The façade in the illustration is not the oldest part of the château. Pass around to the other side and, overlooking the forest, you will find the Tour des Sarasins, the only remaining portion of the feudal castle and evidently forming at one period a part of the outer fortifications. There is also the Ladies' Tower and the Tower of the Chatelaine, but the most beautiful,--that shown in the illustration--is the Tower of the Lion, with its great spiral staircase, by means of which the traveller will enter the great drawing-room with its gorgeously coloured and heavily raftered ceiling, and its fire-place, with an immense mantel, that holds a gallery for musicians. The château is not only magnificent in itself and superbly furnished, but it is one that can be used and is used to live in. It is called the most splendid of its kind in France, and as you mount to its towers and look abroad, you discover that it stands in the heart of a vast forest, twenty thousand acres in extent, so the custodian tells me, and, as we sit perched high up among the grotesque gargoyles and strange carving of the tower, he weaves the château's legend into this. They say that this forest of Meillant is haunted by wolves of the demon order, and that one of them holds the spirit of a woman, who prowls these shadows nightly and pauses ever under the window of the former chamber of the Chevalier Bayard, who once came here to see the king and who did not respond to her advances,--in revenge for which she inserted a dreadful bit, of fangs of iron, into his horse's mouth before the battle of Milan, and so, nearly caused the death of Bayard and the loss of that conflict. Pursuing him even to his death, in the Battle of Pavia, he escaped her only by kissing the cross in his sword hilt as his spirit ascended to God and she fled shrieking away into the darkness. Now she must forever haunt the aisles of this ghostly forest in the shape of a werewolf, and it is said that on misty, moonless nights you may even see the fire of her eyes and hear her dismal howls. As I listen to this legend I wonder whether she has not perchance taken for to-day the shape of that ape which glared so malignantly at me on that hill yonder as we came down here. The world of travel does not come often to Meillant, but perhaps now in the days of auto cars the traveller may discover it. If so he will be amply repaid. I pause a moment as I depart to inspect an exquisite little chapel in the court, and then pass away to the outer gate, where I find a dark-eyed daughter of France sitting on the steps of my machine. She has allowed Jean to bring it within the gates, and smiles pleasantly at my recognition of her courtesy, and so we glide away into the dim aisles of the forest on the return ride to Bourges. [Illustration: THE GRAND SALON OF THE CHÂTEAU OF MEILLANT By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] CHAPTER XVII