The château de Saint-Philbert consisted originally of a vast parallelogram enclosed with walls, bathed on one side by the waters of the lake and protected on the other side by a broad moat hollowed in the rock. Four square towers flanked the four corners of this enormous mass of stone; a citadel in the centre, with its portcullis bristling with spikes, defended the entrance. Opposite to the citadel, on the other side of the castle, a fifth square tower, taller and more imposing than the rest, commanded the whole structure, and the lake, which surrounded it on three sides.
With the exception of this fifth tower and the citadel, or keep, all the rest of the fortress, walls and main-buildings, had pretty much crumbled away, and time had not entirely spared the great tower itself. The rotten beams of the first floor, unable to support the stones which year by year slid down upon them in greater numbers, had sunk to the ground-floor, raising it by over a foot, leaving no other ceiling in the tower than the rafters of the roof.
It was in this lower room that the grandfather of the widow Picaut had principally kept his fruit, and the walls were lined with shelves on which the good man spread in winter the various products of his garden. The doors and windows of this portion of the tower had remained more or less intact, and at one of these windows could still be seen an iron bar covered with rust, which undoubtedly dated from the days of Comte Gilles.
The other towers and the walls of the main building were completely in ruins; the masses of masonry which had fallen had rolled either into the courtyard, which they obstructed, or into the lake, which covered them with its reeds at all times and its foam in stormy weather. The citadel, about as intact as the great tower, was crowded with an enormous mass of ivy which took the place of a roof; in it were two small chambers, which, notwithstanding the colossal appearance of the structure, were not more than eight or ten feet square, owing to the enormous thickness of the walls.
The inner courtyard, used in feudal days as the barrack-ground of the castle's defenders, obstructed by the rubbish which time had heaped there,--fragments of columns and battlements, broken arches, dilapidated statues,--was now impassable. A narrow path led to the great tower; another, less carefully cleared, led to a remaining vestige of the east tower, where a stone staircase was actually left standing, by which all persons desirous of enjoying a beautiful view could, after a series of acrobatic feats, reach the platform of the main tower by following a gallery which ran along the wall like those Alpine paths cut on the face of the rock between precipice and mountain.
It is unnecessary to say that, except during the period of the year when the fruits were stored there, no one frequented these ruins of the château de Saint-Philbert. At that period a watchman was stationed there, who slept in the keep; all the rest of the year the gates of the tower were locked and the place was abandoned to lovers of historical reminiscences, and to the boys of the village, who pervaded the old ruins, where they found nests to pillage, flowers to pick, dangers to brave,--all things of eager attraction to children.
It was in these ruins that Courtin had appointed to meet Monsieur Hyacinthe. He knew they would be absolutely deserted at the hour he named to his associate, inasmuch as the lingering ill-repute of the place drove away at night all the village urchins who, as long as the sun was above the horizon, scampered like lizards among the dentelled ridges of the old ruin.
The mayor of La Logerie left Nantes about five o'clock; he was on foot, and yet he walked so fast that he was an hour earlier than he needed to be when he crossed the bridge which led into the village of Saint-Philbert. Maître Courtin was somewhat of a personage in the village. To see him desert the Grand Saint-Jacques (the inn before which he usually tied his pony Sweetheart) in favor of the Pomme de Pin, the tavern kept by the mother of the widow Picaut, would have been an event which, as he very well knew, would have set the village tongues a wagging. He was so convinced of this that, although, being deprived of his pony and never taking any refreshment except what was offered to him, it seemed a useless matter to go to an inn at all, the mayor of La Logerie stopped, as usual, before the door of the Grand Saint-Jacques, where he held with the inhabitants of the village (who, since the double defeat at Chêne and La Pénissière, had drawn closer to him) a conversation which, under present circumstances, was not unimportant to him.
"Maître Courtin," said one man, "is it true what they say?"
"What do they say, Matthieu?" replied Courtin. "Tell me; I'd like to know."