Chapter XI: Part 11

A narrow grassy lane between tall hedgerows sprinkled over with innumerable glistening blackberries led me to Frontenac, a village upon the rocky hillside. Here is a little church partly raised upon the site of a Roman or Gallo-Roman temple. A broken column left standing was included in the wall of the Romanesque apse, upon the lower masonry of which both pagan and Christian hands have worked. The nave has been rebuilt in modern times, but in the open space before the entrance Roman coffins crop up above the rough paving, separated from each other only by a few feet. There is a stone coffin lying right across the doorway, and the _curé_, whom I drew into conversation, confided to me, with a comical smile upon his pale dark face, that he had raised a fragment of the lid to see if anything more enduring than man had been left there, but that he found nothing but very fine dust. Every bone had become powder. This priest was a companionable man, and he must have looked upon me with a less suspicious eye than most people hereabouts, for he invited me into his house to take a _petit verre_ with him. But the sun was getting near the end of his journey, and I had to fare on foot to the next village; so I thought it better to decline the offer.

The next village was St. Pierre-Toirac, also built upon the hillside above the Lot. It is a larger place than Frontenac, and must have been of considerable importance in the Middle Ages, to judge from its fortified church, whose high gloomy walls give it the appearance of a veritable stronghold. Some of the inhabitants say that it was built by the English, but the architecture does not indicate that such was the case. The interior is a beautiful example of the Romanesque style. The capitals of the columns are fit to serve as models, so strongly typical are the designs, and so exquisite is their workmanship. It is probable that the walls of the church were raised, and that it was turned into a fortress during the religious wars of the thirteenth century between Catholics and Albigenses, which explain the existence of so many fortified churches in Languedoc and Guyenne, as well as so many ruins.

I had reached this church by an old archway, whose origin was evidently defensive, and crossing the dim and silent square, surrounded by mediaeval houses, some half ruinous, and all more or less adorned with pellitory, ivy-linaria, and other wall-plants which had fixed their roots between the gaping stones. I passed through another archway, and stopped at a terrace belonging to a ruined château or country-house. Here I was looking at the valley of the Lot in the warm after-glow of sunset, when an elderly gentleman came up to me and disturbed my contemplative mood by asking me not very courteously if I wanted to see anybody. I was somewhat taken aback to find such an important-looking person in such a dilapidated place. I tried, however, not to appear too much overcome, and explained that it was only with the intention of seeing the picturesque that I had found my way to that ruinous spot. The agreeable person who had questioned me now let me understand that it was his spot, and informed me that nobody was allowed to see it 'sans être presenté.' Then, looking at me very fiercely, he said:

'Are you an Englishman or a German?'

'An Englishman,' I replied, whereupon his ferocious expression relaxed considerably, but he did not become genial.

I retired from his ruin considerably disgusted with its owner, who contrasted badly with all Frenchmen in his social position whom I had previously met. I asked a woman who he was, and she replied that all she knew about him was that he was an 'espèce de noble.' Her cruelty was unintentional. The next morning I learnt from an old Crimean soldier, who knew I was English because he had drained many a glass with my fellow-countrymen, that the magnates of the village had held a consultation overnight upon the advisability of coming down upon me in a body and asking me for my papers. Nothing came of it, which was well for me, for I had come away without my papers.

There was rain that night, and when morning came it had changed the face of the world. The sun was shining again and warmly, but summer had gone and autumn had come. Upon the rocky slopes the maples were on fire; in the valley the large leaves of the walnut-trees mimicked the sunshine, and by the river-side the tall poplars, as they bowed to the water deities, cast upon the mirror of many tones the image of a trembling golden leaf repeated beyond all power of numbering. A little rain had been enough to produce this magical change. It had opened the great feast of colour that brings the year to its gray, sad close.

But the sky was brilliantly blue when I left St. Pierre-Toirac. The next village was Laroque-Toirac. The houses were clustered near the foot of an escarped hill, where thinly-scattered pines relieved the glare of the naked limestone. Upon a precipitous rock dominating the village is a castle, the lower works of which belong to the Feudal Ages, the upper to the Renaissance epoch--a combination very frequent in this district. The mullioned windows and the graceful balustrade, carried along a high archway, are in strong contrast to the stern and dark masonry of the feudal stronghold. This picturesque incongruity reaches its climax in the lofty round tower upon which a dovecot has been grafted, whose extinguisher-roof, with long drooping eaves, is quite out of keeping with the machicolations which remain a little below the line of the embattled parapet that has disappeared. The castle is now used for the schools of the commune, and a score or so of little boys and girls whom I met on my way up the rough path stared at me with much astonishment. I climbed to a bastion of the outer works, where a fig-tree, growing from the old wall, and reaching above it, softened the horror of the precipice; for such it really was. The masonry was a continuation of one of those walls of rock which give such a distinctive character: to the geological formation of this region. The village lay far below--a broken surface of tiled roofs, sloping rapidly towards the Lot, itself a broad ribbon of many blended colours, winding through the sunlit plain. The castle of Laroque belonged to the Cardaillac family. In 1342 it was stormed and taken by Bertegot Lebret, captain of a strong company of English, who had established their headquarters at Gréalou.

