Here my saddle girth broke and I was nearly thrown to the ground. I scrambled off, walked to the little inn where I inquired how far I had yet to go.
"Three leagues yet to Dieppe," the host replied, "but Monsieur can not go on to-night; he must wait the morrow; he can go with comfort in the morning."
I sent my groom for a new girth and found it would take quite an hour to procure one from the village.
"Probably Monsieur would visit the castle upon the hill there," persisted the landlord, pointing across the way, "it is worth his while. It is said to have been destroyed by the Great Henry in his wars with the Duke of Mayenne. True it is that sounds of battle and screams are yet heard there on stormy nights. Probably Monsieur would rest here several days——."
I essayed to silence the fellow, for I was in no mood to listen to his chatter. Yet there was something in his eulogy of the locality, which he gave as a hawker crying his wares, that fixed my unwilling attention.
"And, Monsieur, perchance you may see old mad Michel. What! you know naught of him? Country folk do say his grandam witnessed the murder of the Count, and that it sent her feeble mind a-wandering. Her child through all her life did fancy herself the Count, and made strange speeches to the people's fear. And now this grandson of hers has grown old in frenzy like his mother and grandam, possessed of an evil spirit which speaks through him betimes—it is a curse of the blood, Monsieur, a grievous curse of the blood."
It aroused something of a curiosity within me, yet I was loath to pause upon my journey. Forced, though, to wait an hour, I thought to walk over to the Chateau a couple of hundred yards distant. Taking a lad who lounged about the inn, to show me the way, I sauntered up the path, pausing a while at a long-disused spring, and idly plucked an apple from a branch which over-hung it. A little further up, and mounting the steep acclivity, I stood within the ancient fortress.
This castle, since rebuilded, you, my children, are of course familiar with, for you were all born here. At that date the great central tower alone stood erect amid the universal destruction. A black wolf's head reared itself high above the portcullis. The moat was filled with drift of crumbling years, and the walls, fallen in many places, ran hither and thither in aimless curves and angles, much as they do to-day.
Up to this hour my chronicle has been only of such adventures as might befall a soldier upon any enterprise, but now a strange thing happened. Until that moment I had never seen the Chateau Cartillon, still there was not a corner or a passage which did not seem well known to me. My feet fell into paths they seemed no strangers to. I seemed to know intuitively what each building was for, and even imagined most vividly scenes which had transpired there. The whole place had the most intense personal interest for me, why I knew not.
I am not superstitious, but the ruin oppressed me, made me restless and uneasy; yet I was loath to leave. The loneliness of it all filled me with vague apprehensions as I picked my way across the grass encumbered court-yard toward the road again. A thousand haunting fancies of half familiar things thronged from out each dismantled doorway. Faces I all but recognized peered at me through the broken casements; voices I almost knew called to me from many a silent corner. Yet all was still, all was solitude. Heartily shamed at my quickening step I hurried on and having consumed a quarter of my hour sat down by the spring mentioned before, just beyond the castle's utmost boundary.