ABSTRACT
The ancient and immense pile of building called the castle of Viudrecour, had once been a strong fortress, built originally to guard the south-eastern boundary of the province of Britanny, while it yet belonged to its native princes; but Louis the Eleventh,32 in his frequent attempts to possess himself of that great fief, had taken this chateau, and it became nominally part of his dominions. Buried among woods, and a wild tract of mountainous country, it suited the gloomy disposition of that sullen and ferocious tyrant; and he here had acted many of those tragedies which rendered him the terror of his own abject and insulted people; while he lay in wait to gain farther advantages over the duke de Bretagne; and depopulated the borders by suffering, and even promoting, among his vassals, innumerable atrocities against the inhabitants. It was fortified by all the skill of that age, aided by several devices dictated by his own terrors; and many vestiges of these precautions remained, giving to the exterior of the building an appearance more menacing and horrid than such fabricks usually wear, even when they are more entire than Vaudrecour now was: for much of it had fallen to decay, though many parts yet retained their Gothic horrors unimpaired. A small river had once filled the triple moat that had surrounded it, and yet ran round the whole castle, stealing away almost unperceived among reeds and bushes, till it was lost in the woods; but in wet seasons its original passage being choaked by masses of the fallen ruins, the stream spread itself over the flatter ground, and made an almost impassable morass on that side from whence D’Alonville surveyed it.