As I approached Montbrun, the next village, the rocks which hemmed in the valley became more boldly escarped. In their lower part the beds of lias were shown with singular regularity. Box and pines and sumach were the chief vegetation upon the stony slopes, where the scattered masses of dark-green foliage gave by contrast a whiter glitter to the stones. Montbrun, like so many of the little towns and villages hereabouts, is built upon rocks immediately below a protecting stronghold, or, rather, what was one centuries ago. The windows of some of the dwellings look out upon the sheer precipice. The vine clambers over ruined houses and old walls built on to the rock, and seemingly a part of it. Of the mediaeval castle little is left besides the keep. The Marquis de Cadaillac, to whom it belonged, strengthened the fortifications with the hope that the stronghold would be able to resist any attack by the English; but it was nevertheless captured by them.

After leaving Montbrun I saw nothing more of civilization until I came near a woman seated on a doorstep, and engaged in the exciting occupation of fleaing a cat. She held the animal upon its back between her knees, and was so engrossed by the pleasures of the chase that she scarcely looked up to answer a question I put to her. The word _café_ painted upon a piece of board hung over another door enticed me inside, for it was now nearly midday, and I had been in search of the picturesque since seven o'clock, sustained by nothing more substantial than a bowl of black coffee and a piece of bread. This is the only breakfast that one can expect in a rural auberge of Southern France. If milk is wanted in the coffee it must be asked for over-night, and even then it is very doubtful if the cow will be found in time. To ask for butter with the bread would be looked upon as a sign of eccentric gluttony, but to cap this request with a demand for bacon and eggs at seven in the morning, as a man fresh from England might do with complete unconsciousness of his depravity, would be to openly confess one's self capable of any crime. People who travel should never be slaves to any notions on eating and drinking, for such obstinacy brings its own punishment.

A stout woman with a coloured silk kerchief on her head met me with a good-tempered face, and, after considering what she could do for me in the way of lunch, said, as though a bright idea had suddenly struck her:

'I have just killed some geese; would monsieur like me to cook him some of the blood?'.

'Merci!' I replied. 'Please think of something else.'

An Englishman may possibly become reconciled to snails and frogs as food, but never, I should say, to goose's blood. In about twenty minutes a meal was ready for me, composed of soup containing great pieces of bread, lumps of pumpkin and haricots; minced pork that had been boiled with the soup in a goose's neck, then a veal cutlet, covered with a thick layer of chopped garlic. Horace says that this herb is only fit for the stomachs of reapers, but every man who loves garlic in France is not a reaper. Strangers to this region had better reconcile themselves both to its perfume and its flavour without loss of time, for of all the seasoning essences provided by nature for the delight of mankind garlic is most esteemed here. Those who have a horror of it would fare very badly at a _table-d'hôte_ at Cahors, for its refined odour rises as soon as the soup is brought in, and does not leave until after the salad. Even then the unconverted say that it is still present. To cultivate a taste for garlic is, therefore, essential to happiness here.

I crossed a toll-bridge over the river just below Cajarc, and again entered the department of the Aveyron, my object being to ascend the valley of a tributary of the Lot, to a spot where it flows out of a pool of unknown depth, called the Gouffre de Lantouy. The road passed under the village of Savagnac, built upon the hillside. A Renaissance castle with sham machicolations, little chambers. with their projecting floors resting on brackets turrets on _culs de lampe_ and with extinguisher roofs, and a high terrace overgrown with vines and fig-trees left to fight their own battle, lorded it over all the other houses, like a sunflower in an onion-bed. But the castle, although it gives itself such aristocratic airs, is, in these days, nothing but a farmhouse, sacks of maize being now stored in rooms where ladies once touched the lute with white fingers, and where gentlemen may have crumpled their frills while swearing eternal love upon their knees. The little cemetery adjoining the château has swallowed up the great and the lowly century after century, and the rank grass, now sprinkled with the lingering flowers of summer, barely covers their mingled bones. The old gravestones, left undisturbed, have sunk into the soil nearly out of sight. Such is the ending of all that is human.

A little beyond this village a peasant woman, whom I met picking up walnuts from the road that was strewn with them, lifted her wide-brimmed straw hat to me as I passed. This was indeed polite. I now left the road, and followed a lane by the stream that flows out of the _gouffre_. This valley is narrow enough to be called a gorge, and the stony hills on either side presented a picture of utter barrenness and desolation. But along the level of the stream the deep-green grass shadowed by the hill was lighted up with the pale-purple death-torches of the poisonous colchicum. After crossing a stubble-field, now overgrown by the violet-coloured pimpernel, I reached the sinister pool, fringed with the flag's sword-like leaves and shadowed by willows and alders. I expected to find the water all in tumult; but no, it had the dark, solemn stillness of the mountain tarn. The two streams that poured out of it to meet a little lower down the valley hardly murmured as they started upon their journey amidst the iris and sedge, although the body of water was strong enough to turn a millwheel.

