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Sometimes old Anita, become garrulous with age, mumbled in the twilight when the rose and the lavendar lights swept down the eastern ramparts and across the rolling range lands, and the girl gleaned scattered pictures of a gentle and lovely creature who had come with her father out of a mystic country somewhere "below." "Below" meant down the river and beyond, an unnamable region.
And sometimes, through a chance opening, we could see down over billows of waving leaves to a single little spot of blue, like a turquoise sunk in folds of green velvet, which meant that the River was dropping below us. This, in the mercy of the Red Gods, was meant as encouragement. The time came, however, when the ramparts we scaled rose sheer and bare in impregnability.
But stifled by the smoke, which poured in volumes upon them, the people in the fort were soon compelled to quit the ramparts to avoid suffocation. The palisades were on fire, and the flames mounting in the air, swept over, and began to attack the factory and houses.
Before ordering the assault, the way was prepared for it by a terrible fire from every siege gun of the Turks. This was kept up for twenty-four hours, and so tremendous was the effect that the knights were unable to remain on the ramparts.
There was an utter silence at noonday; nothing but yellowing wheat beneath, the ramparts of the hills around, and the sun above. But, though out of sight, there was a farmhouse behind a small copse and clump of elms full of rooks' nests, a short way from the foot of the Down.
The ceremony was fixed for the 15th of August, the festival of the Virgin Mary and of the Emperor Napoleon. The municipality had decided to make an imposing ceremony and had built the platform on the couronneaux, a delightful extension of the ramparts of the old citadel where I will take you presently.
The fortress was raised by a Baron de Jarnac, and must have been one of the last built to combine the double character of family residence and stronghold. The outer and inner ramparts, and the high, frowning, machicolated keep, perched upon the rock and overlooking the valley, prove that it was truly a chateau-fort, and one that ought to have been able to give a very good account of itself.
This state of things is almost precisely similar to that which prevails in Jupiter, who also stands nearly upright in his orbit, the inclination of his axis being only about 3°. But how to account for the grooves? A very hard nut to crack. They must certainly be a later formation than the craters and the rings, for they are often found breaking right through the circular ramparts.
Already men, fully armed, were hurrying through the streets that led to the Piazza; whence came echoes of voices talking in quick, awe-struck tones the flash of torches a horseman dashing down from the castle to the walls at the port sounds of excited action ringing back from the ramparts the quick gallop of a cavalier rushing to join his command. What might it mean!
All this was against the garrison, to prevent them from breaking out; and outside the camp he made another line of ditches and ramparts against the Gauls who might be coming to the rescue. The other tribes were not deaf to the summons of their friends, but assembled in large numbers, and just as the besieged had exhausted their provisions, an army was seen on the hills beyond the camp.
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