The fourth side of the enceinte stands on a solid rock, above the little river that loses itself in the flat-lands bordering the Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary of that wide water.
A moss-grown path round the walls will give a quick walker ten minutes' exercise to make the round from one tower of the gateway to the other.
Within the enceinte are the remains of the old castle, still solid and upright; erected, it is recorded, by the English during their long occupation of this country.

A more modern chateau, built after the final expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient structure, and in the centre of the vast enclosure, raised above the walls, stands a square house, in the Italian style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and never yet completed.

There are, also, gardens and shaded walks and vast stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many crumbling remains inside the walls, that offered a passive resistance to the foe in olden time, and as successfully hold their own to-day against the prying eye of a democratic curiosity.
Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that the Abbe Touvent directed his tremulous steps.
Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half garden, half hayfield.

The hay had been cut, and the scent of the new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest chateau and under its leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill-defined borders.

The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers the fact--which must, however, have been known to them--that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the hay with no other help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that capable, brown-faced bonne-a-tout-faire, who is assuredly the best man in France to-day.
In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has twice the strength of that to which we are accustomed in mistier lands, and the Abbe looked about him with more confidence as he crossed the great court.