There is something that troubles the imagination in the appearance of this lonely pool for ever silently overflowing, and so deep that nobody as yet has been able to find the bottom. On the side of the stony hill close by are some ruined walls of a church and convent, said to have been built by St. Mamphaise. The peasants of the district have an extraordinary story with regard to this convent, which is either the cause or the consequence of the superstitious awe in which they hold the Gouffre de Lantouy. This legend is to the effect that the conventual building was once inhabited by women who ate children, and that a certain mother, whose baby they had kidnapped and eaten, cursed them so heartily and to such purpose that the _gouffre_ was formed, and their convent, or the greater part of it, was supernaturally carried down the hill and plunged into the bottomless water. The legend also says that those who stand by the pool on St. John's Eve will hear the convent bell ringing. It not being St. John's Eve when I was there I was unable to test the truth of this part of the legend. What I did hear was a raven croaking from the ruin, and the sound harmonized well with the air of mystery and gloom hanging over the spot.

There is some historic reason for believing that the convent at Lantouy was founded by Charlemagne. Very near this spot are the remains of some ancient fortified works, and the locality is known as 'La domaine de Waïffier.' This name is evidently the same as Waïfré. There is reason to believe that the last of the sovereign Dukes of Aquitaine made a stand here when pursued by his implacable enemy Pepin le Bref. The people pronounce the word 'Waïffier' as though it commenced with a 'G.'

Towards evening I recrossed the Lot and entered Cajarc. Passing through the little town, which is not in itself very interesting, I took a path winding up the side of the hill, at the base of which lies the burg. I wished to see a cascade that has a local reputation for beauty. I reached the foot of a high, fantastic rock, from the ledges of which masses of ivy hung woven together like a veritable tapestry of nature. A small stream descended from the uppermost ridge upon a rock covered with moss showing every hue of green, and then into a dark pool below. The hillside above the cascade has been extensively tunnelled for phosphate. An Englishman discovered the value of the site, and dug a fortune out of it. There are several phosphate-mines in this district, all more or less connected with British enterprise. Phosphate inspires respect for Englishmen here, for it has been the means of giving a great deal of employment and rendering petty proprietors, who could barely get a living out of their thankless soil, comparatively rich. The inhabitants, therefore, consider English speculators in the light of public benefactors, and such they have really proved, although the motive that brought them here was scarcely a philanthropic one. Neither the French nor the British public has any conception of the extent to which the mineral resources of France are worked by the English.

Cajarc, although it looks like a village to-day, was once a fortified town of considerable importance in the Quercy. Its inhabitants offered an obstinate resistance to the English on several occasions. In 1290 they refused to swear fealty to the King of England until their lord, the Bishop of Cahors, gave them the order to do so in the name of the King of France. Subsequently in the same and the following century, when the Ouercynois were again in arms against the English, various attempts to take the town by surprise failed through the vigilance and courage of the burghers. To punish them, the English, in 1368, destroyed their bridge across the Lot, of which some remnants may still be seen.

After leaving Cajarc in the morning I was soon alone with Nature on the right bank of the river. Autumn was there in a gusty mood, blowing yellow leaves down from the hills upon the water and driving them towards the sea over the rippled, gray surface lit up with cold, steel-like gleams of sunshine struggling through the vapour. The wilderness of herbs and under-shrubs along the banks was no longer aflame with flowers. Dead thistles, whose feathered seeds had drifted far away upon the wind to found new colonies, and a multitude of withered spikes and racemes, told the old story of the summer's life passing into the death or sleep of winter. Yet the river-banks were not without flowers. A rose, very like the 'monthly rose' of English gardens, was still blooming there, together with hawkweed, wild reseda, and a mint with lilac-coloured blossoms which one sees on every bit of waste ground throughout this region.

A rock rising from the river's bank carried the ruin of an ancient chapel. Only the apse was left. It contained one narrow deeply-splayed Romanesque window, and a piscina where the priest washed his hands. The altar-stone lay upon the ground where the altar must have stood, and behind it a rough wooden cross had been piously raised to remind the passer-by that the spot was hallowed.

The road now ran under high red rocks or steep stony slopes, where, on neglected terraces overgrown with weeds, the dead or dying vines repeated the monotonous tale of the phylloxera.

I passed through the village of Lannagol, mostly built upon rocks overlooking the bed of its dried-up stream, and was soon again under the desert hills, where the fiery maple flashed amid the sombre foliage of the box. The next village or hamlet was a very curious one. Rows of little houses, some of them mere huts, were built against the side of the rock under the shelter of huge masses of oolite or lias projecting like the stories of mediaeval dwellings. People climbed to their habitations, like goats, up very steep paths winding amongst the rocks. The overleaning walls were blackened to a great height by the smoke from the chimneys.

It was dusk when I crossed a bridge leading to the village of Cénevières, where I intended to pass the night. There was a very fair inn here, less picturesque than many of the auberges of the country, but cleaner, perhaps, for this reason. The aubergiste was suspicious of me at first, as he afterwards admitted, for like others he had turned over in his mind the question, Is he a German spy? Judging from my own experience in this part of France, I should say that a German tourist would not spend a very happy holiday here. The sentiment of the Parisians towards the Teuton is fraternal love compared to that of the Southern French. These people proved themselves to be thorough going haters in the religious wars, and the old character is still strong in them.

