again," says M. le Duc,[1] "that the feudal castle never arrived at its perfectness till after the Norman invasion, and that this race of the North was the first to apply a defensive system under unquestionable laws, soon followed by the nobles of the Continent, after they had, at their own expense, learned their superiority."
The next sentence is a curious one. I pray your attention to it. "The defensive system of the Norman is born of a profound sentiment of distrust and cunning, foreign to the character of the Frank." You will find in all my previous notices of the French, continual insistance upon their natural Franchise, and also, if you take the least pains in analysis of their literature down to this day, that the idea of falseness is to them indeed more hateful than to any other European nation. To take a quite cardinal instance. If you compare Lucian's and Shakespeare's Timon with Molière's Alceste, you will find the Greek and English misanthropes dwell only on men's ingratitude to themselves, but Alceste, on their falsehood to each other.
Now hear M. le Duc farther:
"The castles built between the tenth and twelfth centuries along the Loire, Gironde, and Seine, that is to say, along the lines of the Norman invasions, and in the neighbourhood of their possessions, have a peculiar and uniform character which one finds neither
- ↑ Article "Château," vol. iii., p. 65.
