“The battlements, gossip!” I gasped. “The battlements—before all illusion spends itself, and we fall stifled!”
Ah! that was another pair of shoes. We took our official pass at the gateway—for the walls are a “Monument Historique”—and, mounting by way of the Tour de Constance at the north angle, were quickly in that atmosphere we had come to seek. Here from the summit we could first descry the whole compact quadrilateral of the town, with its many gates and towers, sitting, like some huge mediæval ark, on the shores of the desolate land on which it had grounded and settled. On all sides else were waste and water—marsh, and the long ribs of sand, and weedy dreariness stretching to the horizon.
Well, this tower itself had its particular history; but that is for the guidebooks. For us, in excelsis, were the long battlements, whence one may gather one’s glorified impression of the place. High up we wandered, and saw the whole tight little town packed, like a box of bricks, within its walls. The odours reached not to us, but the sun was gay so high, and it was sweet to loiter, and look down on the cradled roofs and the almost empty streets—for the life of them had gravitated fairwards. Once in a little garden we saw a pomegranate tree in rosy fruit—a lovely touch of colour; and once a group of merry girls went by, bareheaded and unadorned, fruit almost as fair. Elsewise, it seemed, we had these deserted ramparts to ourselves, and the view therefrom.
“But grant me still a friend in my retreat,” quoth and quoted I, “whom I may whisper—Solitude is sweet.”
And at that instant, turning an angle, we saw the whole perspective of battlements ahead fringed with human forms.
Fifine laughed delightfully, hearing my gasp of dismay.
“But they are bending over to look down at something,” she said. “We must go and see what it is.”
I leaned through an embrasure, straining my neck to view.
“O, don’t!” she exclaimed, pulling at my coat: “You will fall.”
“All right,” said I, recovering myself. “It is—why, Fifine, what is the matter with you?” Her face was quite pale.