The old Castillon is approached from the present village by a steep cart-road which winds round the rock, or by a still steeper mule-path which labours up with many zigzags. Both road and path are overgrown with grass. They lead to a flight of wide steps which ascends to the town. It forms quite a ceremonial entry. There is but a single street. It is a sorrowful street, because it is so forlorn and so still. It is as green with grass as a lane in a wood and around the doorsteps of the houses and in every court and alley nettles and brambles flourish with heartless luxuriance. Half way along the street is the church. It is small and plain with a roof of tiles and a bell gable that lacks a bell. Over the door is the date 1712. The church is locked; but so far as can be judged from the outer walls it has escaped damage. The “pointed campanile,” however, which is described and figured in older accounts is now no longer to be seen. At the end of the street, on the point that looks towards Sospel, are the ruins of the castle. Only some vaults and some crumbling walls remain; but a gateway of stone with a pointed arch still stands unmoved amidst the chaos of destruction. Many houses are little more than a shell of bricks, but the greater number seem to have suffered little. They are closed. The doors, the window frames and the sun-shutters are grey, because in thirty-three years every trace of paint has vanished. Many of the windows are still glazed. To one house clings a precarious balcony of wood with half of its rail intact. A few of the dwellings are doorless and it is possible to mount stairs laden with débris, to enter rooms which seem to have been but recently left and to climb down into hollow chambers echoing with mystery and suspicion. One front door has a slit for letters—open as if awaiting the postman. It is a trivial feature and yet it seems the most pitiable mockery in the whole of this street of dead things. [Illustration: CASTILLON: THE MAIN STREET AND CHURCH DOOR.] The desolation of the little town is unutterable. If it were a total ruin the human element would be lost; but it is so little a ruin, so like a living village of to-day—with the ashes of the kitchen fire still on the hearth—that it remains even now a vivid embodiment of a place dumb with panic and the fear of death. XXXIX SOSPEL