Within the enceinte are the remains of the old castle, still solid
and upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their
long occupation of this country. A more modern chateau, built after
the final expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure,
and in the centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls,
stands a square house, in the Italian style, built in the time of
Marie de Medici, and never yet completed. There are, also, gardens
and shaded walks and vast stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many
crumbling remains inside the walls, that offered a passive
resistance to the foe in olden time, and as successfully hold their
own to-day against the prying eye of a democratic curiosity.

Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were
in the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these
that the Abbe Touvent directed his tremulous steps.

Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the
middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half
garden, half hayfield. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the
new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest chateau and
under its leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the
breath of the evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder
on the ill-defined borders. The grim walls, that had defended the
Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, served now to hide
from the eyes of the villagers the fact--which must, however, have
been known to them--that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept
this garden himself, and had made the hay with no other help than
that of his old coachman and Marie, that capable, brown-faced bonne-
a-tout-faire, who is assuredly the best man in France to-day.