Although the Germans in 1870-71 did not show themselves in Guyenne, the resentment of the inhabitants towards them is intense, and it is the vivacity of this feeling that renders them so suspicious of foreigners. I noticed, however, that as I went farther down the Lot the people became more genial, so that the long evenings in the rural inns generally passed very pleasantly. Dinner over, I usually took possession of a chimney-corner, the only place where one can be really warm on autumnal nights, and while satisfying the curiosity of the rustic intelligence concerning the English and their ways I gathered much information that was useful to me respecting local customs and the caverns, castles and legends of the district where I happened to be. By nine o'clock everybody was yawning, and if the village blacksmith, the postman, and the bell-ringer had not left by that time, they were in an unusually dissipated frame of mind. By ten o'clock the great kitchen was dark, and the mice were making up a quadrille upon the hearth, supposing no cat to be looking on.

Early the next morning I was climbing the hill towards the Castle of Cénevières. This building is a most picturesque jumble of the castellated styles of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The oldest part of the structure--and it is very considerable--is that of a frowning feudal fortress of great strength, built upon a rock, which on the side of the Lot is a perpendicular wall some 200 feet high. The inhabitants agree in saying that the feudal walls are the work of the English, but they are probably in error. The original castle belonged to Waïfré. It afterwards passed to the Gourdon family, who doubtless rebuilt it upon the old foundations. The last descendant of this family was one of the most ardent Huguenots in the Quercy. The late Gothic superstructure, which is still inhabited, has a very high-pitched roof, with dormer windows covered by high gables with elaborate carvings. Very near this castle, in the side of the cliff, is a fortified cavern, which for centuries has gone by the name of La Grotte des Anglais. It must have been in communication with the castle, of which it may have served as an outwork or a place of refuge in the last extremity. I might have passed the whole day trying to find it but for the help of a peasant, who led the way down the rocks, hanging on to bushes of box. The remains of a small tower, pierced with loopholes on one side of the opening, and the other ruined masonry, leave no doubt as to the defensive use to which this cavern was at one time put.

Having left Cénevières, I recrossed the Lot and passed through Saint-Martin, a village of little interest, but the point from which it is most convenient to reach a certain cave where animals of the prehistoric ages were obliging enough to die, so that their skeletons might be preserved for the delight and instruction of the modern scientific bone-hunter. This is not one of the celebrated caves in the department, consequently the visitor with thoughts fixed on bones may carry away a sackful if he has the patience to grub for them. If the cavern were near Paris it would give rise to a fierce competition between the palaeontologist and the _chiffonnier_, but placed where it is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up a very steep, stony hill, and there had the good fortune to meet an old woman who was coming down over the rocks with surprising nimbleness. She knew at once what I wanted. Although she spoke French with great difficulty, three words out of every five being _patois_, she made me understand that her house was just in front of the cave, and that it was not to be visited without her consent and guidance. She therefore began to reascend the 'mountain,' as she called the hill, making signs to me to follow. There was certainly nothing wrong with the old woman's lungs, for it was as much as I could do to keep pace with her, especially when she led the way up almost naked rock. At length we reached the brow of the hill, where a cottage showed itself in a desert of limestone, but where a little garden, by dint of long labour, had been formed upon a natural terrace on which the sun's rays fell warmly.

The woman left me in the cottage while she went to find her daughter. It was composed of one small room, in which there were two beds, an old worm-eaten walnut buffet, an eight-day clock after the pattern of Sir Humphrey's, a hearth covered with white wood-ashes, a large wheel-shaped loaf of black bread in a rack, onions, grapes, garlic, and balls of twisted hemp hanging from the beams; baskets of maize and chestnuts, and a great copper swing-pot, only a little less imposing than the one out of which the scullion fished the fowls for Sancho Pança. I afterwards learned that two couples slept in the two beds--the old pair and the young pair.

Presently the old woman reappeared, followed by a much younger one, carrying upon her head a copper water-pot, that glowed in the sun like a wind-blown brand. Having set down her pot, the daughter, a rather wild-looking person with sun-baked face and large gleaming eyes, took an old-fashioned brass dish-lamp--a deformed and vulgar descendant of the agate lamp held in the hand of the antique priestess--and, after bringing the wick towards the lip, lighted it. I lit the candle I had brought with me, and, followed by the old woman, we entered the cavern, near the mouth of which was a fig-tree. The entrance was so small that it was almost necessary to crawl for some distance; but it must have been much larger at one time if the story that the younger woman told me about the bones of a mastodon having been discovered inside was well founded. As we proceeded, the roof rose rapidly, so that the rocks overhead could not presently be seen by the light of the candle and lamp. Farther in, the roof became lower, and it was connected with the ground in places by natural columns of vast size, formed in the course of ages by the calcareous deposit of the dropping water. Near the end of the cavern, at about 100 yards from the entrance, various holes dug in the yellow soil showed where the bone-searchers had been at work. I had ample encouragement, for I had only to stir the earth a little to find bones half turned to stone. I selected two or three teeth with the hope that a scientific friend would say they were a mastodon's or a mammoth's. If I had liked the prospect of carrying a bag of bones on my back down the valley of the Lot, I might have taken away many very large specimens. I called to mind, however, an experience of early days which prevented me from being again a martyr to science. I had found a quantity of bones in a newly-dug gravel-pit, and fully believing that they belonged to some animal that flourished before the flood, I carried them twelve miles with infinite labour and suffering, and then learned that they were part of the anatomy of a very modern cow. Since that adventure I have left bones for those who understand them.

