say.
The chateau served for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated each other.
The French, fired on from every point,--from behind the walls, from the summits of the garrets, from the depths of the cellars, through all the casements, through all the air-holes, through every crack in the stones,-- fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the grape-shot was a conflagration.
In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, the dismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible; the English guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral of the staircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof, appears like the inside of a broken shell.
The staircase has two stories; the English, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps, had cut off the lower steps.
These consisted of large slabs of blue stone, which form a heap among the nettles.
Half a score of steps still cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident.
These inaccessible steps are solid in their niches. All the rest resembles a jaw which has been denuded of its teeth. There are two old trees there:
one is dead; the other is wounded at its base, and is clothed with verdure in April.
Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the staircase.
A massacre took place in the chapel.