The donjon was still shut off, on the Tiffauges side, by a vast moat, at the bottom of which mighty trees were growing.

One would have had to pass over the tops of the trees, growing to the very verge of the wall, to gain a porch on the other side, for there was now no drawbridge.
But quite accessible was another part which overhung the Sevre.

There the wings of the castle, overgrown with ivy and white-crested viburnum, were intact.

Spongy, dry as pumice stone, silvered with lichen and gilded with moss, the towers rose entire, though from their crenelated collarettes whole blocks were blown away on windy nights.
Within, room succeeded glacial room, cut into the granite, surmounted with vaulted roofs, and as close as the hold of a ship.

Then by spiral stairways one descended into similar chambers, joined by cellar passageways into the walls of which were dug deep niches and lairs of unknown utility.
Beneath, those corridors, so narrow that two persons could not walk along them abreast, descended at a gentle slope, and bifurcated so that there was a labyrinth of lanes, leading to veritable cells, on the walls of which the nitre scintillated in the light of the lantern like steel mica or twinkling grains of sugar.