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Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

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Title: Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

Author: Edward Harrison Barker


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8546]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO SUMMERS IN GUYENNE: A CHRONICLE OF THE WAYSIDE AND WATERSIDE ***




Produced by DP Beginners Projects, Commissioner Sleer
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




TWO SUMMERS IN GUYENNE


A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside




BY
EDWARD HARRISON BARKER

Author of 'Wayfaring in France', 'Wanderings by Southern Waters,' ETC.


WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS


[Illustration: _G. Vuillies_ DOORWAY OF THE ABBEY CHURCH AT BEAULIEU
(CORRÈZE).]




PREFACE


Of the four summers which the writer of this 'Chronicle of the Wayside and
Waterside' spent by Aquitanian rivers, the greater part of two provided the
impressions that were used in 'Wanderings by Southern Waters.' Although
the earlier pages of the present work, describing the wild district of the
Upper Dordogne, through which the author passed into Guyenne, belong, in
the order of time, to the beginning of his scheme of travel in Aquitaine,
the summers of 1892 and 1893, spent chiefly in Périgord and the Bordelais,
furnished the matter of which this volume is mainly composed. Hence the
title that has been given to it.

It may be thought that there is not a sufficient separation of interest,
geographically speaking, between the tracts of country described in the two
books. The author regrets that it is not possible to convey in a few words
an idea of the extent of the old English Duchy of Aquitaine as it was
defined by the Treaty of Brétigny. Still less easy would it be to deal
rapidly with its physical contrasts, its relics of the past, and its
historical associations. Surely no writer could pretend to have exhausted
the interest of such a subject even in two volumes.

Before the final expulsion of the English, Aquitaine was gradually taking
the name of Guyenne; but when this designation came to be definitively
applied, at the time of the Renaissance, Gascony was not included in
it, nor were Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois and Limousin. Even when thus
restricted in its meaning, Guyenne still represented a very considerable
part of France, including as it did the regions or sub-provinces known as
the Bordelais, Périgord, the Agenais, the Rouergue, and the Quercy.

If the author's work during the fifteen years that he has been living in
France has served to make the people, the scenery, and the antiquities of
this ever-fascinating country somewhat better known to those who speak
the English language, he believes that it is to his favourite mode of
travelling that such good fortune must be largely attributed. His faring on
foot has caused him to see much that he would otherwise have never seen;
it has also widened his knowledge of his fellow-men, and has helped him to
control prejudices which are not to be entirely overcome, but ever remain
an insidious snare to the traveller and student of manners.

E. H. B.

PARIS, _May_, 1894.




CONTENTS


THE UPPER DORDOGNE
ACROSS THE MOORS OF THE CORRÈZE
IN THE VISCOUNTY OF TURENNE
IN UPPER PÉRIGORD
IN THE VALLEY OF THE VÉZÈRE
IN THE VALLEY OF THE ISLE
FROM PÉRIGUEUX TO RIBERAC (BY BRANTÔME)
THE DESERT OF THE DOUBLE
A CANOE VOYAGE ON THE DRONNE
BY THE LOWER DORDOGNE
BY THE GARONNE




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


DOORWAY OF THE ABBEY CHURCH AT BEAULIEU (CORRÈZE)
A BIT OF AUVERGNE
THE DORDOGNE AT LA BOURBOULE
A MOORLAND WIDOW
THE VALLEY OF THE RUE
A WOMAN OF THE CORRÈZE
A PEASANT OF THE MOORS
PLOUGHING THE MOOR
A GORGE IN THE CORRÈZE
TURENNE
A PEASANT OF THE CAUSSE
CHÂTEAU DE FÉNELON
RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS
BEYNAC
CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF CADOUIN
CHÂTEAU DE BIRON: THE LODGE
TRUFFLE-HUNTERS
CHÂTEAU DES EYZIES
CHÂTEAU DE HAUTEFORT
A HOUSE AT PÉRIGUEUX
THE TOUR DE VÉSONE
THE 'NORMAN GATE' AT PÉRIGUEUX
THE DRONNE AT BOURDEILLES
THE ABBEY OF BRANTÔME
CHÂTEAU DE BOURDEILLES
THE DRONNE AT COUTRAS
A STREET AT ST. ÉMILION
THE CHÂTEAU DE MONTAIGNE AFTER THE FIRE
MONOLITHIC CHURCH AND DETACHED TOWER AT ST. ÉMILION
CONVENT OF THE CORDELIERS: THE CLOISTERS
TOUR DE L'HORLOGE AT LIBOURNE
THE HILL OF FRONSAC
BAZAS
INTERIOR OF THE CHÂTEAU DE VILLANDRAUT
THE GARONNE
CHÂTEAU DE MONTESQUIEU
THE GARONNE AT BORDEAUX
THE PALAIS GALLIEN AT BORDEAUX




THE UPPER DORDOGNE.

I had left the volcanic mountains of Auvergne and had passed through
Mont-Dore and La Bourboule, following the course of the Dordogne that
flowed through the valley with the bounding spirits of a young mountaineer
descending for the first time towards the great plains where the large
towns and cities lie with all their fancied wonders and untasted charm.

But these towns and cities were afar off. The young Dordogne had a very
long journey to make before reaching the plains of Périgord. Nearly the
whole of this distance the stream would have to thread its way through
deep-cut gorges and ravines, where the dense forest reaches down to the
stony channel, save where the walls of rock rising hundreds of feet on
either side are too steep for vegetation. Above the forest and the rock
is the desert moor, horrible to the peasant, but to the lover of nature
beautiful when seen in its dress of purple heather and golden broom.

[Illustration: A BIT OF AUVERGNE.]

I had not been long on the road this day, when I saw coming towards me an
equipage more picturesquely interesting than any I had ever met in the
Champs-Elysées. It was a ramshackle little cart laden with sacks and a
couple of children, and drawn by a pair of shaggy sheep-dogs. Cords served
for harness. A man was running by the side, and it was as much as he could
do to keep up with the animals. This use of dogs is considered cruel in
England, but it often keeps them out of mischief, and I have never seen one
in harness that looked unhappy. Traces must help a dog to grow in his own
esteem, and to work out his ideal of the high destiny reserved for him;
or why does he, when tied under a cart to which a larger quadruped is
harnessed, invariably try to persuade himself and others that he is pulling
the load up the hill, and that the horse or donkey is an impostor?

[Illustration: THE DORDOGNE AT LA BOURBOULE.]

The width of the Mont-Dore valley decreased rapidly, and I entered the
gorge of the Dordogne, where basaltic rocks were thrown up in savage
grandeur, vividly contrasting with which were bands and patches of meadow,
brilliantly green. Yellow spikes of agrimony and the fine pink flowers of
the musk-mallow mingled with the wiry broom and the waving bracken about
the rocks.

It was September, but the summer heat had returned, and when the road
passed through a beech wood the shade was welcome. Here over the mossy
ground rambled the enchanter's nightshade, still carrying its frail white
flowers, which really have a weird appearance in the twilight of the woods.
The plant has not been called _circe_ without a reason. Under the beeches
there were raspberry canes with some fruit still left upon them. After
leaving the wood, the scene became more wild and craggy. The basalt, bare
and sombre, or sparsely flecked with sedums, their stalks and fleshy leaves
now very red, rose sheer from the middle of the narrow valley, down which
the stream sped like fleeing Arethusa, now turning to the right, now to the
left, foaming over rocks or sparkling like the facets of countless gems
between margins of living green.

Then I left the valley in order to pass through the village of St. Sauve
on the right-hand hill. There was little there worth seeing besides a very
ancient Romanesque archway, or, as some think, detached portico leading to
the church.

Many of the women of St. Sauve wore the black cap or bonnet of Mont-Dore,
which hangs to the shoulders. It is a hideous coiffure, but an interesting
relic of the past. The prototype of it was worn by the châtelaines of the
twelfth century. Then, however, it had a certain stateliness which it lacks
now. It is only to be seen in a very small district.

I consulted some of the people of St. Sauve respecting my plan of following
the Dordogne through its gorges. They did not laugh at me, but they looked
at me in a way which meant that if better brains had not been given to them
than to me their case would be indeed unfortunate. I was advised to see a
cobbler who was considered an authority on the byways of the district. I
found him sitting by the open window of his little shop driving hob-nails
into a pair of Sunday boots. When I told him what I had made up my mind to
do, he shook his head, and, laying down his work, said:

'You will never do it. There are rocks, and rocks, and rocks. Even the
fishermen, who go where anybody can go, do not try to follow the Dordogne
very far. There are ravines--and ravines. _Bon Dieu!_ And the forest! You
will be lost! You will be devoured!'

To be devoured would be the climax of misfortune. I wished to know what
animals would be likely to stop my wayfaring in this effectual manner.

'Are there wolves?'

'No; none have been seen for years.'

'Are there boars?'

'Yes, plenty of them.'

'But boars,' I said, 'are not likely to interfere with me.'

'That is true,' replied the local wiseacre, 'so long as you keep walking;
but if you fall down a rock--ah!'

'I would not care to have you for a companion, with all your local
knowledge,' I thought, as I thanked the cobbler and turned down a very
stony path towards the Dordogne. It is always prudent to follow the advice
of those who are better informed than yourself; but it is much more
amusing--for awhile--to go your own way. I had lunched, and was prepared
to battle with the desert for several hours. It was now past mid-day,
and notwithstanding the altitude, the heat was very great. But for the
discomfort that we endure from the sun's rays we are more than amply
compensated by the pleasure that the recollection brings us in winter, when
the north wind is moaning through the sunless woods and the dreary fog
hangs over the cities. When I again reached the Dordogne there was no
longer any road, but only a rough path through high bracken, heather and
broom. Snakes rustled as I passed, and hid themselves among the stones. The
cobbler had forgotten to include these with the dangers to be encountered.
To my mind they were much more to be dreaded than the boars, for these
stony solitudes swarm with adders, of which the most venomous kind is the
red viper, or _aspic_. Its bite has often proved mortal.

The path entered the forest which covers the steep sides of the
ever-winding gorge of the Dordogne for many leagues, only broken where the
rocks are so nearly vertical that no soil has ever formed upon them, except
in the little crevices and upon the ledges, where the hellebore, the sedum,
the broom, and other unambitious plants which love sterility flourish where
the foot of man has never trod.

The rocks were now of gneiss and mica-schist, and the mica was so abundant
as to cause many a crag and heap of shale to glitter in the sun, as though
there had been a mighty shattering of mirrors here into little particles
which had fallen upon everything. There was, however, no lack of contrast.
To the shining rocks and the fierce sunshine, which seemed to concentrate
its fire wherever it fell in the open spaces of the deep gorge, succeeded
the ancient forest and its cool shade; but the darkly-lying shadows were
ever broken with patches of sunlit turf. Pines and firs reached almost to
the water's edge, and the great age of some of them was a proof of the
little value placed upon timber in a spot so inaccessible. One fir had an
enormous bole fantastically branched like that of an English elm, and
on its mossy bark was a spot such as the hand might cover, fired by a
wandering beam, that awoke recollections of the dream-haunted woods before
the illusion of their endlessness was lost.

The afternoon was not far spent, when I began to feel a growing confidence
in the value of the cobbler's information, and a decreasing belief in my
own powers. It became more and more difficult, then quite impossible,
to keep along the bank of the stream. What is understood by a bank
disappeared, and in its stead were rocks, bare and glittering, on which the
lizards basked, or ran in safety, because they were at home, but which I
could only pass by a flank movement. To struggle up a steep hill, over
slipping shale-like stones, or through an undergrowth of holly and
brambles, then to scramble down and to climb again, repeating the exercise
every few hundred yards, may have a hygienic charm for those who are
tormented by the dread of obesity, but to other mortals it is too
suggestive of a holiday in purgatory.

Having gone on in this fashion for some distance, I lay down, streaming
from every pore, and panting like a hunted hare beside a little rill that
slid singing between margins of moss, amid Circe's white flowers and purple
flashes of cranesbill. Here I examined my scratches and the state of things
generally. The result of my reflections was to admit that the cobbler
was right, that these ravines of the Upper Dordogne were practically
impassable, and that the only rational way of following the river would
be to keep sometimes on the hills and sometimes in the gorge, as the
unforeseen might determine. Hitherto, I had not troubled to inquire where I
should pass the night, and this consideration alone would have compelled
me to depart from my fantastic scheme. After La Bourboule there is not a
village or hamlet in the valley of the Dordogne for a distance of at least
thirty miles, allowing for the winding of the stream.

After a hard climb I reached the plateau, where I saw before me a wide moor
completely covered with bracken and broom. Here I looked at the map, and
decided to make towards a village called Messeix, lying to the east in a
fork formed by the Dordogne and its tributary the Chavannon. Going by the
compass at first, I presently struck a road leading across the moor in the
right direction. I passed through two wretched hamlets, in neither of which
was there an auberge where I could relieve my thirst. At the second one a
cottage was pointed out to me where I was told a woman sold wine. When,
after sinking deep in mud, I found her amidst a group of hovels, and the
preliminary salutation was given, the following conversation passed between
us:

'They tell me you sell wine.'

'They tell you wrong--I don't.'

'Do you sell milk, then?'

'No; I have no beasts.'

As I was going away she kindly explained that she only kept enough wine for
herself. I had evidently not impressed her favourably. Although I think
water a dangerous drink in France, except where it can be received directly
from the hand of Nature, far from human dwellings, I was obliged to beg
some in this place, and run the risk of carrying away unfriendly microbes.

Having left the hovels behind me, the country became less barren or more
cultivated. There were fields of rye, buckwheat, and potatoes, but always
near them lay the undulating moor, gilded over with the flowers of a dwarf
broom. It was evening when I descended into a wide valley from which came
the chime of cattle-bells, mingled with the barking of dogs and the voices
of children, who were driving the animals slowly homeward. There were green
meadows below me, over which was a yellow gleam from the fading afterglow
of sunset, and in the air was that odour which, rising from grassy valleys
at the close of day, even in regions burnt by the southern summer, makes
the wandering Englishman fancy that some wayfaring wind has come laden with
the breath of his native land. Suddenly turning a corner, I so startled a
little peasant girl sitting on a bank in the early twilight with a flock
of goats about her, that she opened her mouth and stared at me as though
Croquemitaine had really shown himself at last. The goats stopped eating,
and fixed upon me their eyes like glass marbles; they, too, thought that I
could be no good.

I hoped that the village of Messeix was in this valley; but no, I had to
cross it and climb the opposite hill. On the other side I found the place
that I had fixed upon for my night quarters.

