He expounded the fact that there was a staircase in the rock, leading to the level of the town.

Furthermore, he said that the old count and the baron occasionally drank deeply, as soldiers and adventurers will do, to pass the evening.

The next time it occurred he, the faithful servant, would come to my lodging and conduct me into the castle by the aforesaid passage, of which he had the key.
I confess I was unpleasantly alarmed at the prospect of making a burglarious entrance in such romantic fashion.

It savoured more of the last century than of the quiet and eminently respectable age in which we live.

But then, the castle of Fillettino was built hundreds of years ago, and it is not my fault if it has not gone to ruin, like so many others of its kind.