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They had other topics of conversation, besides their news from courts and fairs, which were of interest to Othon, the builder of castles in Wales and churches in his native country.

Behind him lay the Low Countries, where men were still completing the cathedrals that a later Florentine would describe as `` a malediction of little tabernacles, one on top of the other, with so many pyramids and spires and leaves that it is a wonder they stand up at all, for they look as though they were made of paper instead of stone or marble '' ; ;

the Low Countries, where the Middle Ages were to last for another two centuries and die out only when Charles the Bold of Burgundy met his first defeat in the fields and forests below the walls of Grandson.