rounded the city. From the scarp of the moat to the palisade gleamed a carpet of dark-green grass. I crossed a stone bridge over a dry river-bed. On its left bank, above a talus, a barbican, turning to the left, supported a steep path which ended in a dark gateway, with a drawbridge, by which one penetrated to the interior of the town. At the end of this bridge was the gate of the town: it was made of a single piece of wood, now worm-eaten, and was raised and lowered between two grooves; it was strengthened with great nails and had an enormous lock. The doorway ended in a narrow path full of embrasures in the walls, and this opened on to a square paved with slabs, in the cracks of which grew some languid weeds. In the middle of the pathway was another wooden door.
Labraz was a terrible town, a town of the Middle Ages. It had not a single level street, and the houses all had stone escutcheons. Nearly all of them were austere and silent; many were almost or completely in ruins. In a doorway here and there sat an old woman half asleep; a beggar passed feeling his way with his white staff, and starved dogs ran along the gutter. There were four or five ruined churches; some of them had been turned into haylofts. I paused sometimes to consider houses of solid stone with pointed arches; in others the first floor protruded irrepressibly, supported by corbels carved at the end of the beams on a line with the ceiling of the
