And now that I am better able to estimate Castelnau, when I recall it to my memory, after having seen most of the splendors of this earth, I still think the enchanted castle of my childhood, as it stands upon its glorious height, one of the most superb ruins of mediaeval France.
In one of the towers there was a room whose ceiling was painted a royal blue over-strewn with exquisite gold tracery and blazonry.

In no place have I realized feudalism so well as in that tower.

There alone, in the silence as of a city of the dead, I would lean out of the little window cut in the thick wall and contemplate the green verdure lying below me, and I tried to imagine that I saw coming along the paths, given over to the flight of birds, a cavalcade of soldiers, or a procession of noble knights and ladies.

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