I had ample leisure for studying the river after leaving Saint-Martin, for I stood upon the bank waiting for a ferryman until I lost all the patience I had brought with me. He was taking a couple of oxen harnessed to a cart across the stream, and the strong wind that was blowing sent the great flat boat far out of its course.

Every day I noticed a larger fleet of floating leaves upon the water, hurrying through the ever-curving valley, drifting over the golden reflections of other leaves that waited for the gust to cast them too upon the water; passing into the deep shadow of bridges whose arches resounded with mournful murmurs, riding the white foam of the weirs, whirling in the dark eddies beyond, gliding in the brown shade of vine-clad hills and under the beetling brows of solemn rocks, now mingling with the imaged dovecot with pigeons perched upon the red-tiled roof, now with the tracery of Gothic gables or the grim blackness of feudal walls splashed with fern and pellitory, now in a warm glow of dying summer, and now in the melancholy gray of wintry clouds heavy with rain. Away they went, the multitudinous leaves--children of the poplar, the willow, the fig-tree, and vine; some broad and clumsy like rafts or barges, others slender and graceful like little skiffs; all stained with some brilliant colour of autumn.

I had reckoned upon getting a mid-day meal at a village called Crégols on the opposite bank, but when I at length reached it I had another trial. The only place of public entertainment was an exceedingly dirty hovel that called itself a _café_, and the woman who kept it declared that she had no victuals of any sort in the house. This, of course, was not true, but it was a polite way of saying that she did not wish to be bothered with me. The wayfarer in the little-travelled districts of France must not expect to find in all his stopping-places a fowl ready to be placed on the spit for him. Had I obtained a meal at Crégols, I should have looked for some dolmens said to be in the neighbourhood, but failure in one respect spoilt my zeal in the other. I am afraid, moreover, that I only half appreciated the grandeur of some prodigious walls of rock which I passed in my rapid walk to the little town of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. It is deplorable to think how much the mind is influenced by internal circumstances which ought to have nothing to do with the spirit.

After climbing a steep wood where there were unripe medlars, I came in sight of a small burg, lying high above the Lot in a hollow of the hill. A fortress-like church towered far above the closely-packed red-tiled roofs sprinkled with dormer windows, and upon a still higher rock were the ruined walls of a castle. This was Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, a place no less quaint than its name. I was presently seated in a dimly-lighted back-room of an auberge, whose walls--built apparently for eternity--dated from the Middle Ages. The hostess, who, as I entered, was gossiping with some cronies in the dark doorway, while she pretended to twist the wool that she carried upon the most rustic of distaffs--a common forked stick--laid this down, and, blowing up the embers on the hearth, proceeded to cook some eggs _sur le plat_. This with bread, goat-cheese and walnuts, and an excellent wine of the district--the new vintage--made my lunch. The fact that there was no meat in the auberge reminded me that it was Friday.

Speaking generally, the inhabitants of the Lot are practising Catholics. The churches are well filled, and the clergy are as comfortably off as French priests can expect to be in these days. It is no uncommon thing for a _curé_ to keep his trap. I have several times met priests on horseback in the Quercy, but never without thinking that they would look better if they used side-saddles.

The early Gothic Church of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, to judge by its high massive walls and round tower, was raised more with the idea of defence than ornament. In the interior there is still the feeling of Romanesque repose; nothing of the animation of the Pointed style--no vine-leaf or other foliage breaks the severity of the lines. I ascended the tower with the bell-ringer's boy. In the bell-loft, with other lumber, was an old 'stretcher,' very much less luxurious than the _brancard_ that is used in Paris for carrying the sick and wounded. It was composed of two poles, with cross-pieces and a railing down the sides. I ascertained that this piece of village carpentry was used within the memory of people still living for carrying the dead to the cemetery merely wrapped in their shrouds. They were buried without coffins, not because wood was difficult to obtain, but because the four boards had not yet come into fashion at Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. To bury a person in such a manner even there would nowadays cause great scandal, but sixty or seventy years ago it was considered folly to put good wood into a grave. A homespun sheet was thought to be all that was needed to break the harshness of the falling clay. And there are people who call this age that gives coffins even to the poorest dead utilitarian!

