On descending by the outer wall we discover an opening leading into the base of that oubliette, and used, I should say, by the lord of the castle to discover whether life yet remained in his victims after that drop from the hole glimmering faintly far above us. There are other dungeons under the castle but nothing like this, which was the court of last resort, and one can picture the grimly smiling face of the jailer as he conducted his unsuspecting prisoner upon that rolling stone above. Even yet the blackness seems to resound with the shrieks of the poor wretch as he plunged downward, then, silence forever; while above the flag waved a summons to the Crusades "In the name of Christ" the compassionate, and the clouds drifted as idly by then as now. Gomot, in his interesting history of this castle, resents the generally accepted theory of this oubliette--holding rather that the tower was a last refuge for the besieged in this castle and this opening, yawning black before us, but the means of entrance from a ladder. I think him wrong, for all the vast space below shows no signs of any rest for a ladder, indeed the walls are smooth as a stone well for the entire one hundred feet. It is impossible to fix the date of the foundation of the Château de Tournoël, but like all old castles it was back in the time when such places were needed to protect the surrounding land from the barbarians of the adjoining mountains and used as often as an instrument of oppression. The name in Latin was Turnolium and has passed through many changes until to-day it is Tournoël. It is first mentioned in the eleventh century, but was very ancient at that period. Durand, Abbé of Chaise-Dieu, preached a crusade at that time. Bertrand was then Seigneur of the Château and such were his offences against the Church that Pope Grégoire excommunicated him, which promptly brought him to time. With Philip Augustus on the throne in 1180 we find him using Robert, Bishop of Clermont, as a weapon against his (Robert's) brother Guy, Count of Auvergne, and Lord of Tournoël, perhaps the most picturesque figure of that age and section, and long celebrated in song and story by the wandering minstrels. Audacious, brutal, gigantic in stature, and with long red hair, he knew no will save his own and reigned here like a king.