We are taken to the dungeons in the entrance towers where our feudal forefathers inflicted one dares not think what agonies, and without a pang of remorse; rather with a sense of right and heaven-inspired justice. It was within the walls of this fortress, probably in a cell of the Convent, that the Man in the Iron Mask passed the dreadful days and nights of his life.
The sentiment of the unimaginative ruffian who could condemn a fellow-creature to this living grave is probably beyond the understanding of a modern--short of a criminal lunatic. We are glad to hurry out again into the light, oppressed by the shadow of misery and wickedness that seems to hang about the place to this hour.
There are many who hold that the world has made no real progress except in material civilisation. That is a subject that might best be studied in some mouldering dungeon, which, be it remembered, was just as much a "necessary part" of the mediæval castle as the kitchen or pantry is of its descendant, the country-house of to-day.
If such strongholds were either let or sold in the feudal era, they were doubtless recommended to intending purchasers as having well-appointed torture-chambers, fitted with all the latest improvements in racks and thumb-screws. Without venturing to claim too much for the average modern, he may be said to have advanced a little beyond the stage when the thumb-screw was an instrument that no gentleman's house should be without. As the change of ideals to which this improvement is due may be said to have taken place in Provence, fostered and impelled, paradox as it seems, within the precincts of the feudal castle itself with its chains and oubliettes, those sighing ruins become strangely moving and significant.
Our poor, half-starved guide, however, looks as if she thought them anything but significant as she leads us up and down the fallen masonry, the kitten following always, and often springing to her shoulders and curving its lithe little body round her neck.
"Il est comme notre enfant," she says, half apologetically. "Nous n'en avons pas, des enfants." And the kitten swirls its tail in her face as if to assure her that it could well fill the place of any number of children. The faithful little acolyte had to be left outside the door leading to the dungeons, for she used to get lost in the passages and the turret staircase. But there she waited, mewing at intervals, till we re-emerged, and then she sprang with a little purring cry on to her mistress's shoulder.