Sheer against the sky rose a jagged rock and perched on its summit, so much a part of it that it seemed to have been carved, stood a ruined castle. Its windows were vacant; its roof had long since fallen; its walls had been bruised and broken by cannon. It tottered above the valley like a Samson blinded, groping on the edge of the precipice, its power shorn. Round the embattled rock, like children who trusted the old protector, gathered mediaeval houses. Some of them, centuries ago, had wandered off into the snowy orchards and stood tiptoe, as though listening, ready to run back should they hear the tramp of an invading army. Through the valley and into the town a narrow stream darted, flashing like an arrow. Behind town and castle, across the horizon, towered a saffron wall of cloud, tipped along the edge with fire and notched in the center where the molten ball of the setting sun rested. From quaint gray streets came up a multitude of small sounds, like the lazy humming of women spinning. And over all, across orchards and roofs of houses, the grim warden on the rock threw his shadow. It was a valley forgotten by the centuries--a garden without barriers. “Where are we?” I whispered. “Falaise, my darling. I always promised myself that if ever I should love a man, I would bring him to Falaise to love him. Can’t you feel it--the slow quiet, the sense of the ages watching?” She was aflame in the light of the sunset. Her face was ivory, intense and ardent with glory. Her waywardness and fondness for disguise were gone; her true self, steady and unafraid, gazed out on me. The havoc of passion was replaced by the contentment of a desire all but satisfied. “Let’s go to the castle first,” she said. “You remember its story?” I remembered: how Robert the Devil, Duke of the Normans, had found Arlotta, the tanner’s daughter, washing linen in that same little beck; and had loved her at sight and had carried her off to his castle on the rock, where was born William the Bastard, conqueror of England and greatest of all the Normans. Leaving the car in the village street, we climbed the rock and gained admittance. As we gazed down from the splintered battlements into the winding streets, Fiesole drew me to her, throwing her arm carelessly about my neck as though we were boy and girl. “Look,” she whispered, pointing sheer down to the foot of the precipice, “there’s the tannery still standing and the beck running past it. And see, there are girls washing linen; one of them might be Arlotta. In nine hundred years nothing has altered.” We stole across the threshold of the stone-paved room in which the Conqueror was born. “I’m going to shock you,” she said. “I always think of Falaise as another Bethlehem--the Bethlehem of war. The Bethlehem of peace has crumbled, shattered by war; but here’s Falaise unchanged since the day when Robert the Devil seized Arlotta and galloped up the rock, and bolted his castle door. It sets one thinking----”