"She will be here directly, Sir," replied Chazeul, "then I shall see her;" and, attaching himself to their party, he remained for the evident purpose of preventing any private communication between them. CHAPTER X. Those who have visited France in the present day, who have travelled over that rich and fertile land from end to end, who have journeyed through its least frequented districts, and examined into the nooks and corners which are but little exposed to the eye of the ordinary traveller, have yet, in general, but a very faint idea of the scene it presented at the period of which we write. Yet were they to bring history to aid their researches, from time to time, they would discover such fragments of a former day as might enable them to call up before their eyes a true picture of France during the wars of the League, as a Buckland or a Sedgwick, from the teeth and bones of long extinct animals, and from the leaves of trees that have decayed for thousands of years, are enabled to raise up from the waves of time an image of a by-gone world, and people it with monstrous things, such as the eye of man probably never beheld in actual existence. The whole country towards the end of the sixteenth century, torn with factions, desolated by rapine, stained with bloodshed, knew nought of commerce, manufactures, or arts, and even agriculture itself, on which the daily support of the people depended, was accompanied with terror and danger. Thus hamlets and villages, through wide districts of the most fertile parts of France, were swept away or left vacant; the houses of the farmer and the labourer had grown few, and were sometimes defended with trenches and palisades against any of the smaller bands that roved the country; the greater part of the population was gathered into fortified cities; and the rest of the kingdom was dotted with châteaux and maisons fortes, generally at a considerable distance from each other, often in the hands of opposite factions, and always prepared for stern resistance against the attack of an enemy. In the part of the country of which we have been writing, these castles of the old feudal nobility were somewhat numerous; and we must now beg leave to remove the reader for a time from the Château de Marzay to that of Chazeul, which lay, as he has been already informed, at no great distance. We must also go back to an early hour in the morning of that day of which we have just been speaking, in order that those who peruse these pages may be made acquainted with some events which weave themselves into the web of the history as we proceed with our task.