was sleeping. One by one the lights went out
in the windows, and the lighthouses shone red in the darkness, which was
quite blue above us and glittering with myriads of twinkling stars. We
could not see the ocean, but we could hear and smell it, and the
breakers that lashed the walls flung drops of foam over us through the
big apertures of the machicolations.

In one place, between the wall and the city houses, a quantity of
cannon-balls are piled up in a ditch. From that point you can see these
words written on the second floor of one of the dwellings:
"Chateaubriand was born here."

Further on, the wall ends at the foot of a tower called Quiquengrogne;
like its sister, La Generale, it is high, broad, and imposing, and is
swelled in the middle like a hyperbola.

Though they are as good as new and absolutely intact, these towers would
no doubt be improved if they lost some of their battlements in the sea
and if ivy spread its kindly leaves over their tops. Indeed, do not
monuments grow greater through recollection, like men and like passions?
And are they not completed by death?

We entered the castle. The empty courtyard planted with a few sickly
lime-trees was as silent as the courtyard of a monastery. The janitress
went and obtained the keys from the commander. When she returned, she
was accompanied by a pretty little girl who wished to see the strangers.
Her arms were bare and she carried a large bunch of flowers. Her black
curls escaped from beneath her dainty little cap, and the lace on her
pantalettes rubbed against her kid shoes tied around the ankles with
black laces. She ran up stairs in front of us beckoning and calling.

The staircase is long, for the tower is high. The bright daylight passes
through the loop-holes like an arrow. When you put your head through one
of these openings, you can see the ocean, which seems to grow wider and
wider, and the crude colour of the sky, which seems to grow larger and
larger, till you are afraid you will lose yourself in it. Vessels look
like launches and their masts like walking-sticks. Eagles must think we
look like ants. I wonder whether they really see us. Do they know that
we have cities and steeples and triumphal arches?

When we arrived on the platform, and although the battlement reached to
our chest, we could not help experiencing the sensation one always feels
at a great height from the earth. It is a sort of voluptuous uneasiness
mingled with fear and del