ith vaulted roofs, and as close as the hold of a ship. Then by spiral
stairways one descended into similar chambers, joined by cellar
passageways into the walls of which were dug deep niches and lairs of
unknown utility.

Beneath, those corridors, so narrow that two persons could not walk
along them abreast, descended at a gentle slope, and bifurcated so that
there was a labyrinth of lanes, leading to veritable cells, on the walls
of which the nitre scintillated in the light of the lantern like steel
mica or twinkling grains of sugar. In the cells above, in the dungeons
beneath, one stumbled over rifts of hard earth, in the centre or in a
corner of which yawned now the mouth of an unsealed oubliette, now a
well.

Finally, at the summit of one of the towers, that at the left as one
entered, there was a roofed gallery running parallel to a circular
foothold cut from the rock. There, without doubt, the men-at-arms had
been stationed to fire on their assailants through wide loopholes
opening overhead and underfoot. In this gallery the voice, even the
lowest, followed the curving walls and could be heard all around the
circuit.

Briefly, the exterior of the castle revealed a fortified place built to
stand long sieges, and the dismantled interior made one think of a
prison in which flesh, mildewed by the moisture, must rot in a few
months. Out in the open air again, one felt a sensation of well-being,
of relief, which one lost on traversing the ruins of the isolated chapel
and penetrating, by a cellar door, to the crypt below.

This chapel, low, squat, its vaulted roof upheld by massive columns on
whose capitals lozenges and bishop's croziers were carved, dated from
the eleventh century. The altar stone survived intact. Brackish
daylight, which seemed to have been filtered through layers of horn,
came in at the openings, hardly lighting the shadowed, begrimed walls
and the earth floor, which too was pierced by the entrance to an
oubliette or by a well shaft.

In the evening after dinner he had often climbed up on the embankment
and followed the cracked walls of the ruins. On bright nights one part
of the castle was thrown back into shadow, and the other, by contrast,
stood forth, washed in silver and blue, as if rubbed with mercurial
lusters, above the Sevre, along whose surface streaks of moonlight
darted like the backs of fishes. The silence was overpowering. After
nine o'clock not a dog, not a soul. He would return t