Leaving the village behind them, they followed the road, or rather the path, which, in its winding course up the slope of the mountain, was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. So, after some objections, and upon the young man's remarking to his companion that as he was obliged to lead his horse it would be dangerous for her to walk behind, the good woman was induced to go in advance. The young man followed her without a word. One could see that his thoughtful brow was wrinkled beneath the weight of some engrossing preoccupation. A fine and lordly château it was toward which our two pilgrims, so different in age and station, were thus wending their way. Four centuries and ten generations had hardly sufficed for that mass of rock to grow from foundation to battlements; and there it stood, itself a mountain towering above the mountain on which it was built. Like all the structures of that age, the château of the counts of Montgommery was absolutely irregular in its formation. Fathers had bequeathed it to their sons, and each temporary proprietor had added to this stone colossus according to his fancy or his need. The square donjon, the principal fortification, had been built under the dukes of Normandy. Then the fanciful turrets on the battlements and the ornamented windows had been added to the frowning donjon, multiplying the chased and sculptured stonework as time went on, as if the years had been fruitful in this granite vegetation. At last, toward the end of the reign of Louis XII., and in the early days of François I., a long gallery with pointed windows had put the last touch to this secular agglomeration. From this gallery, and still better from the summit of the donjon, could be had an extended view over several leagues of the rich, blooming plains of Normandy. For, as we have already said, the county of Montgommery was situated in the province of Auge, and its eight or ten baronies and its hundred and fifty fiefs were dependencies of the bailiwicks of Argentan, Caen, and Alençon. At last they reached the great portal of the château. Think of it! For more than fifteen years this magnificent and formidable donjon had been without a master. An old intendant still continued to collect the rents; and there were some of the servants, too, who had grown old in that solitude, and who continued to look after the château, whose doors they threw open every day, as if the master was to be expected at any moment, while they closed them again at evening, as if his coming were simply postponed till the next day. The intendant received the two visitors with the same appearance of friendliness that every one seemed to show to the woman, and the same deference which all agreed in according to the young man.