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Updated: May 8, 2025
After a desperate siege, the vaults of the towers and of the donjon were blown up with powder, and the different constructions were set on fire; where Charles VI had been sent to rest, and to turn his attention from his vagaries, and where, nearly two hundred years later, Henri IV had passed a week as Gabrielle D'Estress. Thenceforth, all these royal souvenirs had passed into oblivion.
Sternly was it fortified, after the fashion of the middle ages, with donjon and battlements; displaying, above others, the tall tower, which bore the name of Lord Henry's, or the Clifford's Tower.
When Lotchè, however, who was lighting her master, was about to draw the bars of the door, an unexpected noise arose outside. Yes! Strange as the thing seems, a noise a real noise, such as the town had certainly not heard since the taking of the donjon by the Spaniards in 1513 terrible noise, awoke the long-dormant echoes of the venerable Van Tricasse mansion.
It leaped at the sight of this white and rose castle, with its towers and donjon and keep; it sank at the thought that he, poor old unpretentious Peter Davenant, with no social or personal passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath portcullis or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal pile into the presence of the châtelaine whose abode here must be that of some legendary princess, and bend her to his will.
And before they were able to ascertain what it was, a luminous train, accompanied by a hissing sound in the air, called their attention from the donjon to the ground. A second dull noise was heard from the ditch, and Raoul ran to pick up a silver plate which was rolling along the dry sand. The hand that had thrown this plate made a sign to the two gentlemen, and then disappeared.
With the native sound judgment of the father of a heroine of romance, the von Berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from among her rich and noble lovers.
"A sad and shameful tale!" exclaimed the young Frenchman, as we passed by the donjon where Joan had been lodged and by the scanty ruins of the little chapel where she stopped to pray, and wept because the angels left her. Just then, as we were passing on to find some traces of the several Angevin kings, who lived and died at Chinon, something happened which I cannot quite explain.
Then Balbine, wife of Herve VII, thought for six months that her husband had been killed in the wars. But, unwilling to give up all hope, she watched for him daily from the top of the donjon, and when at last she saw him one morning on the highway, returning to his home, she ran down quickly to meet him, but was so overcome with joy, that she fell dead at the entrance of the castle.
Now the young man who loved Miss I mean Lady Katherine was a sort of wild proposition. Old man wouldn't have him around the place; but young man kept hanging on till Earl ordered him off. Finally the old gent locked Lady Kitty in the donjon tower," said Mr. Hobson. "Too much shilly-shallying in this generation," he went on. "Every house that's got a pretty girl ought to have a donjon keep.
* An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet and nearly five inches English measure. This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep.
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