Very small and very poor, it lies in a region where the land generally is
so barren that but a small part of it has been ever broken by the plough;
where the summers are hot and dry, and the winters long and cruel. Although
in the watershed of the Gironde, it touches Auvergne, and its altitude
makes it partake very much of the Auvergnat climate, which, with the
exception of the favoured Limagne Valley, is harsh, to an extent that has
caused many a visitor to flee from Mont-Dore in the month of August. In the
deep gorges of the Dordogne and its tributaries, the snow rarely lies more
than a few days upon the ground, whereas upon the wind-swept plateau above
the scanty population have to contend with the rigours of that French
Siberia which may be said to commence here on the west, and to extend
eastward over the whole mass of metamorphic and igneous rocks, which is
termed the great central plateau of France, although it lies far south of
the true centre of the country.

At the first auberge where I applied for a night's lodging, an elderly
woman with a mournful face declined to take me in, and gave no reason. When
I had left, she came after me and said, with her eyes full of tears:

'I have a great trouble in the house, that is why I sent you away.'

I understood what she meant; somebody dear to her was dying. A man who was
listening said his brother-in-law, the baker, was also an innkeeper, and he
offered to take me to the auberge. I gladly consented, for I was fearful of
being obliged to tramp on to some other place. Presently I was in a large,
low room, which was both kitchen and baker's shop. On shelves were great
wheel-shaped loaves (they are called _miches_ in the provinces), some about
two feet in diameter, made chiefly of rye with a little wheaten flour.
Filled sacks were ranged along the wall. In a deep recess were the
kneading-trough, and the oven, now cold. The broad rural hearth, with its
wood-fire and sooty chimney, the great pot for the family soup hanging to a
chain, took up a large share of the remaining space. I sat upon a rickety
chair beside a long table that had seen much service, but was capable of
seeing a great deal more, for it had been made so as to outlast generations
of men. Bare-footed children ran about upon the black floor, and a thin,
gaunt young woman, who wore very short petticoats, which revealed legs not
unlike those of the table, busied herself with the fire and the pot. She
was the sister of the children, and had been left in charge of the house
while her father and mother were on a journey. She accepted me as a lodger,
but for awhile she was painfully taciturn. This, however, her scanty
knowledge of French, and the fact that a stranger even of the class of
small commercial travellers was a rare bird in the village, fully accounted
for. The place was not cheerful, but as I listened to the crickets about
the hearth, and watched the flames leap up and lick the black pot, my
spirits rose. Presently the church bell sounded, dong, dong, dong.

'Why are they tolling the bell?' I asked.

'Because,' replied the gaunt young woman, 'a man has died in the village.'

By pressing her to speak, she explained that while a corpse lay unburied
the bell was tolled three times in the day--early in the morning, at
mid-day, and at nightfall. The conversation was in darkness, save such
light as the fire gave. It was not until the soup was ready that the lamp
was lighted. Then the young woman, addressing me abruptly, said:

'Cut up your bread for your soup.'

I did as I was told, for I always try to accommodate myself to local
customs, and never resent the rough manners of well-intentioned people. The
bread was not quite black, but it was very dark from the amount of rye that
was in it. The soup was water flavoured with a suggestion of fat bacon,
whatever vegetables happened to be in the way, and salt. This fluid, poured
over bread--when the latter is not boiled with it--is the chief sustenance
of the French peasant. It was all that the family now had for their evening
meal, and in five minutes everyone had finished. They drank no wine; it
was too expensive for them, the nearest vineyard being far away. A bottle,
however, was placed before me, but the quality was such that I soon left
it. To get some meat for me the village had to be scoured, and the result
was a veal cutlet.

I was not encouraged to sit up late. As the eldest daughter of the inn
showed me my night quarters, she said:

'Your room is not beautiful, but the bed is clean.'

This was quite true. The room, in accordance with a very frequent
arrangement in these rural auberges, was not used exclusively for sleeping
purposes, but also for the entertainment of guests, especially on fair and
market days, when space is precious. There was a table with a bench for the
use of drinkers. There were, moreover, three beds, but I was careful to
ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner
have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person
snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to
overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as
canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of
the crickets on the hearth downstairs until drowsiness beckoned sleep and
consciousness of the present lost its way in sylvan labyrinths by the
Dordogne.

At six o'clock the next morning I was walking about the village, and I
entered the little church, already filled with people. It was Sunday, and
this early mass was to be a funeral one. The man for whom the bell was
tolled last night was soon brought in, the coffin swathed in a common
sheet. It was borne up the nave towards the catafalque, the rough carpentry
of which showed how poor the parish was. Following closely was an old and
bent woman with her head wrapped in a black shawl. She had hardly gone a
few steps, when her grief burst out into the most dismal wailing I had ever
heard, and throughout the service her melancholy cries made other women
cover their faces, and tears start from the eyes of hard-featured,
weather-beaten men.

[Illustration: A MOORLAND WIDOW.]

Most of the women present wore the very ugly headgear which is the most
common of all in Auvergne and the Corrèze, namely, a white cap covered by
a straw bonnet something of the coal-scuttle pattern. There were many
communicants at this six o'clock mass, and what struck me as being the
reverse of what one might suppose the right order of things, was that the
women advanced in life wore white veils as they knelt at the altar rails,
while those worn by the young, whose troubles were still to come, were
black. These veils were carried in the hand during the earlier part of the
rite. Throughout a very wide region of Southern France the custom prevails.
The church belonged to different ages. Upon the exterior of the Romanesque
apse were uncouth carvings in relief of strange animal figures. They were
more like lions than any other beasts, but their outlines were such as
children might have drawn.

I returned to the inn. The baker had come back, and was preparing to heat
his oven with dry broom. I learned that he had not only to bake the bread
that he sold, but also the coarser rye loaves which were brought in by
those who had their own flour, but no oven. Three francs was the charge for
my dinner, bed, and breakfast. The score settled and civilities exchanged,
I walked out of Messeix, expecting to strike the valley of the Dordogne not
very far to the south. The landscape was again that of the moorland. On
each side of the long, dusty line called a road spread the brown turf,
spangled with the pea-flowers of the broom or stained purple with heather.
There were no trees, but two wooden crosses standing against the gray sky
looked as high as lofty pines. I met little bands of peasants hurrying
to church, and I reached the village of Savennes just before the _grand
messe_. Many people were sitting or standing outside the church--even
sitting on the cemetery wall. When the bell stopped and they entered,
literally like a flock of sheep into a fold, all could not find room
inside, so the late-comers sat upon the ground in the doorway, or as near
as they could get to it. As the people inside knelt or stood, so did they
who had been left, not out in the cold, but in the heat, for the sun had
broken through the mist, and the weather was sultry. As I walked round the
church I found women sitting with open books and rosaries in their hands
near the apse, amidst the yarrow and mulleins of forgotten grave mounds.
They were following the service by the open window. I lingered about the
cemetery reading the quaint inscriptions and noting the poor emblems upon
wooden crosses not yet decayed, picking here and there a wild flower, and
watching the butterflies and bees until the old priest, who was singing the
mass in a voice broken by time, having called upon his people to 'lift up
their hearts,' they answered: '_Habemus ad Dominum_.'

I had a simple lunch at a small inn in this village, where I was watched
with much curiosity by an old man in a blouse with a stiff shirt-collar
rising to his ears, and a nightcap with tassel upon his head. The widow who
kept the inn had a son who offered to walk with me as far as some chapel
in the gorge of the Chavannon. We were not long in reaching the gorge, the
view of which from the edge of the plateau was superbly savage. Descending
a very rugged path through the forest that covered the sides of the deep
fissure, save where the stark rock refused to be clothed, we came to a
small chapel, centuries old, under a natural wall of gneiss, but deep in
the shade of overhanging boughs. It was dedicated to St. John the Baptist,
and on St. John's Day mass was said in it, and the spot was the scene of a
pilgrimage. Outside was a half-decayed moss-green wooden platform on which
the priest stood while he preached to the assembled pilgrims. The young
man left me, and I went on alone into the more sombre depths of the gorge,
where I reached the single line of railway that runs here through some of
the wildest scenery in France. I kept on the edge of it, where walking,
although very rough, was easier than on the steep side of the split that
had here taken place in the earth's crust. Upon the narrow stony strip of
comparatively level ground the sun's rays fell with concentrated ardour,
and along it was a brilliant bloom of late summer flowers--of camomile, St.
John's wort, purple loosestrife, hemp-agrimony and lamium. At almost every
step there was a rustle of a lizard or a snake. The melancholy cry of the
hawk was the only sound of bird-life. Near rocks of dazzling mica-schist
was a miserable hut with a patch of buckwheat reaching to the stream. A man
standing amidst the white flowers of the late-sown crop said, in answer to
my questioning, that I could not possibly reach the village of Port-Dieu
without walking upon the line and through the tunnels.

When I had left him about fifty yards behind, his curiosity proved more
than he could bear in silence; so he called out to me, in the bad French
that is spoken hereabouts by those who use it only as the language of
strangers: '_Quel métier que vous faites?_'

I waved my hand in reply and left him to his conjectures.

On I went, now over the glittering stones, now wading through the pink
flowers of saponaria, then in a mimic forest of tall angelica by the
water's edge, until I realized that the peasant's information was
sound--that it was impossible to walk through this gorge except upon the
railway.

Presently the rocks rose in front of me and the line disappeared into the
darkness of a tunnel. I did not like the idea of entering this black hole,
for I had brought no candle with me, but the prospect of climbing the rocks
was still more forbidding. It proved to be a short and straight tunnel with
daylight shining at the farther end. After this came another short one, but
the third was much longer and had a curve; consequently I was soon in total
darkness. The only danger to be feared was a passing train, so I felt with
my stick for the wires between the rock and the metals, and crept along by
them. From being broiled by the sun ten minutes before I was now shivering
from the cold. I longed to see again the flowers basking under the warm
sky, and to hear the grasshoppers' happy song. By-and-by I saw the blessed
light flashing at the end of the black bore. When I came out again into the
sunshine, I was following, not the Chavannon, but the Dordogne.

The gorge widened into a valley, where there were scattered cottages, cows,
sheep, and goats. Here I found a fair road on the western side of the
river, in the department of the Corrèze, and being now free of mind, I
loitered on the way, picking strawberries and watching the lizards. It
was dark when, descending again to the level of the Dordogne, I sought a
lodging in the little village of Port-Dieu. I stopped at a cottage inn,
where an old man soon set to work at the wood-fire and cooked me a dinner
of eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. He was a rough cook, but one very
anxious to please. The room where I passed the night had a long table in
it, and benches. There was no blanket on the bed, only a sheet and a heavy
patchwork quilt. Ah, yes, there was something else, carefully laid upon the
quilt. This was a linen bag without an opening, which, when spread out,
tapered towards the ends. Had I not known something about the old-fashioned
nightcap, I should have puzzled a long time before discovering what I was
expected to do with this object. The matter is simple to those who know
that the cap is formed by turning one of the ends in. There were mosquitoes
in the room, but they sang me to sleep, and if they amused themselves at my
expense afterwards, I was quite unconscious of it.

The murmur of the rushing Dordogne mingled not unpleasantly with the
impressions of dreams as I awoke. I got up and opened the small worm-eaten
window-frame. High thatched roofs, not many yards in front, were covered
with moss, which the morning rays, striking obliquely, painted the heavenly
green of Beatrice's mantle. Down the narrow road goats were passing,
followed by a sunburnt girl with a barge-like wooden shoe at the end of
each of her bare brown legs. The pure, life-giving air that entered by the
window made the blood glow with a better warmth than that of sparkling
wine. I soon went outside to see something of the place which I had entered
in the darkness.

I found that the village was built partly in the bottom of the gorge and
partly on one of its craggy sides. Closely hemmed in by rocks and high
hills overgrown with forest was a bright and fertile little valley, with
abundance of pear and walnut trees, luxuriant cottage-gardens, and little
fields by the flashing torrent, where shocks of lately-cut buckwheat stood
with their heads together waiting for the warm September hours to ripen
their black grain.

Many of the houses were half hidden in leafy bowers. I threaded my way
between these towards some ivy-draped fragments of an ancient priory upon a
mass of rock much overgrown with brambles glistening with blackberries
and briars decked with coral-red hips. Before descending to the road and
beginning the day's journey I indulged for a little while the musing mood
of the solitary wanderer in the grassy burying-ground on the edge of the
cliff.

I started for Bort ere the intensely blue sky began to pale before the
increasing brilliancy of the sun. The road ran along the bottom of the deep
valley, where there was change of scene with every curve of the Dordogne. A
field of maize showed how different was the climate here from that of the
bleak plateau above the deep rift in the rocks. I stopped beside a little
runnel that came down from the wooded heights to pick some flowers of
yellow balsam, and while there my eye fell upon a splendid green lizard
basking in the sun. Here was another proof of the warm temperature of the
valley, notwithstanding its altitude. As I went on I skirted long fields of
buckwheat upon the slope, but reaching only a little way upwards. The white
waxen flowers had turned, or were turning, rusty; but what a variety of
beautiful colour was on the stems and leaves! Greens and yellows passed
into carmine, purple, and burnt sienna. A field of ripening buckwheat has a
charm of warm colour that gladdens the eye, especially when the morning or
evening sunshine is upon it. But this glow of many tints was a sure sign
of approaching autumn; so, too, were the reddened stalks of persicaria,
filling the dry ditches by the wayside.

The valley narrowed, and upon its rocky sides was many a patch of purple
heather--little gardens for the wild bees, but not for man. Neither peasant
nor local Nimrod ever sets his foot there. Still higher, the outlines of
the topmost crags were drawn hard against the sky, for there was no vapour
in the air. Verily, the ground seemed quite alive with brown lizards
darting along at my approach and raising little clouds of dust, whilst
blue-winged grasshoppers--which, perhaps, would be more correctly described
as locusts--crossed and recrossed the road in one flight. In the midst of
such beautiful scenery, and with such happy creatures for companions, I
felt no wish to hurry. Moreover, the blackberries sometimes tempted me to
loiter. If they are unwholesome, as French peasants often maintain, I
ought to have been dead long ago. Strange that this prejudice should be
so general in France with regard to the fruit of so harmless a tribe. But
these same peasants gather the leaves of the bramble to make a decoction
for sore throat. I passed a cottage that had a vine-trellis, the first I
had seen on this side of the Auvergne mountains, and it was half surrounded
by a forest of beans in full flower on very high sticks. In a sunny space
was a row of thatched beehives.

