Farther on, there was an older building still, mounted on its little rock, with a small, but deep tank on one side, a river on the other, and a foss once traversed by a drawbridge, running round the rest of the base, and joining the river at the pond. I once waded through the stream, for the drawbridge had long returned to dust, to see what was in the house above. I was ill repaid for my pains. All was vacant and in ruin. There was a large, tall, square building, two lesser towers and a wall, but not a vestige of wood-work remaining. It must have been long completely dilapidated; for in the great-court, with one of its gnarled roots knotted round a fragment of masonry, was an oak which must have taken more than two centuries to grow. The two buildings were strangely contrasted in style: the gay, airy lightness of the one: the stern, heavy simplicity of the other, were the records of two past ages; but they, the ages which brought them forth, the people which had built them, and the feelings which lent them their characteristics, had all passed away. The epitaph for the grave-yard of all terrestrial things should have been written on both their fronts—“_Fuimus_.” It was one day in the autumn time, when the leaves were brown, and the light mellow, and the birds had ceased their song, but the grasshopper still prolonged his chirping, that I had wandered out in this direction an hour or two after noon. It is a very pleasant land that Antoumois—for I am certain that it was there, although I have no proof of it—with its vineyards and its corn-fields, and its woods interspersed, and here and there wild, ill-shapen rocks starting up in one’s way, and presenting strange, unusual forms and clefts and caverns innumerable. There had been a good deal of rioting in the town in the morning. In fact the regular municipal government might have been considered as almost at an end, and anarchy was advancing with rapid strides. I no longer wanted to see executions: the turbulence of the people did not amuse and did not frighten me, but it annoyed me. My ears were tired of shouts and screams, and I was sick of the Marseillaise to my very heart. I longed to see the old town in its clear, calm, sober light again, with the streets uncrowded by victims, and unpolluted by the disorderly rabble of the suburb. Gladly I escaped out into the country, and I believe good Father Bonneville was glad to see me go. I had walked on past the first house I have mentioned, and was about mid-way between it and the second. I was wandering on along a little foot-path, not sufficiently frequented to prevent the velvet moss from growing quickly upon it, and had very nearly arrived at a spot where one of those bold, rugged and fissured rocks which I have mentioned, rose up in the midst of the wood, and forced the path to take a turn. Suddenly, when near the angle, a woman and a child turned the corner advancing with wild and rapid steps. The child, a beautiful little girl, of some