midday
On the first floor there was a suite of spacious rooms , still roofed over , and very dark because of the shuttered windows . I penetrated into these chambers , and I felt an almost delicious terror when I heard my footsteps echoing through the sepulchral stillness of the place . Then I would pass in review before the strange Gothic paintings and the half-effaced frescoes that still retained traces of gilt ornamentation ; the fabled monsters and garlands of impossible flowers had been added at the time of the Renaissance . This magnificent , pictured past , fantastic and barbarous to the point of being terrible , seemed to me , at that time , very vague and dim and distant ; I could not realize that it had been lighted up by the same midday sunshine that warmed the red stones of the ruins about me . And now that I am better able to estimate Castelnau , when I recall it to my memory , after having seen most of the splendors of this earth , I still think the enchanted castle of my childhood , as it stands upon its glorious height , one of the most superb ruins of mediaeval France . In one of the towers there was a room whose ceiling was painted a royal blue over-strewn with exquisite gold tracery and blazonry . In no place have I realized feudalism so well as in that tower .