After walking some eight miles, I was not unwilling to take advantage of
a village inn. Here I had a meal of bacon and eggs, haricots, cheese and
walnuts, with some rather rough Limousin wine. I soon became aware that
there was something amiss in the rustic auberge, and catching a dim glimpse
of a figure lying in a bed in a small room adjoining, I asked the young
woman who waited upon me if anybody was ill there. 'Yes,' she replied
dolefully. Then I learnt from her that her father, struck with apoplexy,
was lying in a state that was hopeless. There is no escaping the
mournfulness of life. When our minds are least clouded the shadow of death
suddenly stands between us and the sunshine. I was in no mood to linger at
the table.

What a relief to be out again in the sunshine and the light air, to see
the Dordogne flashing through meadows where women were haymaking with bare
feet!

It was early in the afternoon when I entered the small but active town of
Bort. The burg is only interesting by its exceedingly picturesque situation
on the right bank of the Dordogne, under a very high hill, capped by a
basaltic table, which is flanked towards the town, or rather a little to
the south of it, by a long row of stupendous columns of basalt, known as
the _Orgues de Bort_, from their resemblance at a distance to organ-pipes.
The basalt here is of a reddish yellow. The table, with its igneous
crystallizations, lies upon the metamorphic rock.

I decided to climb to the summit of the prodigious organ-pipes, and to look
at the world from that remarkable point of view. For the greater part of
the distance the way lay up a tiresome winding road on the side of the
hill. A woman, who was tying buckwheat into sheaves, said the distance was
'three small quarters of an hour.' It would have been simpler arithmetic to
have said 'half an hour,' but the peasant thinks it safer not to be
more explicit than he or she can help. Experience has taught me that
'three-quarters of an hour,' whether they are called little or not, mean an
hour or more, and that 'five quarters of an hour' mean an hour and a half,
or even two hours. I passed a team of bullocks descending from the moor
with loads of dry broom for the bakers, headed by a little old man in a
great felt hat, with a long goad in his hand, with which he tickled up the
yoked beasts occasionally, not because they needed it, but from force of
habit. This goad, by-the-bye, is a slender stick about six feet long, with
a short nail at one end, so fastened that the point is turned outwards.
A bullock is not goaded from behind, but from the front between the
shoulder-blades, and it generally suffices for the animal to see a man in
front of him with a stick. Instead of drawing back, as might be supposed,
he steps forward at his best pace. Cows and bulls are harnessed, to the
wain and plough as well as oxen; they have all to work for their living.
English cattle are allowed to grow fat in idleness, and their troubles do
not begin until the time comes for them to be eaten. It is otherwise in
France.

On the banks were fragrant, mauve-coloured pinks, with ragged petals; but
at the foot of the _Orgues_ was a rocky waste, where little grew besides
the sombre holly and fetid hellebore.

The view from the top of the cliff made me fully realize the wildness, the
sterility, the desolation of nature in this region. Beyond the valley far
beneath me where the Dordogne lay, a glittering thread, was the department
of the Cantal. The whole southern and eastern prospect was broken up by
innumerable savage, heath-covered or rocky hills, with little green valleys
or dense woods filling the hollows, the southern horizon being closed by
the wavy blue line of the Cantal mountains. To the north-east the sky-line
was marked by the Mont-Dore range, with the highest peak of Auvergne, the
Puy de Sancy, clearly visible against the lighter blue of the cloudless
air. The feeling that prevailed throughout this wide expanse of country was
solemn sternness.

I returned to Bort, and as there were still about two hours of light left,
I crossed the river and went in search of the cascades, two or three
miles from the town, formed by the Rue in its wild impatience to meet the
Dordogne. When I was skirting the buckwheat fields of the valley in the
calm open country, there was a sweet and tender glow of evening sunshine
upon the purple-tinted sheaves standing with their heads together. The
Titan-strewn rocks felt it likewise with all their heather and broom. There
was no husbandman in the plain, no song of the solitary goat-girl, no creak
of the plough, no twitter even of a bird. It was not yet the hour when
Virgil says every field is silent, but the repose of nature had commenced.

The dusk was falling when I reached a silk-mill by the side of the Rue,
and passed up the deep gorge full of shadows, led by the sound of roaring
waters. A narrow path winding under high rocks of porphyritic gneiss
brought me to the cascade called the Saut de la Saule, where the river,
divided into two branches by a vast block, leaps fifteen or twenty feet
into a deep basin to whirl and boil with fury, then dashes onward down the
stony channel, to leap again into the air and fall into another basin.

[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE RUE.]

I reached a rock in the channel by means of a tree that had been laid
between it and the bank, and stood in the midst of the seething, broken
torrent, from which arose that saddening odour which water in wild
commotion gives forth when daylight is dying and the darkened trees stand
like mourning plumes. On either hand the forest-covered sides of the ravine
and their savage crags seemed to reach higher as they grew darker. Where
was I? There was a tree hard by that looked very like the infernal elm
beneath whose leaves the vain dreams cluster; but it was probably an oak.




ACROSS THE MOORS OF THE CORRÈZE.


The night being passed at Bort, the next morning I continued my journey by
the Dordogne. Again the sky was cloudless. I kept on the right bank of the
river--the Limousin side, leaving the Cantal to some future day, that may
never come. A little beyond the spot where the Dordogne and the Rue met
and embraced uproariously, the path entered a narrow lane bordered by tall
hedges chiefly of hazel and briar overclimbed by wild clematis--well termed
the traveller's joy, for it is a beautiful plant that reminds many a
wanderer of his far-away home.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE CORRÈZE.]

Then I passed under precipitous naked rocks, with the river on the other
hand, skirted by low bushes of twiggy willow that looked like tamarisk from
a distance. The sun was now hot, and the ground was again all astir with
lizards. Looking upon the path just in front of me, I brought myself to a
sudden stop. Had I advanced a step or two more I could hardly have failed
to tread upon a serpent that lay dozing in the sun just in my way. I was
glad that I did not do so, for I recognised it, by its olive skin with
reddish patches, as the dreaded _aspic_, or red viper. There it lay
stretched out its full length, about a foot and a half, either asleep or
enjoying the morning sun so much that it was in no humour to move. I do
not kill snakes indiscriminately, like the peasants whenever they get the
chance, but this one being dangerous, I resolved that it should never
take another sun-bath. After being roused by a blow, the creature did not
attempt to run, but did battle bravely, fiercely striking at the stick.

The path I had been following with so much confidence dwindled away and was
lost. Again the gorge became a deep rift in the rocks, which left no margin
on which one could walk. The only way to follow the windings of the stream
would have been to wade or swim. Once more I had to own myself beaten
by natural obstacles. The Dordogne is a river that cannot be followed
throughout its savage wildernesses, except perhaps in a light flat-bottomed
boat, and then not without serious difficulties. Anglers might have
splendid sport here until they broke their necks, for the trout abound
where the shadow of a man seldom or never falls. In the neighbourhood of
towns and large villages the fishing is often spoilt by the casting-net.

Having realized the situation, I turned my back to the stream and commenced
climbing the steep side of the gorge, choosing a spot where it was well
wooded, for the sake of the foothold. For some distance the ground was
green with moss and wood-sorrel; but the tug-of-war came when the vast
banks of loose stones--hot, bare, and shale-like--were reached. On gaining
the plateau, I threw myself down upon the heather and looked at the scene
below. The mingling of rock, forest, and stream was superbly desolate. Even
the naked steeps of slate-coloured broken stone had an impressive grandeur
of their own.

Leaving the Dordogne with the intention of cutting off a wide bend and
meeting it again the next day or the day after, I struck across the
half-cultivated open country, hoping soon to find a village; for I had
spent much time in the gorge and made very little progress, while the sun
had moved nearly up to the centre of his arc. The rays fell fiercely,
and there was no shade upon the plateau. There was a road, but it was
abominable. Only tramps understand the luxury of-walking upon a good road.

I came to a hamlet that looked very miserable. The daily toil had scattered
the men afield, and only a few women were to be seen. Not one of them wore
a stocking, nor even a wooden shoe. Some to whom I spoke did not understand
me; those who understood told me that there was no inn in the place--that
there was no one who could give me a meal. One of them must have thought
that I was begging my way, or was exceedingly hard up, for she said: 'Ah!
mon pauvre ami, vous êtes dans un malheureux pays.'

Continuing, I came to a village which was not shown on my map. Here I
learnt there was a single auberge, which was also the tobacco shop and
grocery of the place. It was kept by an old man who lived alone. This
inn was a cottage without any sign over it. I tried the door, but it was
locked, and nobody responded to the noise I made. It took me half an hour
to find the solitary at the farther end of the village. He returned with
me, and, opening the door, we both entered the only room of the cottage. It
was shop, bedroom, and kitchen. There was a bed against the wall, and near
the window was a small stock of tobacco, snuff, and groceries all mixed up.
My host's back was much bent and his face deeply furrowed. He wore a shirt
with a high collar, and a blue waistcoat. He was an honest, kindly man,
and seemed to take pleasure in doing what he could for me apart from the
thought of gaining by it.

In the way of food he had only eggs, bread, cheese, and butter. It was
decided that he should fry some eggs. He lighted some sticks upon the
hearth, and there was soon a good blaze; then he laid his great frying-pan
upon it, resting the long handle upon a chair. While the butter was
melting, he opened a trap-door in the floor and went down a ladder into his
cellar. Presently he reappeared with a litre of wine, and having set
this before me, he proceeded to crack the eggs and empty them into the
frying-pan. As a cook he had no pretensions, but he knew how to fry eggs.
When my meal was ready, and he had placed everything before me upon the
bare board, he sat at a little distance eating a dry old crust with a piece
of goat cheese. This was his lunch. I insisted upon his sharing the wine
with me, and this little attention made him thoroughly confiding and
cheery.

He was left a widower, he told me, with four children, at the age of
thirty-eight, and he would not take a second wife because, his father
having done so, he remembered the trials and tribulations of his own
childhood which came of his having 'a mother who was not a mother.' He said
to himself, 'My children shall not run the risk of going through what I
went through.' He toiled on alone, brought up his family himself, added
to his bit of land in course of years, and acquired other property. His
children were now all settled in life, and he had given them everything he
had except the cottage in which he lived. I was struck by the strong virtue
of this illiterate peasant, who had evidently no notion of his own value,
and who would not have told the simple story of his life passed amidst the
moors of the Corrèze had I not drawn it from him.

[Illustration: A PEASANT OF THE MOORS.]

As I watched the old man, prematurely bent by labour, eating his hard
crust, cheerful and contented, after giving to others the fruit of his many
years of toil, I thought, 'If man were nothing but an animal, such a life
would be not only absurd, but impossible.' Another glass of wine made my
host and cook still more talkative. He told me that not long ago he had
walked from this village to Tulle, distant about thirty-five miles, to
see a soldier son who was to pass through the place with his regiment. He
started at three in the morning and arrived at five in the afternoon, but
was only able to exchange a few words with his son. They could not even
'break a crust' together. The old man then turned his face towards his
village, and walked the whole night.

'I hope your son would walk as far to see you,' I said, with a little
scepticism in my mind.

This is what he replied, almost word for word:

'Ah! children do not do for their parents what their parents do for them.
The commandment says, 'Honour your father and your mother'--not honour your
children. Nevertheless, it is the parents who deny themselves the most. As
soon as your children are married they generally forget you.

Perhaps if I had married again I should be happier now. All the same, I
am contented. I can keep myself. When I am no longer able to take care of
myself, my children must do something for me.'

I confess that I was sorry when the time came for me to leave this old man,
knowing well that I should never see again his rugged face and his kind
eyes twinkling under their shaggy brows. Perhaps he, too, had some such
regret, for we had had a long talk, and he may have tired out all his other
listeners, especially those of his own family. When a man has grown old
and is near the end, it would often be better for him to go out into the
wilderness and talk to the rocks and trees than to repeat the stories of
his life upon his own hearth-stone. Before I left the peasant fetched a
bottle, which he only brought out on rare occasions, and insisted upon my
drinking a parting glass with him.

I passed through another hamlet where there was a high wooden cross. There
were walnut-trees, and men were knocking down the nuts. The women here wore
wide-brimmed black straw hats over white caps. I soon left these figures
behind, and was alone in a birch-wood, where there were many yellow leaves
between me and the blue sky. Then I met the road to Neuvic, and following
it came to the Artaud, a tributary of the Dordogne, threading its way
through deep ravines, amidst wild rocks, dark woods, and bracken-covered
steeps. The road crossed the ravine upon a bridge of three arches.

The scene was one to raise the mind above common things. The stream rushed
madly down the rocky chasm with a mighty roar, now losing itself in the
leafy vaults of overhanging trees, now reappearing like a torrent of fire
where the glorious lustre of the September sun struck it and mingled with
it.

As I ascended the opposite hill a still deeper ravine came into view,
wooded down to the water and all in dark shadow, except a rocky ridge
facing the sinking sun and bathed in warm light.

When the top of the hill had been reached, an old man, who wore a large and
very weather-beaten felt hat, was sitting on the step of a wayside cross
with a flock of geese feeding around him. Next I passed a bare-footed
_cantonnier_ breaking stones, and he told me that if I made
haste I might reach Neuvic before dark. On the outskirts of a
village--Roche-le-Peyroux--a wandering tinker and his boy were at work
by the side of the road with fire and bellows, and I felt a trampish or
romantic desire to stay with them awhile in the cheerful glow; but thinking
of the coming night, I smothered the impulse.

Upon the moor which I was now traversing was a very old stone cross, upon
which the figure of the Saviour was rudely carved in relief. The form was
so uncouth as to be scarcely human. The head was half as wide again as the
space across the shoulders, and the hands were nearly as large as the head.
How many centuries ago did Christian piety raise this rough image of its
hope upon the moors amidst the purple heather and the yellow broom?

The road crossed another stream not far from the spot where it fell into
the Dordogne. There was a wooded quietude here, with an odour of fresh
grass and water that enticed me to linger; but the evening light in the
tops of the trees and the twittering of the birds settling amongst the
leaves for the night spurred me on. I had walked many miles since the
morning, but had made very little way according to the map, so full of
deception is this wild Limousin country to the wanderer who does not know
it. I had still some eight miles to walk before reaching Neuvic.

