groaning captive
has really been addressed to the spirits of the larder and the
faggot-nook. For all this, there are some very bad corners in the towers
of Villeneuve, so that I was not wide of the mark when I began to think
again, as I had often thought before, of the sto