Hard by, on the line--so it was said--of the filled-up moat, is a row of
ancient quinces, with long crooked arms, green, gray, or black with moss
and lichen, stretching down to the tall grass, where in the dewy hours of
early darkness the glow-worms gleam.
This little chateau was never a stronghold to inspire an enemy with much
respect; it was rather a castellated manor-house, dating from the times
when even the residences of the small nobility were fortified. Marred as it
had been by alterations made in the present century without any respect for
the past, it was still very interesting. In one of the towers, said to be
of the fourteenth, and certainly not later than the fifteenth, century, was
a chapel on the ground-floor with Gothic vaulting, and which still served
its original purpose. A contemporaneous tower flanking the entrance
contained the old spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms. I often
lingered upon it in astonishment at the mathematical science shown in its
design, and the mechanical perfection of its workmanship. What seemed to be
a slender column round which the spiral vaulting turned was not really
one, for each of the stone steps was so cut as to include a section of the
column as a part of its own block.
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