There was a little mill at the bottom of the grassy valley, but it seemed
deserted by all living creatures save a dog. This rather large and shaggy
animal seized the rare opportunity that was now offered him for a little
excitement. Not satisfied with barking at me furiously from his own ground,
he followed me about a mile up the hill I had now to climb, but without
venturing very near. At length I thought I had had enough of his company,
so at the next bend in the road I came to a stand beside a heap of stones
that a _cantonnier_ had neatly piled up in geometrical pattern. There I
waited, and the animal came on gaily, little expecting to find himself
suddenly at close quarters with me. Just as he turned the corner he raised
a howl that said he was both surprised and shocked. Skipping with great
agility, he avoided the next stone, and the expression of his face told me
that he was already feeling very home-sick. He turned tail as quick as he
could, and used very bad dog-language as the stones followed him down the
hill. As a rule, dogs lose all their courage when they are out of sight of
their own homes, unless someone whom they know well is near at hand to give
them confidence in themselves.

I am again upon the moor. There is a deep silence over the heather, for the
last bees have left the pink and purple bells. But there is still a wan
glow in the air, which gives a sad beauty to the quiet, mournful land. A
boy is returning with some cattle after spending the day upon the heath,
and he sings as he thinks of his poor home, the blazing sticks on the
hearth, the soup, the buckwheat cake, or the potatoes. Through a mask of
silver birches I see a solemn ruddy light as of a funeral-torch in the far
western sky. The breath of evening is made sweeter by the odour wafted from
some distant fresh-cut grass or broom that has been drying in the September
sun. A field-cricket, waking up, breaks the silence with its shrill cry
that is quickly taken up by others near at hand and far away in the dusk.
The light and colour of the day are now gone, but there is one beautiful
star flashing in front of me like a lamp of the sanctuary when the vaulted
minster is filled with shadow.

The rest of the walk to Neuvic was by night. The first auberge I entered in
this small town of some three thousand inhabitants was a little too rough
even for me. The family were at dinner, or at supper, as they would say,
eating upon the bare board, without plates, potatoes boiled in their skins.
I do not doubt there were hollows cut in the table to serve instead of
plates, for this primitive contrivance still lingers in the wildest parts
of the Limousin. In answer to my inquiry as to bed accommodation, I was
told that I should have to sleep in the same room with others, probably the
whole family. I had sufficient taste for civilization left to decline the
proposed arrangement, and went in search of another inn.

Happily there was one, and of a better sort. It was thoroughly rustic, but
there was not the squalor I had just encountered. In the kitchen, paved
with small pebbles, two months' accumulation of used linen had been pressed
down in an old wine-cask, and boiling water was now being poured upon it
through a cloth covered with a layer of wood ashes. In these rural places
the washing-day is usually once in two or three months. This simplifies
matters, but it needs a considerable stock of linen, which, by-the-bye,
peasants generally possess. The wash-house odour that arose from the
_lessive_ was not grateful, but I tried to accommodate myself to it. On the
floor was a baby swaddled up, and tightly fitted into a small wooden cradle
on huge rockers--a cradle that might have served for scores of babies,
and been none the worse for wear. Although the fire on the hearth looked
tempting, the proximity of the wine-cask and the linen that was being
purified with potash made me glad to hear that my meal would be served in
another room.

Considering the region, the dinner was not a bad one. I had soup, veal,
eggs, and a fair wine. I had also a companion, but would rather have been
without him. He was a young man, whose appearance gained by the contrast of
a dusty wayfarer's, and he gave himself airs accordingly. I set him down as
a petty functionary of the place, and a _pensionnaire_ of the auberge.
All the time I was with him his mind was exceedingly restless as to my
intentions and business in those parts, and such explanations as I gave
him to appease his insatiable curiosity and awkwardly-veiled suspicion
evidently left him unsatisfied.

The next morning the hostess brought out her police register for me to
enter my name, nationality, age, profession, destination, etc. I had no
doubt that my acquaintance of the night before had reminded her of this
little formality in order that he might afterwards see what I had written.
All innkeepers in France are liable to a fine if they do not make every
traveller who passes the night with them leave this record of himself for
inspection, but the formality is much more often omitted than observed. I
have not been able to overcome my English dislike of the practice, which
is annoying and useless, like much more that belongs to the French
administrative system.

By daylight I found Neuvic to be a cheerful, pleasant little town, with
a venerable-looking old church, apparently of the twelfth century. It is
entered by a cavernous portal under a very massive low tower, but the
interior shows little of interest. What struck me, however, as something
quite uncommon was a small altar in the centre of the nave just below the
sanctuary. Upon it was an image of the Virgin, which a boy told me had been
found in a neighbouring wood about a century ago.

On leaving Neuvic I noticed a woman carrying to the baker's a large dish
of edible _boleti_, known to the French as _cépes_. This excellent fungus
during the late summer and autumn is a very important article of food in
France wherever there are extensive chestnut-woods. The orange mushroom is
also much eaten in the same regions, for it likewise loves the chestnut
forest; but it may be mistaken by those who do not know the signs for
its relative, the crimson-capped fly-agaric, one of the most deadly of
cryptogams.

After seeing the dish of _cépes_, I was not surprised to find many
chestnut-trees along the road that I now took to St. Pantaléon. The country
was less barren than that which I had passed over the day before. Although
there was much heather, broom and furze, trees and pasture broke the
monotony of the moorland. Here was the better Limousin landscape--every
knoll and mamelon covered with heather and other moor-plants, woods and
meadows in the dells and dips. The numerous clumps of silver birches, and
the gorse arrayed in its new flowers of bright gold, added to the charm of
the sunlit scene.


To me the weather was all the more delightful by being very warm, for I had
run away from winter on the Auvergne mountains. The whirring noise of the
grasshoppers as they flew across the road, and the tremulous sheen of
their wings, coloured like blooming lavender, brought back to me the best
recollections of other wayfaring days in the warm South, when all these
things were new, and the sight feasted upon them with the eagerness of bees
that suck the first flowers of spring.

I passed a little field of buckwheat that had been cut some days and had
fully ripened. A woman was threshing out the grain with a flail upon a
spread canvas, surrounded by a circle of purple-tinted cones, the sheaves
leaning together. Now the wide level moor returned, but Nature was not
quite the same here as she had been before. The vast expanse was dotted
over with dark little juniper bushes. These were covered with berries which
nobody seemed to think worth the picking. Rock-cist flourished, starring
the turf all over with its yellow discs. This moor was an absolute desert.

Long I walked without seeing another human being. At length I met a woman
carrying a distaff, and tried to get into conversation with her, but it was
impossible; she could not speak a word of French, and I knew nothing of her
Limousin patois.

By steadfastly following the road, I came to the village of St. Pantaléon,
on the brow of a hill overlooking the Luxège, and stopped at a wayside inn.
It was a poor auberge; but there was an air of reaching toward some ideal
of superior life and softened manners that made itself felt in small
ways not to be described with any certainty, but none the less real. The
innkeeper, who was also a peasant-farmer, possessed the doubtful blessing
of a mind that rose above what the logic of his existence, sternly bound
to a plot of grudging soil and the petty needs of still poorer neighbours,
demanded of it. He was blessed or afflicted with that hunger of knowledge
and refinement which lifts and casts down, rejoices and saddens. He knew
that such ambition with regard to himself was vain, that it was his destiny
to live out his days on the edge of a moor in the Corrèze, and that it was
his duty to thank Heaven that he was sheltered and had sufficient food,
fuel, and clothing for himself and his family: all this he knew, and he
accepted his lot bravely. But the fire was only damped down; it glowed
in its hidden heart, and strove for a vent. It was not lighted without a
purpose. The peasant had a son, to whom the flame had been passed on; for
he aimed at the priesthood. This has ever been a refuge of ambitious minds
that cannot rise by any other means above the dullness of the peasant's
life, which is the more endurable the more the man is able to place himself
upon the animal level of his plodding ox. The son was being educated in a
seminary, but he was now home for the holidays. Presently he appeared. He
was a youth of about nineteen, wearing a blouse like any other peasant.
There was certainly nothing in his appearance to indicate that he
was destined for the cure of souls. The proud father said: 'He is in
philosophy.' The young man had a twinkle in his eye that might have been
philosophical. Neither of them had a suspicion of the vanity concealed in
the high-sounding phrase.

But I am forgetting to say anything about what was more important to me
than aught else at that time. I had to eat and drink in order to look at
nature with an admiring eye, note the interwoven aims and motives and
troubled duties of human life; to be 'in philosophy' after my own humble
fashion. My meal was chiefly of fried eggs and ham, the latter nearly as
hard as leather. I ate in a small room where there was a bed with a red
curtain. No knife was given me, for in these out-of-the-way inns you are
expected to carry your knife in your pocket, which a century ago was the
case in most of the French hostelries. In the remotely rural districts the
ways of life have changed very slightly in a hundred years. But, if
the knife was overlooked, the white napkin and small tablecloth were
remembered. While talking with the _aubergiste_ over the coffee--there was
really some coffee here that was not made either from acorns or beans--he
told me, as an example of the low rate of wages in the district, that a
road--mender, who worked in all weathers, was paid forty francs a month.
In the whole commune there were only two or three persons who had wine in
their houses. He lent me his two sons--the _séminariste_ and his young
brother--to walk with me as far as the Luxège, and put me on the path to La
Page, at which village I proposed to pass the night.

As we left, a grand expanse of chestnut forest came into view, following
the hills that bordered the curved line of the Luxège. The little river,
like all the tributaries of the upper Dordogne, runs at the bottom of a
deep gorge. Standing upon the brink of it, I perceived that I was about
to enter another sylvan solitude of enchanting beauty. The dense forest
descended the abrupt escarpments to the channel and hid the stream, and
over the leafy masses was that play of sunshine, shadow, and thin vapour
which I had so often watched in a dreamily joyous mood lying at the foot of
some pine in the Vosges.

About half-way down the gorge was a ruinous Romanesque chapel upon a rock,
the polygonal apse being on the very edge of a precipice. At each exterior
angle of the imperfect polygon was a column with a cubiform capital. The
interior was all dilapidated; the floor of the sanctuary had fallen in, but
the altar-stone--a block of granite--remained in its place. This chapel
belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some
subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny,
mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried
away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where
the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was
the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly
told. These crosses doubtless mark the graves of nameless priors. And the
dust of the humble monk and serving brother, where is that? Every plant
draws from it something that it needs to fulfil its purpose. It is as good
for the nightshade as for the violet; flowers that are rank and deadly, and
others that are sweet and innocent, strive for the right of clasping with
their hungry roots the dust of men.

The innkeeper's sons left me by an abandoned mill on the other side of the
stream, which was crossed by a rough wooden bridge. Ascending the opposite
hill by a narrow path in the shadow of chestnuts and beeches, and fringed
with gorse and heather, I passed another deserted house, the roof of which
had fallen in. The gorge was getting very shadowy when I reached the
tableland above it. I saw the small town of Laplau in the plain away to
the left, but my path did not lie through it, for I preferred the wilder
country towards La Page. When I passed a little lake in a hollow, half
surrounded by firs, the slanting rays were diving into its liquid
stillness, over which the motionless trees bent gazing at their likeness.

When the sun left me I was upon a hilly waste, amid darkening bushes
of holly and juniper, tall bracken, heather, and gorse. The spirit of
desolation threw out broad wings under the fading sky; but from afar
towards the west, whither I was going, came through the dusk the shine and
twinkle of many fires that had been lighted by the peasants upon their
patches of reclaimed desert. They flashed to me the sentiment of the autumn
fields, of hopeful husbandry, of laying up for the winter, and preparation
for harvests that would be gathered under next year's sun.

Tired and hungry, I reached La Page in the darkness. The village looked
very poor and dreary; but I had been told that it contained a 'good hotel,'
and I set about looking for it. It turned out to be a rather large but
exceedingly rough auberge. On opening the door I saw a great kitchen with
pebbled floor, lighted only by the glow of embers on the hearth. The figure
of a woman standing in the chimney opening was lit up by the glare. I
walked towards her, and asked her if she could give me lodging. After
scanning me very acutely for some seconds, she replied, 'Yes.' She was
puzzled, if not startled, by the apparition in front of her; but having
thrown down my pack and taken a seat in the chimney-corner like a familiar
of the house, I talked to her about the comfort of being in such a place
after a long walk in so wild a district as hers, and succeeded in making
her quite genial. She was the mayor's wife, but she was not too proud to
cook for me after lighting a flickering oil-lamp. While I was waiting for
my meal peasants came in, and had theirs at the bare tables, of which there
were several in the great kitchen. Their soup was ladled out from the
immense black pot that hung over the fire, and the noise they made as
they fell to it was very grating to the nerves. But the wanderer in the
chimney-corner had no business to be there, unless he was prepared to
accept all that was customary without wincing. My own dinner commenced with
some of this soup, which was like hot dishwater with slices of bread thrown
into it. The bit of boiled veal that followed was an improvement, although
anything but a captivating dish. Goat-cheese, hard and salt, and with a
flavour that left no doubt as to the source from which it came, made up the
frugal fare. I returned to the chimney-corner and smoked in silence, now
peering up the sooty cavern where the wind moaned, and now watching the
clear-obscure effects of the dimly-lighted room. Presently a trap stopped
outside, and in walked the aubergiste, accompanied by a sprightly little
man who I afterwards learnt was a pedlar.

Monsieur le maire was not exactly a polished gentleman; he took no notice
of me after the first searching glance. He made an unpleasant impression,
but this wore off when I found that he was a well-meaning man, who had not
cultivated fine manners. Why should he have cultivated what would have been
of little or no use to him? These rural functionaries are just like the
people with whom they live. The young _séminariste_ told me an amusing
story of a mayor of St. Pantaléon, who had had a very narrow escape of
being caught by gendarmes when upon a poaching expedition. '_Tout le monde
est braconnier ici_,' added my informant with a sincerity that was very
pleasing. Of course, he was a poacher himself when reposing from his
theological and philosophical studies. I thought none the worse of him for
that. After all, poaching in France generally means nothing more immoral
than neglecting to take out a gun license, and to respect the President's
decrees with regard to the months that are open and those that are not.

On my way to bed I saw in a corner of the staircase a spinning-wheel of the
pattern known throughout Europe. I was told that it had not been used
for many years. The distaff and spindle which are to be seen on Egyptian
monuments are still employed by thousands of French, peasant-women, but the
wheel invented in the sixteenth century is rarely used now, unless it be by
Martha in the opera.

