miles off; but Angers contents itself with a meagre
affluent of that stream. The effect was naturally much
better when the huge, dark mass of the castle, with its
seventeen prodigious towers, rose out of the protecting
flood. These towers are of tremendous girth and soli-
dity; they are encircled with great bands, or hoops, of
white stone, and are much enlarged at the base.
Between them hang vast curtains of infinitely old-look-
ing masonry, apparently a dense conglomeration of
slate, the material of which the town was originally
built (thanks to rich quarries in the neighborhood),
and to which it owed its appellation of the Black.
There are no windows, no apertures, and to-day no
battlements nor roofs. These accessories were removed
by Henry III., so that, in spite of its grimness and
blackness, the place has not even the interest of look-
ing like a prison; it being, as I supposed, the essence
of a prison not to be open to the sky. The only
features of the enormous structure are the black, sombre
stretches and protrusions of wall, the effect of which,
on so large a scale, is strange and striking. Begun by
Philip Augustus, and terminated by St. Louis, the
Chateau d'Angers has of course a great deal of history.
The luckless Fouquet, the extravagant minister of
finance of Louis XIV., whose fall from the heights of
grandeur was so sudden and complete, was confined
here in 1661, just after his arrest, which had taken
place at Nantes. Here, also, Huguenots and Vendeans
have suffered effective captivity.