Among other curious things I saw in this ancient out-of-the-way burg were two mediaeval corn-measures forming part of a heap of stones in a street corner. They had much the appearance of very primitive holy-water stoups, such as are to be seen in some rural churches, for they were blocks of stone rounded and hollowed out with the chisel. Each of these measures, however, had a hole in the side near the bottom for the corn to run through, and irons to which a little flap-door was once affixed in front of this hole. The commune treated these stones as rubbish until some accidental visitor offered 500 francs for them; now it clings to them tightly, hoping, no doubt, that the price will go up. Prowling curiosity-hunters are destined to destroy much of the archaeological interest of these old towns. They are doing to them what Lord Elgin did to the Parthenon. Fantastic corbel-heads and other sculptured details disappear every year from the Gothic houses, and find their way into private museums.

As I was taking leave of the bellringer's boy--a lad of about fifteen--he put his hand under his blouse and, pulling out a snuff-box, offered me a pinch. I had met plenty of boys who chewed tobacco--they abound along the coast of Brittany--but never one who carried a snuff-box before.

The castle whose ruins are to be seen on the bluff above the church received Henry IV. as a guest after his memorable exploit at Cahors.

A man who was laying eel-lines across the Lot consented to take me to the other side in his boat, and there I struck the road to Cahors, which closely borders the river all along this valley. In several places it is tunnelled through the rock, where the buttresses of the cliffs could not be conveniently shattered with dynamite. All this has been the work of late years. Previously the passage between the river and the rocks was about as bad as it could be. The English fortified several of the caverns in the cliffs commanding the passage, to which the name of _Le Défilé des Anglais_ was consequently given. Now the term is applied by the country people to the caves themselves, wherever these have been walled up for defence.

I soon reached one of these caverns, the embattled wall being a conspicuous object from the road below. Having fallen into ruin, it had lately been repaired at the expense of the commune. To an Englishman the spot could not be otherwise than strangely interesting. I imagined my own language being spoken there five or six centuries ago, and speculated as to whether the accent was Cockney or Lancashire, or West of England.

Several fig-trees grew beside the walled-up cavern, and I was picking the ripest of the fruit when I heard a voice from the road below calling upon me to come down. Peering through the boughs, I saw a man seated in the smallest and most gimcrack of donkey-carts. It was something like a grocer's box on wheels. The owner gave violent smacks to the plank on which he was sitting, to let me understand that there was room for another person. I did not think there could be, but I left the figs and came down the rocks.

'If you are going to Saint-Géry,' said the man, 'I can take you about five kilomètres on the road.'

'But the donkey,' I urged, 'will lie down and roll.'

'What, the little beast! Not he! he will go along like an arrow.'

I accepted the invitation, and away went the donkey, making himself as much like an arrow on the wing as any ass could. My companion, who was a handsome fellow, with a moustache that one would expect to see upon the face of a Sicilian brigand, was a cantonnier, and as he scraped out the ditches and mended the roads, his donkey browsed upon what he could find along the wayside. In summer and winter they were inseparable companions, and had come to thoroughly understand one another. The cantonnier confided to me that he was formerly employed in the phosphate quarries, and that he had closed his experience in this line by working three months without wages for an Englishman whose speculation turned out a failure. Phosphate then lost its charm upon the proprietor of the donkey-cart, for it had caused him to 'eat all his economies,' and he resigned himself to the wages of a road-mender, which were small but sure. It was getting dusk when we parted. My next companion on the road was a poor bent-backed, shambling, idiotic youth, who was driving home two long-tailed sheep and a lamb, and who had just enough intelligence for this work. He kept at my side for a mile or two, flourishing a long stick over the backs of the sheep and uttering melancholy cries. His presence was not cheering, but I had to put up with it, for when I walked fast he ran. He likewise left me at length to continue my way alone, and his wild cries became fainter and fainter. Then, in the deepening dusk, two churches, one on each side of the river, began to sound the angelus. A gleam of yellow light lingered in the western sky between two dark hills, but the clouds above and the river below were of the colour of slate. Suddenly a bright blaze flashed across the dim and misty valley from a cottage hearth where a woman had just thrown on a faggot to boil the evening soup, and the gloom of nature was at once filled with the sentiment of home.

It was quite dark when I reached Saint-Géry. The narrow passage leading to the best inn was illumined by the red glare of a forge, and was rich in odours ancient and modern. Some twenty geese tightly packed in a pen close to the hostelry door announced my arrival with shrieks of derision. They said: 'It's Friday; no goose for you to-night!' Those who suppose that geese cannot laugh have not studied bucolic poetry from nature. The forge was attached to the inn, a very common arrangement here, and one that enables the traveller who has hope of sleep at daybreak--because the fleas are then thinking of rest after labour--to enjoy the melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith' without the help of Handel.