The next morning I made friends with the pedlar, who was about to start
upon my road, and who offered to give me a lift in his trap as far as La
Roche Canillac. Meanwhile, he had unpacked all his samples of cloth with a
view to doing a little business with the mayor. This personage, however,
was not allowed to have much voice in the matter; it was his spouse who
represented his interests in the bargaining battle that was now waged with
deafening din and much apparent ferocity for three-quarters of an hour. The
little pedlar was used to this kind of thing, and was quite prepared for
the fray. When the lady offered him, after much depreciatory fingering of
the chosen material, two-thirds of what he asked for the stuff that was to
be made into a pair of winter trousers for the mayor, he spun round and
jumped like a peg-top just escaped from the string. Then he raged and
swore, said he was being mocked at, dabbed his hat on his head, and made a
pretence of gathering up his samples and rushing off. The mayor watched the
scene with a quiet smirk on his face: he knew that he would somehow get the
trousers. I have no doubt that he did have them, but I walked out instead
of waiting to see the end of the battle. When I returned, the haggling was
over, the hostess and the pedlar were on the most affable terms, and there
was not a sign of the recent storm.

Presently the pedlar, myself, and the innkeeper's son--a young man who had
received his education elsewhere, and had learnt much that did not chime
in with his present surroundings--were in a light cart, drawn by a lively
horse, speeding along the road over the moors. Here and there, near the
village, were small fields of buckwheat in the midst of the heather and
bracken. My companions explained that each commune was surrounded by a
considerable extent of moorland that belonged to it, and that any native of
the commune had the right of selecting a piece, which became his absolute
property after he had cleared it and brought it under cultivation; thus
anyone could have what land he wanted in reason for nothing. Quite an
Arcadian state of things this, were not the conditions of nature such as to
chill the ambition to acquire such freeholds. Three years of back-breaking
labour are needed before the land is fit to be put to some profitable
purpose. And then what does it yield? Buckwheat, and perhaps potatoes.
Although the peasants have the faculty of extending their landed property
in the manner described, the consideration of means generally stands in the
way. They cannot afford to work and wait three years. Their existence is
truly wretched, and if it were not for the luxuriant chestnut-woods, which
cover the sides of the narrow valleys or gorges with which the barren
plateau is deeply seamed every few miles, the population of the region
would be more scanty than it is, for the chestnut goes far to sustain the
people through the worst months of the year.

The plough used upon these moors, on the _causses_ of the Quercy, and
in some other districts where the barrenness of the soil has kept the
inhabitants for centuries imprisoned within the circle of their old
routine, is one of the simplest that the world has known. It differs but
slightly from the one figured in the most ancient of Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and is really the same as that which was used in Gaul under the Romans.
Indeed, it has not the improvements that the Romans introduced. Two poles
forming an obtuse angle is the rough shape of it. The wedge-like share is
a continuation of the pole that is held by the ploughman. Often on the
_causses_, where loose stones are inseparably mixed with the soil, the
entire plough is of wood.

[Illustration: PLOUGHING THE MOOR.]

We passed through the village of Marcillac, near the head of one of the
valleys. The soil was much more fertile here, and a maize field was a sign
that the climate was warmer. There were, moreover, pleasant gardens with
fruit-trees and flowers. Oleanders were blooming outside some of the
houses. But we had no sooner risen upon the plateau again than the moor
returned, and for seven or eight miles it continued unbroken. The ground
was slightly undulating, and amongst the gorse and heather were scattered
innumerable juniper bushes.

On approaching La Roche Canillac the road descended into a very deep valley
by so many turns and windings that I was thankful to be in the pedlar's
cart, especially as the mid-day sun smote with torrid strength. But the
scenery was of exquisite beauty, and this valley will remain in my memory
as one of the most charming I have ever seen. Luxuriant woods, flashing
water, savage rocks, emerald-green patches of meadow, little mills by the
riverside--I should add nothing to the picture by saying more. Upon the
rocky hillside was the burg of five hundred inhabitants. My companions
took me to an old auberge whose exterior was not promising, but which was,
nevertheless, well supplied with food, and had a good cellar. The meal
served there was the best that had fallen to my lot for several days. The
sun had lost all the ardour of mid-day when I took leave of the pedlar
and the mayor's son. I went away thinking that I might travel far without
finding two more kindly, honest fellows.

[Illustration: A GORGE IN THE CORRÈZE.]

I had hoped to reach Argentat by the Dordogne that night, but I had stayed
too long at the inn for the plan to be practicable; so I set off down the
gorge of the tributary with the intention of taking my luck at a village
called St. Bazile. I was soon in the shade of the chestnut forest, where
boars were said to be plentiful. As time went on, the scenery became
more solemn and awe-inspiring. Pines that looked very gloomy in the late
afternoon mingled with the chestnuts, while black rocks, faintly flushed
with heather towards the sky, reared their jagged outlines above the sombre
foliage. All the while the water in the gorge moaned or roared. It was
growing very dusk when the walls on either hand rose like the sides of a
pit.

I was beginning to ask myself in no cheerful mood whether the map had not
deceived me as to the whereabouts of St. Bazile, when, to my relief, I
heard a church bell ringing not very far down the stream. It was the
angelus. How often has this clear, solemn, heart-touching, and consoling
sound been to me what a familiar beacon is to the doubting mariner! Only
wanderers in desolate places know the sentiment that it carries through the
evening air. More welcome than ever before did it seem in this black gorge.
I pushed on, and presently the gloomy walls widened out. Turning a bend
of the torrent, I stood in a glow of ruddy light that streamed from the
yawning mouth of an open-air oven that had recently been filled with dry
broom and kindled for the night's baking. Here was a fresh delight, for
there is nothing more cheering, more full of homely sentiment in the dusk,
than the view of such a blazing oven.

This, then, was the village of St. Bazile de la Roche, to give its full
name. It could scarcely have boasted a hundred houses. There was one
miserable little inn, kept by a widow. There I had to pass the night,
unless I preferred a cave or a mossy bed under a tree. The poor woman
managed to find a piece of veal, which she cooked for me. It seemed to be
my lot now to eat no meat but veal. As I sat down to this dish and a bottle
of wine, two men at another table were eating boiled potatoes, without
plates, and drinking water. The contrast made me uncomfortable. There is
some reason in the selfishness that avoids the sights and sounds and all
suggestions of other people's poverty and pain; but those who take such
base care of themselves never know human life. I could not offer these
men wine without running the risk of a refusal, but it was different with
regard to a little hump-backed postman who came in to gossip. Half a litre
of wine that, at my wish, was set before him made him exceedingly cheerful.
He told me that he walked about twenty miles a day on the hillsides and
in the ravines, and I suppose his pay was the same as that of other rural
postmen in France--from £28 to £32 a year. The inhabitants of St. Bazile,
he said, were all very poor, their chief food being potatoes and chestnuts.
Before the vines a little further down the valley were destroyed by the
phylloxera and mildew, the people were much better off. Then there was
plenty of wine in the cellars, but now St. Bazile was a village of
water-drinkers. He spoke of the neighbouring parish of Servières, where,
at the annual pilgrimage, women go barefoot from one rock to the other on
which the chapel stands.

Before placing myself between the canvas-like sheets, I opened the lattice
window of my meagrely-furnished room. The only distinguishable voice of the
night was that of the stream quarrelling with its rocky bed just below.
Before me was the high black wall of hill and forest, above the ragged line
of which flashed the swarming stars.

The angelus sounded again at four in the morning. Before seven I was out in
the open air. I saw the curé go up into the tower of his small church,
and ring the bell for his own mass. He was probably too poor to pay a
sacristan. A little later he was in the pulpit catechising the children,
and preaching to the older parishioners between whiles. A boy and then a
girl would stand up, and in answer to questions put to them would recite in
an unintelligible gabble the catechism they had learnt. If one of them lost
the thread and suddenly lapsed into a speechless confusion of ideas, the
curé pointed the finger of reprobation at the unfortunate little wretch,
and made him or her--especially him--feel the enormity of having a bad
memory. While waving his arm in a moment of rhetorical excitement, he let
his book fall upon an old woman's head. '_Voilà ce que c'est de faire
des gestes!_' said he with a smile that was almost a discreet grin. The
children were delighted, and everybody laughed, including the poor old
soul, who had seated herself under the pulpit so that she might hear well.

It was evident that the people of St. Bazile quite understood their curé,
and that he was just the one for them. He was a strong man, over sixty
years of age, and he spoke with a rich southern accent. Under his
sacerdotal earnestness there was a sense of humour ever ready to take a
little revenge for a life of sacrifice. There are many such priests in
France.

I had no sooner walked out of this village, on my way to Argentat, than I
became aware that the Girondin climate was beginning to make itself felt.
The influence of the plains was overcoming that of the highlands. The warm
rocky slopes on each side of the valley were covered with vines--alas! dead
or dying. There was no hope for them. On the level of the river were fields
of maize, now ripening, and irrigated meadows intensely green. There were
beehives, fifteen or twenty together on the sunny slopes, and as I went on,
the signs of human industry and ease increasing, I saw petunias climbing
over cottage doors. There was a steep descent to Argentat. The town lay in
a wide valley by the Dordogne, in the midst of maize and buckwheat fields
and green meadows, the surrounding hillsides being covered here with
chestnut woods, and there with vines. I met a woman returning from market
with melons in her basket. Truly I had come into a different climate. At
the small town, made pretty by the number of its vine trellises, I lunched.
The inn where I stopped is not worth describing; but it gave me a dish of
gudgeons caught in the Dordogne that deserved to be remembered.

I did not remain long at Argentat, for I was determined to reach Beaulieu
that night. A little out of the town some girls whom I passed on the road
looked very suspiciously at me out of the corners of their eyes, and
reminded me that another whom I had met that morning higher up the valley
took to her heels at the sight of me. An old woman who had lived long
enough to overcome such timidity, asked me if I was a _marchand_, by which
she meant pedlar--the old question to which I have grown weary of replying.
About a mile from the town I found the Dordogne again. It had grown to
quite a fine river since I last saw it in the ravines below Bort. Many an
eager affluent had rushed into it, both on the Corrèze and the Cantal side.
Here most of the grass was dried up, and the freshness of the highlands was
gone. Still the valley was shut in by steep cliffs. Brambles climbed about
the rocks, where the broom also flourished, although tangled with
its parasite, the dodder. Looking up the crags, I recognised a wild
fig-tree--the first I had seen on this southward journey.

The valley became again so narrow that the road was cut into the escarped
side of the cliff, for the river ran close under it. A woman with bare legs
and bare chest--really half naked--trudged by with a heavy bundle of
maize upon her head, followed by a couple of red-haired children, their
perfectly-shaped little legs browned by the sun and powdered with dust. How
beautiful are the limbs of these peasant children, however disfigured by
toil and the inherited physical blight of hardship their mother's form may
be! With each fresh generation, Nature seems to make an effort to go back
to her ideal type; but destiny is strong. Old and new causes working
together are often more than a match for that most marvellous force in all
animal and vegetable life--the love of symmetry.

Resting upon a bed of peppermint, blue with flowers, under an old wall,
whose stones were half hidden by celandine and roving briony; loitering
dreamily upon a wide waste of sunlit pebbles, watching the flashing rapids
of the river where it awoke from its calm sleep to battle with the rocks
which had resisted incalculable ages of washing, the hours glided by so
stealthily that it was evening when I reached a village which was still
eight miles or more from Beaulieu.

Turning into an inn, I fell into conversation with a postman, who made me
the offer of his company during the remainder of the journey. I readily
assented, and gave him a glass of absinthe--his favourite drink--before
leaving. He did not need it, for, as he confessed, he had been clinking
glasses with unusual zeal that day. He was a very droll fellow, a striking
type of the Southerner, whom it was difficult to look at with a serious
face, and whom no one with any sense of humour could really dislike,
notwithstanding his immense vanity and his immeasurable impudence. He had a
thick black beard, a long, sharp nose, dark eyes full of mischievous mirth,
and cheeks the colour of red wine. He wore a stiff new blouse with a red
collar--the badge of his office--and a straw hat like a beehive. The whole
of the way to Beaulieu his tongue was not still a minute. He told me
stories of his bravery and his love adventures with a most amusing accent
and intonation. The Rabelaisian expressions, which give such a peculiar
flavour to the conversation of the 'people' in Southern France, rolled off
his tongue with a sonority that could hardly have been excelled at Nimes
or Tarascon. His swagger, his gestures, and his elocutionary power were
amazing. He would stop walking, and, placing his stick--which he called
his _trique_--under his arm, would speak in a tragic stage-whisper; then,
clutching his _trique_ and flourishing it over his head, he would burst out
into a roar of laughter that made the dogs bark in the scattered farms for
miles around. Once, when we were passing under high rocks, he shouted with
such a terrible voice that he brought some loose stones rattling down upon
the road so close to us that my head, as well as his own, nearly paid the
penalty for thus exasperating the peaceful night. This was either the
effect of vibration or of the sudden movement of some bird or other
creature that he had startled far above us.

Among other things of which this amusing man talked to me was a visit of
archaeologists, among whom were a number of Englishmen, to Beaulieu.

'If you had only seen them,' he said, 'outside the church, all with their
noses lifted in the air! _Grand Dieu!_ What noses!'

Long before we reached Beaulieu I had had more than enough of the wild
spirits of my comic postman. On entering the town he insisted upon
taking me to a hotel which he said he could recommend to me with as much
confidence as if I were his brother. Then he left me; but I had not seen
the last of him. He presently returned, while I was enjoying the luxury
of a quiet and well-served little dinner. Seating himself in front of me
without waiting for an invitation, he helped himself with his fingers to
a dish of baked _cépes_, which I in consequence relinquished, but with a
complete absence of goodwill. There was no getting rid of him, short of
telling him plainly to go, and this I could not do after having accepted
his companionship on the road. He devoured all the mushrooms, expressing
his astonishment between whiles that I did not like them. '_J'aime bien
les champignons,_' he kept on repeating. '_Ça me va le soir. Ce n'est pas
lourd._' When the dessert was brought in, he picked out the only ripe
peach in the dish, and having poured another glass of wine down his really
terrible throat, he declared that it had given him great pleasure to make
my acquaintance, and left me with the hope that I should sleep well,
and would not forget the Beaulieu postman. I assured him, with perfect
sincerity, that I should never forget him.

When daylight returned I found Beaulieu a pleasant little town lying
under hills covered with chestnut woods, and at a short distance from the
Dordogne. Its name, however, was probably given to it on account of the
fertility of the soil in this bit of valley, where the cliffs that enclose
the Dordogne on each side fall back, and, by allowing a rich alluvium to
settle in the plain, give the husbandmen a chance of growing something more
profitable than buckwheat.

