Pierrefonds! It was here that a sad ne’er-do-weel (for whom I have a liking none the less) built himself this famous castle in 1391. It was the wonder of the age, too strong and too near Paris for the safety of the Crown. It was dismantled in 1617; and all that remains of the fourteenth-century fortress is, with the foundations, one side of the keep and part of the outer wall. Its restoration, begun in 1858, was the triumph of Viollet-le-Duc. Before the decoration was finished, before the last moats were dry, or the palisade laid out, the Second Empire fell; the munificent patron became an invalid in exile, and Pierrefonds was dubbed a national monument, kept from ruin, but no longer an occasion for expense. I own that I should like to have seen it before it was restored--to have seen the real, time-stained, historical document. Yet, after all, the world has a goodly harvest of ruins, of documents; and there is only one such magnificent historical novel as the Castle of Pierrefonds. The decoration is often poor and gaudy; but architecturally Pierrefonds is a work of genius. To walk through it is to see the Middle Ages alive, and as they were: a hundred phrases of mediæval novels or poems throng our memory. See, there is the great Justice Hall, built separate from the keep, above the Salle des Gardes; and there, connecting it with the outer defences, are the galleries or _loggie_, where the knights and ladies used to meet and watch the Palm Play in the court below. Here is the keep, a fortress within a fortress, with its postern on the open country. From its watch-towers, or its double row of battlements, we can study the whole system of mediæval defence. Ah, this would be the place to read some particularly exciting book of Froissart’s--“The Campaign in Brittany,” for instance, or one of those great Gascon sieges, full of histories of mining and counter-mining, of sudden sallies from the postern gate, of great engines built like towers, launching stones and Greek fire, which the enemy wheels by night against the castle wall. I am deep in mediæval strategy when a timid common-sensible voice interrupts-- “Mais comment cela se peut-il que le château soit si ancien, p’isque vous me dites qu’il fut construit sous le Second Empire?” ’Tis our fellow-sightseer, apparently some local tradesman, bent on holiday, tramping the forest with his wife, their dinner in a basket, and bunches of _muguets_ dangling from their wrists. He is a shrewd little fellow. In his one phrase, he has summed up the sovereign objection to Pierrefonds-- “How can the castle be so ancient if, as you say, ’twas built under Napoleon III.?” Decidedly Pierrefonds is too well restored! IX