I turned my horse and we set off at a gallop. As we rode along, I tried to account for this unexpected fancy which had an air of premeditation. I imagined that time and reflection had weakened the first impression that calumnies had made on Mlle. Marguerite. Apparently, she had conceived some doubts of Mlle. Hélouin’s veracity, and had seized an opportunity to make, in an indirect way, a reparation which might be due to me. My mind full of such preoccupations, I gave little thought to the particular object of this strange ride. Still, I had often heard the tower of Elven described as one of the most interesting ruins of the country. I had never gone along either of the roads—from Rennes or from Josselin—which lead to the sea, without looking longingly at the confused mass rearing up suddenly among the distant heaths like some huge stone on end. But I had had neither time nor opportunity to examine it. Slackening our pace, we passed through the village of Elven, which preserves to a remarkable extent the character of a mediæval hamlet. The form of the low, dark houses has not changed for five or six centuries. You think you are dreaming, when, looking into the big arched bays which serve as windows, you see the groups of mild-eyed women in sculpturesque costume plying their distaffs in the shade, and talking in low tones an unknown tongue. These gray spectral figures seem to have just left their tombs to repeat some scene of a bygone age, of which you are the only witness. It gives a sense of oppression. The sluggish life that stirs around you in the single street of the village has the same stamp of archaic strangeness transmitted from a vanished world. A little way from Elven we took a cross-road that brought us to the top of a bare hillock. Thence, though still some distance off, we could plainly see the feudal colossus crowning a wooded height in front of us. The _lande_ we were on sloped steeply to some marshy meadows inclosed by thickets.