Beaulieu was once the seat of a powerful Benedictine abbey. The original
monastery was founded in 858 by Charles le Chauve, who placed it under
his protection. Although the territory was included in the viscounty of
Turenne, the Viscount Raymond II., before he went crusading, made over
his suzerain rights with regard to the abbey and its dependencies to the
abbots, who thus became temporal lords. There is nothing left of the
monastery; but much of the abbey church, which dates from the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, has been fortunately preserved. The interior is not
remarkable, but the large and elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment
which fills the tympanum of the portal is considered the most precious
example of mediaeval sculpture in the Bas-Limousin. The face of the
Saviour, expressive of something above all human passions and motives,
shows a really God-like combination of serenity and severity. The fantastic
spirit of the age is well set forth in the tortured forms of the horrid
reptiles and fabulous beasts carved in relief upon the massive lintel, and
filling also the broad border at the base of the tympanum. The same
spirit finds even stronger expression in the demon figure, so grotesquely
long-drawn out, carved upon the scalloped pillar that supports the lintel.
The abbey was pillaged by the Huguenots, who lit a fire in the choir, which
destroyed much of the woodwork. Notwithstanding the religious wars and
the revolutionary convulsions of the eighteenth century, the church has
preserved some of its ancient treasure, of which the most precious object
is a silver statue of the Virgin of very curious workmanship, dating from
the twelfth century.

[Illustration: TURENNE.]




IN THE VISCOUNTY OF TURENNE.


What gives us the zest to wander until the hour comes when we must fain be
content to sit in the porch, thankful if the evening sun shines warmly, is
the fascination of the unknown. As children, did we not long to get at
the horizon's verge, to touch the painted clouds of the morning or of the
sunset--ay, and to grasp with our outstretched hands that reached such a
little way the blood-red glory of the sun itself? The garden, with its
glowing tulips and its roses haunted by gilded beetles, became too small
to satisfy the mind of infancy fresh from the infinite. Surely, I thought,
when I was again in the open country beyond Beaulieu, I must have carried
something of my childhood on with me, for me to go wandering over these hot
hills exposing myself to sunstroke, weariness, and thirst for the sake of
the unknown.

The road at first led up vine-covered slopes towards the west, where the
waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride
upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up _soutane_ showing his
gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this
one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed
in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the
solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling
steed. On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a
little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber
house, its porch aglow with climbing petunias.

Beyond this village was a deep valley, the sides of which were covered with
chestnut-trees. On ascending the opposite hill, I took a by-path through a
steep wood, thinking to cut off a long turn of the hot and dusty road. It
led me into difficulties and bewilderment. The path disappeared, but I went
on. After climbing rocks densely overgrown with brambles, which left their
daggers in my skin, I reached the top of the hill, and saw before me a
desert of disintegrated rock or drift dotted over with low juniper bushes.
Although it was the middle of September, the sun blazed above me with the
ardour of July, and the rays were thrown back by the bare stones, on which
there was not a trace of moss, nor even lichen. These arid rocky places, so
characteristic of Southern France, have a poetry of their own that to me
is ever enticing. I love the stony wastes and their dazzling sun-glitter.
There I find something that approaches companionship in the prickly
juniper, the narcotic hellebore, and the acrid spurge. And these plants
likewise love the places where the world has remained unchanged by man. The
heat, however, was too great for me to linger upon this shadeless hill,
where every stone was warm, and the reflected glare was almost as blinding
as that of the sun itself, which seemed so near.

Having crossed another valley, after much casting about, I found the
highroad again. The altitude was considerable here, so that the view
embraced a wide expanse of the Corrèze and the department of the Lot, which
I was approaching. The scene was everything that an English landscape is
not. No soft verdure, no hedgerows setting memory astir with pictures of
the flowering may and the pink, clambering dog-rose gemmed with dew; no
lustrous meadow crossed by shadows thrown by ancient dreaming elms; no
flash from the briskly-flowing brook: no, nothing of this, but in its place
a parched and rugged land of hills or knolls, stony, wasteful, where for
countless ages the juniper, the broom, the gorse, and the heather have
disputed the sovereignty, the intervening valleys, timidly cultivated,
producing little else but rye and buckwheat, and the deep gorges sombre
with overhanging trees.

This road was so tedious, so hot and dusty, that, after walking a few miles
upon it, I lost patience altogether with what seemed to be its unreasonable
windings, and again made an effort to strike across country by means of
by-paths, in order to reach the spot where, according to the map and
compass, I thought Vayrac ought to be. I came to a seventeenth century
country-house, large enough to be termed a château, but now the dwelling of
some peasant-farmer. It was a dilapidated, apparently owl-haunted building,
with a dovecote tower over grown with ivy, and was half surrounded by a
wall, whose tottering, ornamental pinnacles told a story of comparative
grandeur that had come to grief in this remote spot. The farmer had been
winnowing his corn outside, and the narrow lane was ankle-deep with chaff.
The only human being that I could find here was a wild-looking girl, with a
bush of hair on her head, who made me understand, half in French, half in
patois, that I should never reach Vayrac by the way I was going. She sent
me off in another direction. I walked on, I know not how many miles,
without coming to any village or wayside auberge, over a shadeless plain in
the department of the Lot. There was no water; consequently not a bird was
to be seen or heard. But there were myriads of flies, and too many hornets
for my comfort, for some of them followed me with impertinent curiosity.

I confess that I do not like hornets. When I see them, they remind me of
the story of a donkey told me by a man in these parts. He in his youth
saw an unlucky ass that, quietly browsing, unconscious of indiscretion,
disturbed a hornets' nest. Suddenly the animal showed symptoms of unusual
excitement, which became rapidly more violent, until, after some amazing
antics, first on his front-legs and then on his hind-legs, he rolled over
on his back, and kicked violently at the sky. His master knew what had
happened, but stood lamenting afar off, not daring to go to the rescue. In
a short time the poor donkey ceased kicking, and swelled up in a manner
horrible to behold.

All nature now appeared to be baking. Even the blackberries, which I ate
by the handful to slake my raging thirst, were warm. A long, straight road
that I thought would never end brought me at length to Vayrac, where there
was a good inn. Oh, the luxury of rest at last in a shaded room, with the
companionship of a jug of frothing beer just brought up from the cool
cellar!

  *        *        *        *        *

Months passed before I continued from this point my journey on foot. The
spring had come, and the face of nature was wondrously changed. Over the
valley that I had seen before so parched had spread the soft verdure of
young grass; hedges of quince were all abloom, and at their roots the
stitchwort mingled its white starry flowers with the matchless blue of the
Germander speedwell, so dear to English eyes. The roadsides were bright
with daisies and the gold of the ill-appreciated dandelion.

A lane from Vayrac led up to the escarped sides of the Puy d'Issolu--the
Uxellodunum of the Cadurci, according to Napoleon III. and others who have
made Caesar's battlefields in Gaul their study. It was April, and from near
and afar came the warbling of nightingales. They moved amongst the new
leaves of almost every shrub and tree. A very abrupt ascent through
thickets brought me to the tableland, where the turf was flashed with
splendid flowers of the purple orchids. From the waste land the sombre
junipers rose like scattered cypresses in a cemetery.

If this was not the site of Uxellodunum, we may pretty safely believe it to
have been that of some important _oppidum_ of the Gauls. A circumvallation
there could never have been in a strict sense, for where the plateau rests
upon high calcareous walls there was no need of a fortification. But
elsewhere, where the position was accessible from the valley, it was
protected by a strong wall. On the northern side this rampart can be
followed for a considerable distance without a break. In one spot the soil
which has collected about it has been dug away, leaving the masonry bare.
It is not composed of loose stones of various sizes, like that of the
Celtic city at Murcens, but of small flat stones neatly laid together, with
layers of mortar between; a circumstance that sets one conjecturing and
doubting. The wall appears to have been six or eight feet thick. The line
of it now only rises very slightly above the edge of the plateau.

I met a peasant who owned the highest part of the tableland, and who
managed to grow crops upon it. Near his cottage he pointed out the remains
of an ancient structure, which he called the fort. The masonry was of the
same character as that of the wall. Near to it were fragments of ancient
pottery and tiles, which he had dug out of the ground. The tiles were
very heavy and flat, with turned-up edges, so that they could hang one to
another. There were holes, too, for the nails which held them to the roof.
Thrown on one side were human bones, which had from time to time been
turned up by the plough. The peasant told me that his father, while digging
rather deeply, had found a skeleton wearing a bracelet and part of a
helmet. A visitor to the Puy d'Issolu, many years ago, was allowed to take
these remains away, together with a quantity of iron arrow-heads, on his
promise to come back and pay 600 francs for them. He never came back.

The view from the Puy takes in an immense expanse of the solemn Limousin
country. To the south is the stone-strewn Quercy, while to the north and
east is the still wilder Corrèze. On the west lie the forests of Black
Périgord. Looking to the east, I saw the mountains of Auvergne, the
Mont-Dore range rising beyond the Corrèze against the blue sky, as white as
the sugar towers and pinnacles upon a bride-cake. Here it was warm, like
June weather in England; there winter still reigned upon the snowy hills.
Standing against the north-western horizon were the high towers of the vast
feudal fortress of the Viscounts of Turenne. It was there that Madame de
Condé, escaping from Mazarin, planned the rising of Guyenne in 1648. I
could only distinguish the towers, but I knew that a little below them was
the small mediaeval town of Turenne, which grew up under the protection of
the Viscounts, who for centuries were virtually the sovereign princes of
this region. No lover of the picturesque would waste his time by going
there.

Descending from the tableland on the southern side, where the rocks form a
steep little gorge, I came to the stream from which the besieged Cadurci
are supposed to have drawn their water-supply, until it was cut off by
Caesar. Looking at the spot, it is easy to understand how it all happened.
The natural fortress, selected with so much judgment by the Cadurci, was
almost unassailable. To help them, they had the cover of the wood that
still fills the gorge, but which was probably much denser then than it is
now. From his tower of ten stages, which commanded the fountain, Caesar
continually harassed with darts, thrown by the _tormenta_, those who came
to the spring; and he, moreover, tells us that he caused a gallery to be
tunnelled to the fountainhead, and thus drew off the water, to the utter
astonishment and despair of the Cadurci, who perceived in this disaster the
intervention of the gods. A tunnel such as he describes exists, and the
stream flows through it. At a point some distance higher, the sound of
gurgling water can be distinctly heard beneath the stones; and it was here
probably where the stream originally broke out, and where the inhabitants
of the _oppidum_ came with their vessels. Napoleon III. had the
subterranean gallery cleared, and its artificial character was proved by
the discovery that massive beams of wood, of which there were some remains,
had been used to prevent the soil from falling in upon the workers. It has
now been nearly filled up again by the calcareous deposit of the water.
The river mentioned by Caesar as the one that flowed in the valley beneath
Uxellodunum [Footnote: 'Flumen infimam vallam lividebat quae totum
poene montem cingebat, in quo positum erat praeruptum undique oppidum
Uxellodunum.'--'De Bello Gallico,' Lib. VIII.] is a small tributary of the
Dordogne, called the Tourmente. This is assuming the Puy d'Issolu to have
been Uxellodunum. The most convincing material proof that the two places
are the same was furnished by the discovery of the tunnel; but some strong
corroborative evidence is to be found in local names. The word _puy_
affords no clue; for it simply means a high place. In the dialect of the
Viscounty of Turenne the Puy d'Issolu is pronounced _Lo Pê dê Cholu_. In
the word Issolu or Cholu, we may have something of the Celtic word, which
was Latinized by Caesar after his custom; but this verbal similarity would
not in itself go far to prove the identity of the height near Vayrac with
the position defended by Drappes and Lucterius. Lying in the Corrèze at
no great distance from the Dordogne is the town of Ussel--a name that
approaches much more nearly the sound of Uxellodunum. But an educated
native of Vayrac, whom I chanced to meet months after my visit to the Puy
d'Issolu, furnished me with some local testimony which appears to be
of value in connection with a subject that has given rise to so much
controversy. The stream where it issues near the base of the rocky height
has been known in the neighbourhood from time immemorial as 'Lo foun
Conino'--Conino's Fountain. Conino is a natural Romance corruption of
Caninius, the name of Caesar's lieutenant who in the first instance
directed the siege of Uxellodunum. The French name for the stream at the
bottom of the valley already mentioned is derived from the Romance one, Lo
Tourmento. Now, as Caesar made so much use of _tormenta_ as engines of war,
to prevent the besieged Cadurci from drawing water, something may easily
have occurred to associate the stream with one of these machines. It is to
be observed, however, that there are other streams in France to which the
name Tourmente has been given, and of which the explanation is much more
simple.

[Illustration: A PEASANT OF THE CAUSSE.]

How solemnly still seemed this spectre-haunted spot in the quiet evening!
There was the groaning murmur of the stream flowing down its subterranean
passage, and there was the low and fitful warble of a nightingale; but this
was all. Who, passing by here without foreknowledge, would suppose that on
this bit of desert the great struggle between Rome and Gaul was brought
to a close? What a wonderful thing is a book, that it should preserve age
after age, with undiminished reality, all the torment, anguish, and passion
of a siege, and give a human interest to rocks and streams, which without
such aid would tell us nothing of the horrid tumult that raged over and
around them! Now I can see the half-naked Gauls rolling down their barrels
of flaming pitch upon the Roman engineers, and hear that great clamour
of the besiegers and the besieged of which Caesar speaks. Above were the
Celtic heroes defending their last rock with the obstinacy of despair, and
ready to accept death in any form but that of thirst; and here were the
veteran legionaries exposing themselves day after day to the burning pitch,
the stones, and the arrows of the defenders, with that disciplined courage
and unwavering resolve to conquer which made Rome the mistress of the
world. But the most terrible scene must have been that in which the Gaulish
warriors, after their surrender, had their hands cut off. What frightful
business was that, and what a heap of hands must have been buried
somewhere, either upon the table-land or in the valley! A deep-ploughing
peasant may long since have come upon an extraordinary collection of little
bones, and been much puzzled by them. And poor Drappes, who, after his
capture, refused to eat, and died from starvation; he must have been buried
somewhere near. But Nature says nothing about all these things; she covers
up the traces of human ferocity with her new leaves and moss, and smiles
there as tenderly as upon children's graves.

I passed the night at St. Denis, a modern place brought into existence by
the line to Toulouse. At the auberge the evening was enlivened by dancing.
Two maids of the inn found partners in a couple of rustic youths, and a
young soldier _en congé_ provided the music by whistling, or imitating the
hurdy-gurdy with his mouth. For it was the _bourrée_ that was danced.