I was not cheered by the sight of goose or turkey turning on the spit as I entered the vast smoke-begrimed kitchen, lighted chiefly by the flame of the fire, but the great chain-pot sent forth a perfume that was not offensive, although the soup was _maigre_. There was also fish that had been freshly pulled out of the Lot. The cooking left something to be desired, but the hostess, the wife of the Harmonious Blacksmith, had thrown her best intentions into it. A rosy light wine grown upon the side of a neighbouring hill compensated for the lack of culinary art. It was a rather rough inn, but I had been in many worse. Seated in the chimney-corner after dinner, and sending the smoke of my pipe to join the sparks of the blazing wood up the yawning gulf where the soot hung like stalactites below the calm sky and twinkling stars, I had a long talk with the aubergiste, who told me that he had been taken prisoner at Sedan, and had, in consequence, spent eight months in Germany. He considered that he had been as well treated by the Germans as a prisoner could expect to be. He had always enough to eat, but there was no soup, and, lacking this, he thought it impossible for any civilized stomach to be happy.

Rural inns have charms, especially when they are old and picturesque, and smell of the Middle Ages; but to be kept a prisoner in one of them by rainy weather is apt to plunge a restless wanderer into the Slough of Despond. The chances are that the inn itself becomes at such times a slough, so that Bunyan's expression is then applicable in a real as well as in a figurative sense. There is a constant coming in and going out of peasants with dripping sabots, of dogs with wet paws, and draggle-tailed hens with miry feet; geese, and even pigs, not unfrequently venture inside, and have a good walk round before their presence is noticed and they are treated to quotations from Rabelais, enforced with the broomstick. Then the rain beats in at the open door, which nobody troubles to close. Under these circumstances, the rural inn becomes detestable. So I found the auberge at Saint-Géry, where I waited long hours for the weather to change, after having received a soaking while climbing the escarped cliffs which rise so grandly on one side of the little town.

A fortified cavern and a ruined castle tempted me up the rocks. On my way I passed a small Gothic house, dating apparently from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, with pointed arched doorway and window lights separated by slender columns with foliated capitals carved by no clumsy rustic workman. The boy who accompanied me had the key. As I entered I was met on the threshold by the fragrant odour of the tobacco-plant; I perceived that the mediaeval house was used for drying tobacco-leaves--a purpose that could never have been in the imagination of the original owner, for those stones were laid together long before the herb, now so precious to the French Government, was brought to Europe. The stalks with all the leaves attached were hung to strings stretched from wall to wall. There is much tobacco grown hereabouts in the valley of the Lot, but it is considered too strong for smoking purposes, and is therefore made into snuff. When the utmost care has been used in its cultivation and drying the price paid by the Government to the grower does not exceed half a franc the pound. Those who enjoy the privilege of raising it consider the money very hardly earned.

I reached the ruined castle at the foot of the limestone buttresses supporting the plateau above. Enough is left of the wall to show that it must have been a strong place at one time. It is attributed by common consent to the English. Protected on one side by the abrupt rock, it overlooked the valley from a height that to an enemy must have been very difficult of access. The fortified cavern is in the escarped cliff above the castle, with which there was, perhaps, a secret communication. The upper part of the wall is gone, but what remains is about ten feet high and nine feet thick. Swallows build their nests in the roof of the cavern, and the spot is noisy with the harsh cries of countless jackdaws. These sagacious birds can doubtless tell many stories of the English which they received from their ancestors.

When I returned to the auberge wet and shivering, I found no sympathy, the thoughts of the hostess being occupied by a matter that interested her more deeply. The badgers had eaten her maize which she needed for fattening the geese, and her tongue was busily employed in wishing them every misfortune, both in time and eternity. Badgers are very numerous in the district, and they continue to increase and multiply, while the peasants jeopardise their immortal interests by cursing them every time they see a spike of ripening maize pulled down and half stripped of its corn. In the daytime these animals sleep comfortably, digesting their ill-gotten meal in the holes of the rocks, which are so honeycombed that dogs cannot easily get at the hermits. Moreover, it is not every dog that likes the prospect of being bitten nearly in half, the badger being much better known than trusted by the canine race.

Another animal that flourishes here, in spite of the hatred in which it is held by the inhabitants, is the fox, which likewise finds the valley an Elysium on account of the convenient neighbourhood of the rocks pierced with multitudinous holes. Badgers and foxes, with all their vices, are preferable to the hyenas which used to infest this part of France, as is proved by the bones found in the larger caverns. The present inhabitants ought to take comfort from this reflection, but they do not.

While the aubergiste's wife, a little woman who carried about with her the outline of a wine-cask, was breathing maledictions upon the badgers, and venting her fury upon the little boy-of-all-work--who, being used to such outbursts, ate his morning allowance of soup with philosophic indifference--I took up my place again in the chimney-corner, and endeavoured to dry myself on all sides by somewhat imitating the movement of a fowl turning on the spit.

At length the heavy pall of cloud lifted, and when the first yellow gleam of sunshine filtering through vapour was reflected by the puddles and streaming roofs, I walked out of Saint-Géry. When the last houses were out of sight, solitude added to the desolate grandeur of the scenery. It was a relief to be alone with Nature, dripping as she was with recent tears, after the depressing influences of the inn--the dimness, dampness, and dirt, the unreasoning anger of ignorance, the dull routine of human beings whose chief concern was to feed themselves and the animals which helped them to live. As an alterative to the mind, rural life is of real value in the case of those who have been carried round and round in the whirlpool of a great city until they have had more than enough of the sensation; but, like other useful medicines, rusticity is best when taken in moderate doses, and at judicious intervals. I had stayed at Saint-Géry long enough to feel like a fish that in jumping out of water for the sake of variety had fallen upon the mud.

