In the cells above, in the dungeons beneath, one stumbled over rifts of hard earth, in the centre or in a corner of which yawned now the mouth of an unsealed oubliette, now a well.
Finally, at the summit of one of the towers, that at the left as one entered, there was a roofed gallery running parallel to a circular foothold cut from the rock.

There, without doubt, the men-at-arms had been stationed to fire on their assailants through wide loopholes opening overhead and underfoot.

In this gallery the voice, even the lowest, followed the curving walls and could be heard all around the circuit.
Briefly, the exterior of the castle revealed a fortified place built to stand long sieges, and the dismantled interior made one think of a prison in which flesh, mildewed by the moisture, must rot in a few months.

Out in the open air again, one felt a sensation of well-being, of relief, which one lost on traversing the ruins of the isolated chapel and penetrating, by a cellar door, to the crypt below.
This chapel, low, squat, its vaulted roof upheld by massive columns on whose capitals lozenges and bishop's croziers were carved, dated from the eleventh century.

The altar stone survived intact.