Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/131

 and when I'd seen how pretty the old-fashioned bedrooms were, I begged to stay all night instead of going on. Brown seems to regard my requests as if they were those of royalty—commands; and he rearranged our programme accordingly. I'm writing in a green -and-pink damask bedroom now, but when I shut my eyes I can see the castle and the dungeons and—Madame César. Yes, I think I can find my way back for your benefit, and return on our own tracks.

First, like a promising preface to the ruined stronghold of the terrible Louis, we went through a massive gateway, flanked with towers, and climbed up a winding street of ancient, but not decrepit houses, to come cut at last upon a plateau with the gigantic walls of the castle on our left. When I remembered who caused those outworks and walls to be put up, so high and grim and strong, and why, I felt a little "creep" run up my spine at sight of the enormous mass of stonework. "Who enters here leaves hope behind" might have been written over the gateway in the dreadful days when Loches was in its wicked prime. Those walls are colossal, like perpendicular cliffs. At a door in one of them we tinkled a bell, and presently, with loud unlocking of double doors, quite a pretty young girl appeared and invited us in. She was the daughter of the gardien, she told us. It was almost a shock to see something so fresh and young living in such a forbidding, torture-haunted den as Louis' Château of Loches. She was like one of the little bright-coloured winter blossoms springing out from a cranny of the grey walls. When she had