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Updated: June 8, 2025
I passed through the gateway, and found myself within a square enclosure of about two acres. On one side rose a round and lofty keep, or donjon, with a conical roof, part of which had fallen down, strewing the square with its ruins.
But here, at Manasia, "The battle towers, the donjon keep, The loophole grates, where captives weep. The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow lustre shone;" and we were quietly carried back to the year of our Lord 1400; for this castle and church were built by Stephan, Despot of Servia, the son of Knes Lasar.
The surrounding hills have here as at Surruk Durrah the appearance of ruined castles, with donjon or keep and tower; they forcibly reminded me of the "Castle of St. John," in Scott's Bridal of Triermain, but my visions of Merlin and fair maidens awoken from their charmed slumbers were destroyed by the sight of a little purling brook which promised me a few hours angling.
All the relaxation I had from my studies was to divert myself with some rabbits on the top of the donjon, and some pigeons in the turrets, for which I was indebted to the continual solicitations of the Church of Paris.
But look I but see! Who is it comes now, sweeps round the donjon flank? Lean over the embrasure, and learn! Ah, man, are my eyes so old, my memories so treacherous, that I do not know day from night? They have gone on, or did they enter, think you?
And thither, unto Malepartus safe and strong, trots Reinecke, where he hopes to be snug among the labyrinthine windings, and innumerable starting-holes, as the old apologue has it, of his ballium, covert-way, and donjon keep.
It had a "donjon," or keep, which was generally occupied by the baron as a bar-room, feed-trough, and cooler between fights. It was built of stone, and was lighted by means of crevices through the wall by day, and by means of a saucer of tallow and a string or rush which burned during the night and served mainly to show how dark it was.
I stood upon the donjon keep it is a sacred place, Where floated for eight hundred years the banner of my race; Argent, a dexter sinople, and gules an azure field, There ne'er was nobler cognizance on knightly warrior's shield. "The first time England saw the shield 'twas round a Norman neck, On board a ship from Valery, King William was on deck.
As we passed round the donjon, we met the Green Man, the forest-keeper, who did not greet us, but walked by as if we had not existed. He was looking just as I had formerly seen him through the window of the Donjon Inn. He had still his fowling-piece slung at his back, his pipe was in his mouth, and his eye-glasses on his nose. "An odd kind of fish!" Rouletabille said to me, in a low tone.
That donjon, whose dark form seems to stand amidst the stars, only serves to mark one of the many tombs of feudalism which rise above the smiling but capricious Dordogne like menhirs monuments of older illusions along the ocean-scalloped coast of Brittany.
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