The next morning I was on the road to Martel, with nightingales and
blackcaps singing all around from blossoming quince and hawthorn and copses
filled with a gold-green glimmer, until I reached the bare upland country.
Upon the barren _causse_, besides the short turf, the gray ribs of rock,
and scattered stones, little was to be seen but dark little junipers, tall
broom, not yet in flower, hellebore, with bright tufts of new leaves and
evil-looking green blossoms edged with dull purple, and the numberless
gilded umbels of the spurge, which in springtime lend such beauty to the
Southern desert. In the dips and little dingles there were stunted oaks
with the brown foliage, that had been beaten by the winter winds in vain,
still clinging to them, but which every breath of western breeze now
scattered, because the buds were swelling and the unborn leaves were asking
to come forth. At wide distances above the undulating, sterile land a
farmhouse would appear, with high-pitched tiled roof, and a pigeon-house
rising like a tower at one end. The stranger marvels to see such
substantially-built houses in the midst of such sterility; but he finds
the explanation when he has time to consider that there are so many stones
lying about that, where it is possible to plough, the peasant heaps them up
in his field, or makes walls that are little wanted. Having reached the top
of a knoll, I saw beneath me many old tiled roofs whose lines ran at all
angles, and above these rose the massive walls of a half-fortified church,
and various towers or fragments of towers. I was looking at Martel.

According to legend and local history, Charles Martel, after defeating the
Saracens near this spot, caused a church to be built on a piece of fertile
land a few miles from the battlefield, and dedicated it to St. Maur. A town
grew around church and monastery, and was named Martel in honour of the
founder. In the early days of the Crusades, when princes and barons
rivalled one another in virtuous zeal, a Viscount of Turenne decreed that
inhabitants of Martel who were convicted of sinning against the marriage
tie should be dragged naked through the town. The charter that contains
this enactment treats of villeinage also, and orders that whoever has a man
for sale within the limits of the viscounty shall fix the price, and shall
not change it afterwards.

The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry Plantagenet brought the
English to Martel in the twelfth century; but it does not appear that they
obtained or cared to keep anything like a permanent grip on the place until
the fourteenth century. Inasmuch, however, as Henry Short-Mantle, the
rebellious son of Henry II., met with no resistance at Martel when he came
thither, after pillaging the sanctuary of Roc-Amadour in 1183, it may be
concluded that English influence was already established there. In the
market place is a house a portion of which was once included in a building
that has now nearly disappeared, but which is known to every inhabitant as
the 'palace of Henry II.' On the first floor, communicating with a spiral
staircase, is a room paved with small pebbles. On one side is a broad
chimney-place, just such as we see now all through Guyenne, even in the
towns. According to the tradition preserved by the family to whom the house
belongs, it was in one of the chimney-corners of this room that Prince
Henry sat on the evening of the day that he left Roc-Amadour. It is
uncertain, however, whether the Prince went to Martel immediately after the
sacrilege, or after a pilgrimage that he made to the sanctuary to atone for
his crime, when he was suffering from the disease that killed him. There
is a local legend that he was followed by two monks, who contrived to put
poison into his goblet; but whether he was poisoned or died of dysentery at
Martel, as the chroniclers maintain, is a detail of small importance. That
he did die here, and very repentantly, on a bed of ashes, and held up by
the Bishop of Cahors, is a historical fact.

An indubitable testimony of the English occupation of Martel is the
heraldic leopard of the Plantagenets. I found it carved in stone among
the ruins of King Henry's palace, and hard by I saw it again upon a rusty
fireplate that had been thrown into a corner. There is not a native of
Martel who is not ready to talk of _le leopard anglais_.

The English were never loved by the Martellois. The people of this district
are strong in their attachments, and perhaps even stronger in their
animosities and prejudices. Without doubt the English did not treat them
with marked tenderness; but there was very little human kindness in the
Middle Ages, and the French, or the races which now compose France, left
nothing to be invented in the arts of cruelty and oppression in the wars
that they waged among themselves before they learnt, or were forced to
learn, that it was to their interest to hold together and form one
nation. Moreover, the greater number of the so-called English who kept a
considerable part of Aquitaine in continual terror for three centuries were
natives of the soil.

All the men of Martel who could carry arms joined the forces of King John,
who was defeated by the Black Prince at Poitiers. The consuls of Martel had
to pay heavy ransoms for their fellow-townsmen who fell into the hands
of the English. Notwithstanding the disaster at Poitiers, the Martellois
closed their gates and prepared for a siege, after having obtained from
the Viscount a company of crossbow-men to help them in the defence. But an
English garrison was soon established at Montvallent, only a few miles off,
and this fact seems to have demoralized the Martellois, who, after enduring
a few assaults, surrendered the town. The longest period of unbroken
English possession of Martel appears to have occurred after this surrender.
It is probable that the Sénéchaussée, which now exists under the name of
the Hôtel de Ville, was commenced about this time, although the King of
England must have been represented in the town by his seneschal long
before. By the treaty passed between Henry III. and Reymond VI. of Turenne
in 1223, it was stipulated that the Viscount should pay homage to Henry,
but that the English officers should exercise no jurisdiction in the
viscounty, except in the town of Martel, where the King could hold his
assizes with the consent of the Viscount. It was, moreover, provided that
in the event of resistance on the part of his fiefs, the Viscount could
apply to the English seneschal at Martel for armed assistance. The burghers
were in the enjoyment of their political franchises from the year 1256.
They had town councillors, who elected four consuls every four years, who
represented the borough in the États Vicomtains--an assembly composed of
the principal landholders and dignitaries of the viscounty. The more they
tasted freedom the more the burghers felt disposed to quarrel with the
Viscount. In 1355 they sent a deputation to the Pope at Avignon begging
him to ask their lord if it was his wish that the town should retain its
privileges. The minutes of the municipal meeting, at which this decision
was come to, are in existence, and they show how the Romance language was
written at Martel in those days:

  'Item fo ordenat que Moss. Aymar de Bessa et P. Karti ano a
  Vinho far reverensa al papa per nom de la vila eque Phi recomendo
  la vila. E quelh fasso supplicacio quelh plassa far am los vescomte
  se bot que nos garde nostres previleges.'

This ancient town has suffered grievously from that spirit of demolition
which was so active during the first half of the present century, but
which in France has been somewhat checked by the Commission of Historic
Monuments. There are people who can remember when the town was surrounded
by two walls; now only a few remnants of the fortifications remain. The
church is exceedingly interesting. There are details indicating a very
early origin--they may possibly have come down from the foundation; but the
structure in the main belongs to the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The
east end--the oldest portion--has more the character of a stronghold than
of a church. It has no apse, and the terminating wall, which is carried far
above the roof, has a row of machicolations, and the massive buttresses by
which it is flanked are really towers pierced with loopholes. At the foot
of the wall is a deep pool of water, which serves as the horse-pond for the
town; but it may originally have been part of a moat.

In the tympanum of the twelfth-century portal is one of those bas-reliefs
representing the Last Judgment upon which the artistic ambition of the
early Gothic period appears to have been chiefly directed in this region.

The fourteenth-century Sénéchaussée, with its embattled belfry, its little
turrets or bartizans hanging high at the angles of the wall, its dim old
court, with a deep well in the centre, speaks with a ghostly voice of
ancient Martel. This building, after the English left, was the residence of
the seneschals of the Viscounts of Turenne down to the Revolution. In two
of the rooms are chimney-pieces very artistically carved in oak.

Notwithstanding all the demolition that has gone on, bits of picturesque
antiquity meet the eye everywhere in the old English town. Now it is a
half-ruinous watch-tower, now the Gothic doorway of a thirteenth-century
house, now a gateway that has lost its tower, but whose wounds are covered
with yellow wallflowers in spring; now a turret running up an entire front,
with little windows looking out upon the quiet street, or some high-pitched
roof curving inward under the weight of years and tiles.

The inn where I put up was like a hostelry of romance. Entering by a broad
archway, I passed along a passage vaulted and groined, where corbel-heads
grimaced from dim corners; climbed a staircase broad enough for a palace,
and, having reached the landing, saw a great room with hearth and chimney
to match, massive old furniture, pots and pans of highly-polished copper,
and a hostess stout and cheery, who welcomed me as though I were an old
friend, and not a wanderer to whom food and shelter were to be exchanged
for money. This good woman had evidently no faith in new fashions; she
dressed as she did thirty years ago, and every dish that she cooked for me
was kept warm by a pewter brazier filled with embers from the hearth.
One of these dishes was a goose's liver half roasted, half stewed, and
sprinkled with capers.

While at Martel I was arrested as a spy by an old _garde champêtre_, who,
seeing me taking notes of the church, wished to know who gave me permission
to 'make a plan of the town.' I did not reply to him with the politeness
that he evidently considered himself entitled to. It is probable that I
should have chosen my words with more circumspection had I guessed what an
important person he was; but as he wore a blouse, and was squatting upon
a heap of stones which he had been pulling about, I underestimated his
dignity. That he united the functions of _cantonnier_ and _garde_ did not
occur to me. He sprang to his feet, put on his official badge, and, seizing
me by the arm, shouted: 'I arrest you!' Then, when I took the liberty of
removing his hand, he called out: '_Au secours!_'

But those to whom he appealed were women, who preferred to let him manage
his own business, and who, moreover, were too much amused to interfere.
When he had calmed down a little I walked with him to the deputy-mayor,
whose office was over a little shop. After hearing me and examining my
papers, this gentleman was satisfied that I was not a very dangerous
person, and he told me that I had better forget the incident.

The fierce old man could not understand why I was released. He even
protested: '_Il dit qu'il est un anglais; mais il le dit!_'

The deputy-mayor tried to calm him by observing that I had a right to be an
Englishman. The _garde_ then walked out, looking very hot and puzzled. From
his childhood he had heard of the English as the worst tyrants that
the region had known. Was not the country strewn with the ruins of the
fortresses they had built? To his mind they were more dangerous enemies
than the Germans, who never came near Martel. I bear no grudge against the
old man. He believed that he was doing his duty in arresting me, and if I
had made more allowance for his age and prejudices the unpleasantness might
have been avoided. To him the old struggle with the English was almost as
fresh as if it had taken place in his father's time.

People who remain in the same place all their days, and who never read,
live much more in the past than others, and remember injuries done to their
remote ancestors as if they, the latest descendants, were still suffering
from them, I remember asking a woman in an inn not far from Martel how an
old gateway and other mediaeval buildings close by had been brought to such
a sad state of ruin.

'It was you,' she exclaimed, 'who did that--_vous autres anglais!_'

And she looked so resentful for a few moments that I wished I had let the
sleeping dog lie.




IN UPPER PÉRIGORD.


Leaving Martel, I crossed the valley of the Dordogne, and passed on to
other valleys southward and eastward, as recounted in the story of my
wanderings by 'Southern Waters.' Many months went by, and then one summer
day found me wayfaring again by the Dordogne towards the sea. A little
below the point where I had crossed in search of the Ouysse I came to the
small town of Souillac. This place, although fortified in the Middle Ages,
played a much less important part in the wars of the Quercy than the
neighbouring burgs of Martel and Gourdon. Its interest lies mainly in its
twelfth-century church, and here chiefly in a very remarkable bas-relief of
the Last Judgment. This astonishing work of art is to be found not where
one would expect it to be, namely, in the tympanum of the portal, but in
the interior, against a wall at the west end, over a Gothic arch, whose
transition from the preceding style is marked by a billet-moulding. The
sculpture is in a high degree typical of the uncouth vigour of the period.
The two pillars supporting the arch are so carved as to represent figures
of the damned going down into hell. The artist might have been inspired by
Dante had he not lived before the poet who collected and fixed upon the
sombre canvas of his verse all the woeful visions of eternal punishment
that haunted the mediaeval mind. A man and woman are descending to the
abyss, he holding her by the hair, and she clasping him by the waist, the
faces of both terribly expressive of horror that is new, and utter despair.
The meaning is plain, enough: each was the cause of the other's doom, and
the sentence of the Judge in the panel above has united them in hell for
all eternity. On the opposite pillar are another couple, also clasping one
another; but their faces express the blank and passionless misery of a
doom foreknown. Monk or layman, he who designed the composition felt the
necessity of giving this tragic warning to his fellow-beings. Centuries
later an English poet expressed the same idea in verse:

  'The woman's cause is man's! they rise or sink
  Together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free.'

One of the less conspicuous figures is going down head foremost in the
company of an animal that looks very like a pig. This beast having been
damned by ecclesiastical sculptors in France as early as the twelfth
century, and probably earlier, it is not surprising that a polite peasant,
when he mentions it by name, often excuses himself for his supposed breach
of good manners by adding: '_Sauf votre respect_.'

Nearing a village not far from Souillac, and wondering the while what had
become of the picturesque, I saw, as if by enchantment, a few yards away, a
little old church covered with ivy, and surrounded by tombstones that were
stained with the dead colours of last winter's lichen; one leaning this
way, another that, but all going down into the grassy graves. A few chairs
and a single bench told that the people who came here to pray were not many
nor rich. Most of the flagstones were broken, and the altar was almost
simple enough to please a Calvinist. It was the simplicity, not of
intention, but of poverty. Are such churches--lost amidst the pensive
trees, or bathed by the tender evening light upon the vine-clad
hillside--doubly hallowed, or is it the poetry of old memories and ideal
pictures stored away behind a multitude of newer impressions that moves us
like the wind-blown strains of half-forgotten melodies as we pass them in
our wanderings?

Evening found me by the Dordogne, that flowed calmly in a salmon-coloured
light, thrown down by a wasteful stony hill, itself lit up by a reflected
glow of the sinking sun. The meadows through which the little path ran were
dotted all over with golden spots of lotus, and near the water the pale,
pure yellow of the evening primrose shone against the darkening willows.
The voices of unseen peasants, labouring somewhere in the fields so long
as the daylight lasted, were carried up the valley by the breeze, just
loosened from its leash; but the sound was only a little louder than the
whispering of the poplars.

The gloaming lingered until I reached the village of Cazoulès. At the inn
where I decided to pass the night I fell among bicyclists--quite a crowd of
them--all young, frantic with the excitement of some break-neck run, and
noisy enough to shock the dog's sense of decorum, for he slunk off with
his tail between his legs. Having slaked their thirst, the jovial band
of enthusiasts sprang upon their steel horses and dashed off into the
darkness, where their voices were quickly lost.

While waiting for dinner, I found nothing so amusing as listening to a high
dispute between the hostess and a travelling butcher, with whom she had
long had dealings, but whom she had lately deserted because she had found
another who sold cheaper. The butcher called his rival a 'dirty sparrow,'
but at length proposed to yield the sou on each pound of meat by means of
which the 'sparrow' had scored his victory. In future all his meat was to
be sold at eleven sous, and on these terms he was restored to favour. Thus,
by playing one man off against the other, the artful woman was able to save
quite a pile of sous every week on her general expenses. The Frenchwoman of
ordinary intelligence, whether she belongs to the north or the south, the
east or the west, may be safely trusted to beat any man of her own race at
bargaining.

