On almost any site around one's horizon a seigneur might have built himself a chateau, an all but impregnable stronghold where he might sustain successfully the powers vested in him as a vassal of the Dauphin. This was the usual procedure, and if many of these classic strongholds have disappeared, there are enough remaining to suggest the frequency and solidity of mediæval building in these parts, a species of castle building which here in the mountains differed not a little from that of the lowlands. It is just this view-point that makes the study of the chateaux of Dauphiny the more interesting. Even the imperfectly preserved ruins which crown many a peak and hill-top are suggestive of this unique and effective manner of castle building, and though many have fallen from sheer decay in later years, it is chiefly because they were undermined or overthrown in some great or petty quarrel, and not because their design was not well thought out nor their workmanship thorough. The picks of Louis XI caused more actual depredation than has the stress of time. Often but a local legend remains to tell the tale. Chambaraud, Mantailles, and Beaufort have disappeared, and Moras, Thodure and Vireville, all of them reminiscent of the prowess of the feudal barons, are in truth but dim reminiscences of their once proud estate. Between Grenoble and Vienne is the Chateau de Bressieux, most picturesque, the first great requirement of a castle. It dates, in part, from the twelfth century. That is its second qualification. Antiquity comes after picturesqueness in its appeal to even the traveller of conventional mould. The Barons of Bressieux were by the right of their title members of the Parliament of Dauphiny. The situation of their chateau assured them the full and free exercise of their power, right or wrong, and, like all the Dauphinese seigneurs, they were practically rulers of a lilliputian empire. It seems that the celebrated Mandrin, a brigand so dignified that he was ranked as a "_gentilhomme_," married into the family of Bressieux. History has apparently been unjust to Mandrin, "the _escroc_ who possessed the manners of a dandy," but at any rate there be those in Dauphiny to-day who revere his memory before that of Bayard. Saint Marcellin, in the lower valley of the Isère, is Italian in its general aspect and layout. Its house walls, its roof-tops and its arcaded streets are what most folk will at once call Italian. Be this as it may, it was originally the stronghold of the native Dauphins and the place in their _royaume_ where they lived the most at ease and ate and drank the best. This is not conjecture or a far-away twentieth century estimate, but a quotation from recorded history. The only thing one recalls of Saint Marcellin in the eating line to-day is an exceedingly pungent variety of goat's milk cheese. It is not for that that most of us make of the quaint little Dauphinese city a place of pilgrimage.