Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/93

 ginning at it and leading up to the first castle gate was a steep winding path. The arch of this gate served as a support to a great high tower, which was supplied with many loopholes. From that gate, over a deep moat, another bridge stretched to a second tower, a twin to the first, and a walk led from it into the bastion. Formerly it was a drawbridge; the bulwarks surrounding the castle were impregnable, and the moat was filled with water. But now the posts and the chains were rusty, the moat was dry to the bottom, the bulwarks were partly caved in, and the towers from which the wardens formerly announced the nightly hours, now echoed with the hooting of owls and the croaking of jackdaws dwelling with bats in the loopholes.

The castle in the midst of the slowly waving trees, resembled a dying hermit with a scarred face and tattered garments, crippled with the burden of age and bowed by the adversity of fate, meditating on the latter end of his life and the changes and inconstancy of the world.