The sun that changes the face of all things, and warms the ideas no less than the earth, now shone out from a blue sky, spreading fire over the ruddy tops of the chestnut woods, and flashing into the dark caverns of the ancient crags, fringed with box, sumach and juniper. I noticed that one of these caverns had been fortified, but my curiosity was satisfied with the distant view. A yellow chicory, quite leafless, was still blooming on the stony banks, and I also, found a white scabious. Green hellebore and wild madder flourished amidst the broken limestone. A forest of brown maize-stalks, from which the golden corn had been gathered, followed the windings of the river, now turgid and tumultuous, and dyed sienna-red by the washings from the hills. Every day the increasing water as it descended the weirs made a wilder tumult. These weirs are a great beauty to the Lot, for they generally form an angle or the arc of a circle, and the river tumbles over the rough blocks like a natural cascade. They are connected with a series of locks, which render the stream navigable from the sea; but one rarely sees a barge upon it now, the railway having completely ruined the water traffic, and caused a most elaborate and costly piece of engineering to be practically useless.

The valley now widened out, and a village came into view, together with a ruined castle upon a mamelon, that rose like a volcanic cone from the plain. On the castle wall an immense wooden cross had been set, showing against the sky with an effect truly grand. The village was Vers, and the castle, which was built by the English, is called the Château de Béars.

At Vers I was met by an old man, who insisted upon showing me another cave fortified by the English, after taking the precaution of telling me that he would accept nothing for his trouble. He was long and lean and brown, and had a 'glittering, eye' like the Ancient Mariner, but his conversation was much more cheerful than that of the hero who shot the albatross. He was a born actor, for he accompanied his talk with magnificent dramatic gestures, and, after letting his voice drop suddenly to a tragic whisper, he would raise it again to the most gusty and blustering heights of sound. He was a strong type of the Southerner, inasmuch as all this amazing vehemence and gesticulation was quite uncalled for. It is remarkable, however, how much may be done by mere action and intonation to impress the listener with the idea that the speaker must be a person of uncommon intelligence. But when half a dozen such talkers are engaged in discussion upon some trivial topic, and each employs the same means to enforce his views upon the rest (this occurs nightly in the _cafés_ at Cahors), the Northerner is inclined to think that they are all mad. The wiry old man explained to me, in order to account for the ease and agility with which, notwithstanding his years and his awkward _sabots_, he stepped from block to block in the ascent, that he had been all his life a rock-blaster. At length we reached the cavern. The English, who used it as a refuge, had shown much sagacity in its selection, for the enemy that attacked them there would have been compelled to climb up the face of the rock beneath by following zigzag ledges, while the besieged behind their loopholed wall were raining arrows and bolts upon them. The wall, as it exists, is twenty or thirty feet high. There is a doorway protected by an inner wall. To reach the upper loopholes and parapet the men mounted upon oak beams resting crosswise between the masonry and the rock. One massive beam, crumbling and worm-eaten, as may be supposed after the centuries that it has been there, may still be seen serving as the lintel of a window.

I made a rather long stay at Vers, in order to visit the site of a Celtic town on the _causse_; but I did not start upon this journey until the next day. The inn where I put up was much more comfortable than some others which I had chosen for night-quarters while wandering down the valley. To anybody fresh from London it would have seemed primitive indeed, with its broad hearth and massive iron dogs, its enormous fire built with logs and the roots of trees, and its cosy chimney-corners, where the sitters' heads were from time to time enveloped with wreathing smoke; but I had grown so accustomed to such sights that this hostelry seemed to contain all the blessings and commodities of an advanced state of civilization.

The hostess was a good and sprightly cook, and I watched her proceedings with a keen interest as I sat upon one of the seats in the chimney. Having hitched the pot that contained the soup upon the hook at the end of the sooty chain, she raked out embers from the centre of the burning mass, and made separate fires with them upon the hearth. Others she carried to a range of small charcoal fireplaces on one side of the spacious kitchen, and very soon afterwards she had sauce-pans and a frying-pan and a gridiron all murmuring or hissing together. There was too much garlic in her cookery, but I had also grown used to that. Although the phylloxera had blighted nearly all the vineyards in this region, the landlord here was able to put upon the table some wine, grown upon his own hillside, not unworthy of the ancient reputation of the Cahors district for its vintage.

After dinner I returned to the chimney-corner which was decidedly the most comfortable place in the inn, in spite of the smoke and the close neighbourhood of soot, and set about obtaining information from the aubergiste and his cronies who had dropped in concerning the exact whereabouts of a Celtic town whose ruined fortifications, I knew, were to be found somewhere among the barren hills to the west of Vers. It was some time before I could make these men understand what I was really in search of, and when they understood they seemed to think I was a little mad, until the idea struck them that I might be a dealer in antiquities, hoping to pick up certain odds and ends that would repay me for the trouble of walking to such a desolate and uninteresting spot.