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On the rock of the Falkenstein, at its very highest point, rises a round tower hollowed out at its base. This tower, covered with brambles, white thorns, and myrtles, seems as old as the mountain itself. Neither French, Germans, nor Swedes have been able to destroy it. The stone and the cement are united so firmly, that not the least fragment can be detached. It has a gloomy and mysterious aspect, which carries you back to bygone times to which the memory of man cannot reach. At the period of the passage of the wild geese, Marc Dives used frequently to lie in ambush there when he had nothing better to do, and sometimes at the fall of day, just as the flocks were arriving through the mist, and describing a large circuit before retiring to rest, he would bring down two or three, to the great delight of Hexe-Baizel, who was always very eager to put them on the spit.
Often, too, in the autumn, Marc would spread his nets among the bushes, into which the thrushes would drop without even a struggle; so that, in short, the old tower served him as a sort of storehouse.