Tillieres; but we have one grand military tower; we have a much larger
town, containing several important churches and houses, and one
ecclesiastical tower which may claim a place in the very first rank of
its own class. Verneuil is a border-fortress; but it is not so ideal a
border-fortress as Tillieres. It is not so close on the border; for here
Normandy has a small _Peraia_, a certain amount of territory beyond the
river. And, as Verneuil presented no such commanding point for a castle
site as Tillieres did, the fortress was not placed on a height at all,
but in the lower part of the town, to guard the stream. There is a
distinct ascent in Verneuil; but nothing like the slope at Tillieres
from the Norman castle down to the border-stream and from the
border-stream up again to the French hills. But there is enough rise to
make the grand ecclesiastical tower on the high ground stand out as the
most prominent object in the approach, while the grand military tower
down below makes no show at all. We were a little puzzled by Joanne's
account of Verneuil, in which he said that the castle had been
completely demolished, but that the donjon existed still. It seems that
at Verneuil, as at Argentan, castle and donjon are distinguished; but at
Verneuil castle and donjon are not, as at Argentan, separate buildings
joined only by a long wall; they stand close together and formed part of
one work. Nor is the castle as distinguished from the donjon, completely
demolished; there is a considerable fragment standing very near. The
donjon, called locally _Tourgrise_ from the colour of its stone, is a
round tower, not quite a rival of Coucy, but tall enough and big enough
to have a very striking effect. It has been lately restored or set up
again in some way, perhaps cleared out and roofed in. Anyhow Verneuil is
not a little proud of the fact, and marks its thankfulness by a great
number of rather foolish inscriptions. The tower is proclaimed to be the
work of Henry I., our Henry of Tinchebray, not the developed rebuilder
of Tillieres; but this seems out of the question, as the small
doorways--we cannot guarantee the windows--have pointed arches, which
seem to be original. But the ruined fragment of the castle hard by, with
its ruder masonry and a shattered round-headed window seemed certainly
to be as early as Henry's day and very likely a good bit earlier. Hard
by the donjon seems to be a small piece of town walls; otherwise the
walls ha