The barrack-master proved to be a most interesting man, knowing many details of Caesar's life and campaigns which I suspect were not known to that captain himself.

He had served in Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and that he ought himself to have died of it long ago.

He pointed out the difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time of the first Napoleon.
The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my question as to how it came there elicited the following story:--When Louis XIV.

was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[42] which commands the citadel on one side as the Bregille does on the other.

Among the besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men to whom the Franche Comte was then a sort of home, as forming part of the dominions of Spain; and this monk was the most active supporter of the defence, against the large party within the walls which was anxious to render the town.