Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/218

 a mirage, some strange trick of the senses, which, on rubbing the eyes, must disappear. And the nearer one draws, the more vivid does this impression become. Everything perfect, marvellously perfect, yet with no jarring hint of newness. It is well-nigh impossible at any time to tell where the original structure ends and where Viollet le Duc's restoration begins, and on what a grand scale it all is.

By moonlight the effect was really glorious. My Goddess and I walked over a drawbridge and entered the silent, grass-grown streets of the old, old city, where quaint and ancient houses, given up now to the poor, huddle under the protecting walls of the great fortress. We were in a perfect mediæval city, just as it existed in the time of the Crusades. In thus exactly realising the life of a garrisoned fortress of those stirring days, I found much the same dramatic interest I feel on stepping into the silent streets of Pompeii, where the ghosts seem more real than I.

We stopped at the house of the gardien, and I made an excuse for leaving Miss Randolph at a little distance, as I talked to him, reminded him of my last visit, and begged that, as a favour, he would show us about, although it was now "after hours." He is a very good fellow, courteous and intelligent, speaking with the noticeably distinct enunciation which seems to be the mark of all these guardians of monuments historiques in France; and when he understood that there was a lady in the case, he readily consented to oblige, though I suspect he left his supper in the midst. He took off his cap to