We are shewn, of course, 'the room where William the Conqueror was
born,' and from the windows of the castle keep we have just time to make
a sketch of the beautiful Val d'Ante,[38] and of the women, with their
curiously-shaped baskets, washing in the stream; and to listen to the
thrice-told tale of the tanner's daughter, and to the deeds of valour
wrought on these heights--when the performance is declared to be over,
and we find ourselves once more on the ramparts outside the castle.

We are so full of historical associations at Falaise--every nook and
corner of the castle telling of its nine sieges--that we are glad to be
able to examine the building thoroughly from without, and to remind
ourselves of the method of defensive warfare in the fifteenth century.
The whole of the precincts of the castle, the walls, ramparts, and the
principal towers, are (at the time we write, August, 1869) strewn with
mason's work, as if a new castle of Falaise were being built; everything
looks fresh and new, it is only here and there we discover anything old,
the remnants of a carved window, and the like. But, as a Frenchman
observed to us, if it had not been for all this nineteenth-century work,
the present generation would never have seen the castle of Falaise. The
work of restoration appears to be carried on in rather a different
spirit from the ecclesiastical restorations at Caen and Bayeux; here the
prevailing idea seems to be, 'prop up your antique _any how_' (with
timber beams, and a zinc roof to Talbot's tower, such as we might put
over a cistern), so long as devotees will come and worship, with
francs, at the shrine; whilst at Bayeux, as we have seen, the old work
is handled with reverence and fear, and the nineteenth-century mason
puts out all his power to imitate, if not to excel, the work of the
twelfth.

The churches at Falaise should not pass unnoticed; but we will not weary