For a rural inn this one at Cazoulès was good and substantial, but it
provided a little too much irritation at night to be consistent with
peaceful slumber and happy dreams. This was not, perhaps, the fault of the
inn, but of the Dordogne Valley. As soon as the day broke another enemy
entered the field. The flies then awoke, refreshed but hungry, and
determined to make the most of a good opportunity. The house-flies of the
North, when compared to those of the South, seem to have been well brought
up, and trained to live with human beings on terms of civility, if not of
friendship. The flies of Southern France must be descended from those that
were sent to worry Pharaoh, and when one has lived with them during the
months of August and September, one can quite believe that their ancestors
exasperated the Egyptian king to the point of promising anything so that
they might be taken from him.

It was not until I had walked away from Cazoulès that I realized where I
was. I had left the Quercy while wandering through those meadows as the sun
was sinking, and had entered Périgord--once famous for troubadours, and
now for truffles. Nobody can live there today by making verses, and the
representative of the jongleur, who once sang from castle to castle to the
accompaniment of the mediaeval fiddle, and who was so heartily welcomed at
all the baronial feasts and merrymakings, is now a wandering beggar, who
gathers crusts from the peasants by his rude minstrelsy, that changes
from the pious to the obscene, or from the obscene to the pious, as the
character and taste of the audience may decide. Many persons, however,
contrive to prosper by hunting for truffles in the exhilarating company
of pigs. It is not in this fertile valley that they find them, but on the
hillsides and stony table-lands, where the oak flourishes, but never grows
tall.

I passed almost at the foot of one of those darkly-wooded, precipitous
hills or cliffs which now approach the water's edge and now recede for
a mile or more in this part of the valley; widening or diminishing the
cultivated land accordingly as the rocky sides of the fissure resisted the
washing and mining of the ancient waters.

On the top of the cliff stood a high round tower--the keep of a small
feudal stronghold. It is called the Tour de Mareuil. Its position leaves
little doubt that in old times its owners, like so many other nobles whose
ruined castles crown the heights on both sides of the Dordogne, levied toll
upon the boats that came up or went down the river. Navigation must have
been always difficult on account of the strong current and the numerous
rapids and shallows; but the stream was a means of communication between
Bordeaux, Périgord, and the Haut-Quercy that was not to be despised,
and probably some care was taken to keep the channel open. According to
tradition, the English made frequent use of it. The tolls were an important
source of income to the nobles whose fortresses overlooked the river. A
sharp look-out was always kept from the towers for approaching boats.

I was on my way to the castle where Fénelon first saw the light, and in
order to reach it I had to cross the river. An old flat-bottomed boat,
built for conveying men, asses, and other animals from one side to the
other, lay off the bank, and two girls, who were in charge of a flock of
geese as well as of the ferry, were willing to take me across. While the
elder ferried, the younger examined me carefully at close quarters,
and apparently with much interest. Presently she asked me if I sold
writing-paper. After landing, I soon reached the village of St. Mondane.
Here I halted at an inn in the shadow of old walnut-trees. A few yards off,
under one of the great trees, was a high wooden crucifix, around which some
twenty or thirty geese were standing or lying down, all in a digestive or
contemplative mood, and through the openings between the boles and the
branches were seen the sunlit meadows sloping to the low willows and the
flashing river.

From St. Mondane a charming road or lane between very high banks that are
almost cliffs leads upward to the Château de la Motte-Fénelon, where, in
1651, was born François de Salignac de la Motte, known to the world as
Fénelon. Having reached the top of the hill, I soon came in view of a
picturesque mass of masonry with round towers capped with pointed roofs,
and with Gothic gables hanging lightly in the air over dormer windows; the
whole rising out of a dense grove of trees in the midst of a quiet sunny
landscape. When quite near I found that the grove was a sombre little wood
of ever-green oaks. The same wood, if not the actual oaks, may have been
there in Fénelon's time, for the ilex is one of the commonest trees in
Périgord on the hills about the Dordogne. As a boy, while climbing here,
he may have torn his hose into tatters, notwithstanding his precocious
knowledge of Greek. The future churchman may even have robbed a jay's nest
on this very spot. What quietude and what deep shadow! Not a leaf stirred;
only a fiery shaft of sunshine forced its way here and there through the
dark roof of unchanging green to the brown soil and the rampart's mossy
wall.

Although the present castle was raised when feudalism was nothing more than
a tradition and a sentiment, the outworks, consisting of two walls, the
inner one standing on ground considerably higher than the other, were of
exceptional strength, and as they were originally, so they remain at the
present day. I passed through the outer and then the inner gateway, and, in
my search for a human being, accident led me to the kitchen, which was very
large and entirely paved with pebbles. Here I found the cook, who, I had
been told, was the only person in authority at that time. Surrounded by
four great walls, on which hung utensils that were rarely handled except
for the periodical scouring, she looked as solemn as a cloistered nun. She
consented, however, to show me the interior of the castle, with a pathetic
readiness which said that the appearance of an occasional visitor kept her
from sinking into hopeless melancholy.

[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE FÉNELON.]

The most interesting room is the one in which Fénelon slept. Here is to be
seen his four-post bedstead, each of the posts a slender twisted column,
the silk hangings and fringe looking very worn and faded after being
exposed to the light of over two hundred years. Adjoining this room is the
_salle à manger_, the immense hearth, with seats at the ingle corners,
being covered by an elliptical arch. Most of the furniture here and
elsewhere is of massive oak, carved in the style of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The family into whose possession this castle has
passed, although distinct from that of Salignac de la Motte, which has now
no representative, reverently preserves all that associates the spot with
the memory of the illustrious author of 'Télémaque.'

From the top of one of the machicolated towers I saw a vast expanse of
country, singularly grand, but very solemn. From each side of the Dordogne
Valley rose and stretched away into the distance a seemingly endless
succession of hills, broken up by narrow gorges and glens. Over all, or
nearly all these hills lay a dark and scarcely varying mantle of forest.
This tract of country is well named Périgord Noir. It is one of the few
districts of France which still draw a sum from the Government yearly in
the form of prize money for the wolves that are killed there.

I returned to St. Mondane and continued my journey westward by the valley,
which brought me every day a little nearer to the sea--still so far away.
As I had no need to hurry, I sat awhile in the late afternoon upon a low
mossy wall, in the deep shade of a dripping, whispering rock, from which
hung delicate green tresses of the maiden's-hair fern. Above, the rock was
lost in a steep wilderness of trees and dense undergrowth, which met the
radiant sky somewhere where the eye could not follow. The bell-like tinkle
of water out of sight was the only sound until I heard a patter-patter of
webbed feet coming along the road. A flock of geese were moving homeward,
followed by a woman, whose feet were as bare as theirs, and whose eyes were
fixed upon her distaff and spindle. She would not have noticed me had not
the birds, true to their ancient reputation, given the alarm.

A little later I had left the shadow of the wooded rocks and was on the
margin of the river, which spread out broadly here between its shelving
banks of pebbly shingle. Then, to reach by the shortest way the village
where I intended to pass the night, I had to turn once more from the water
and cross some wooded hills. Here the jays mocked at the solemnity of the
evergreen oaks, and the dark forest echoed as with the laughter of fiends.

Groléjac was the curious name of the village I was seeking, and which I at
length found partly on a hill and partly in the valley of the Dordogne.
Chance taking me to a house that bore the sign of an inn, although it
was at the back of a farm-yard, I thought I might as well stop there as
anywhere else.

I am waiting for dinner-seldom a cheerful way of killing time. I do not,
however, expose myself to the risk of being irritated by the sight of my
willing but mechanical hostess scraping the white ashes from the embers,
parcelling out these into little heaps of fire upon the hearth, throwing
salt into the swinging pot with a hand the colour of which may be
distressing to the imagination, then tasting the soup: all this, and much
more, I leave her to accomplish in the gathering darkness of the kitchen,
and, sparing her the pain of lighting lamp or candle while there is still
a gleam of day, I wander out beyond the houses of the village to a quiet
woodside, there to watch the coming of night, which, whether it be
accompanied by wailing winds and storm-rack brimming with tears, or by that
grand serenity which grows in beauty as the light fails, is always like the
coming of death.

In the clear obscure, the brown and yellow rocks of bare limestone, at
the foot of which is the small inn, seem to be drawing nearer. All their
details become luminously distinct as the air grows darker, while the
caverns gape like the black mouths of some stealthily approaching,
monstrous, many-headed form. Two men are still working in a field of
tobacco, and they go on until lights flash forth from all the houses in the
valley. Then they slowly move off into the dusk with their ox and waggon.

All about the fields, where the night crickets are now chirruping and the
flying beetles are droning, there is a general movement of life towards the
village--of men carrying their mattocks on their shoulder or walking in
front of the ox that has done his long day's ploughing, of women and
children, geese, turkeys, and sheep.

[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.]

I wonder if the wooden cross beside the tobacco-field was put there to
mark the spot where somebody died, in accordance with an old and beautiful
custom still much practised in these rural districts of France; but the
thought of the laid table at the auberge changes the train of ideas, so,
following in the wake of the last goose, I, too, take refuge from the night
in the now animated village.

Sitting alone at a great table in a room large enough for a marriage feast,
ill-lighted by an oil-lamp, whose flame appears to be afflicted with St.
Vitus's dance--a room quite free from ornament, with furniture responding
exclusively to the purposes of resting, eating, and drinking, with
curtainless windows looking out upon the moonless night that is beginning
to sigh and moan at the approach of a storm--my dinner is not a very
cheerful one. Not that I am necessarily unhappy when I take a solitary
meal. In this matter all depends upon the mood, and the mood frequently
depends upon influences too subtle to be analyzed. The dinner was as good
as I had a right to expect it to be. A dish on which the hostess had
evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce
of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl--an unfortunate bird
that was just going to roost with an easy mind, when my coming upset the
arrangements of the inn and the poultry house. One fowl, at all events, had
had good reason to think it was an ill wind that blew me into the village.

It is a bad custom in rural France to kill fowls just when they are wanted
for the spit. Not only is it unpleasant to think that a creature is not
allowed time to cool before it begins to turn in front of the fire, but the
art of cooking is placed at a disadvantage by the practice. It is of no
use, however, trying to convince the people of their error, even when they
kill poultry for themselves and can choose their time: they will never do
things otherwise than in the way to which they have been accustomed. The
French are stubbornly conservative in everything except politics.

As I felt the need of talking to-night, I fetched the farming innkeeper
from his kitchen and persuaded him to drink some of his own cognac. This he
did without wincing, but he soon returned the compliment by bringing out of
a cupboard a bottle of clear greenish liquor, which he said was _eau de vie
de figues_. It was something new to me. I had tasted alcohol distilled from
a considerable variety of the earth's fruits, but never from figs before.
It retained a strong flavour of its origin, and might have been correctly
described as fire-water, for it was almost pure spirit.

I drew this man into conversation upon the peasant's life. All that he
said was only confirmation of the opinion I had already formed from other
testimony respecting the occupation of Adam when he had to struggle with
nature outside of the terrestrial paradise. Let a man own as much soil as
he can till with his hands, let him have an ox, too, to help him: he can
only live at the price of almost incessant labour and rigorous frugality.
This is the normal condition of the peasant-proprietor's existence.

'The peasant who works seriously,' said the farmer, 'does not sleep more
than four hours a night during the summer months. He goes to bed at ten,
and gets up at two. This would not hurt him if he were better fed, but he
eats little besides his soup, and drinks bad _piquette_.'

The man went back to his kitchen, and then to his bed close by; the flame
of the lamp became sick unto death, for it now wanted oil, and the house
grew so quiet that the squeaking of the rats and the pattering of their
feet could be heard from places that seemed far away. But for the rumbling
of the thunder, the only sound from the mysterious world outside would have
been the scream, now like the cry of a cat, now like a puppy's bark, of
an owl flying with muffled wings up and down the valley. Very different,
however, was this little owl's cry from the madman's shout of the great
eagle owl, which I had often heard in the rocky vale of the Alzon. I
threw open the window of my bedroom and looked out upon the night. It
was illumined, not by moon nor by stars, but by lightning flashes, which
followed one another with such rapidity that there was no darkness. The
quivering flame threw an awful brightness into the great woods upon the
tops of the hills.

A few hours later I was wandering through these woods, which were now
filled with another light that dried the dripping leaves.

Some miles of forest, then cultivated slopes, and at length the Dordogne
again. I was growing rather weary of searching for the mediaeval town of
Domme, when I recognised it by its old ramparts upon the summit of a high
bare hill, which looked very forbidding indeed where it changed to rock,
whose naked escarpments seemed to float as inaccessible as a cloud in the
blue air far above the valley. As I climbed the shadeless stony hill in the
mid-day sun-glare, I thought that if the soldiers of five or six centuries
ago used strong language as they toiled up here in their heavy armour, it
was excusable. I was wellnigh repenting of my resolution to reach Domme,
when, by a turn of the road, I found myself not many yards in front of a
fortified gateway of the fourteenth century, with a drumtower on each side
connected by a curtain with the ramparts. At first glance nothing seemed to
be wanting. The towers, however, were ruinous in the upper part, and the
battlements had disappeared.

With the help of a local pork-butcher, who kept the key, I was able to
enter the towers of this gateway. In each was a guard-room of considerable
size, and the men-at-arms while on duty there evidently found that in time
of peace the hours lagged, for some of them had carved upon the wall with
their knives or daggers crucifixes and representations of the Virgin and
Child, all closely imitated from church sculpture, painting or window
decoration of the Gothic period. Many names are cut in Gothic character on
the same walls; a further proof that the vanity of man has ever sprouted in
much the same way as now. The antiquary, because he has his own prejudices,
perceives an abyss between the act of the Cockney tourist of to-day who
carves his name upon an old tower or a menhir, and that of a man who five
centuries ago, for no better reason than the other, left upon a guard-room
wall a similar record of his passage. The man of the present is a vulgar
defacer of interesting monuments, whereas he of the past added to their
interest, and prepared a pleasant little surprise for the archaeologist who
might walk that way a few centuries later.

Enough of the fortifications of Domme remains to show what a very strong
place it was in the Middle Ages. Much of the wall where the town was not
naturally defended by the high naked rock, forming a frightful precipice
that no besiegers would have attempted to scale, has been well preserved.
Standing upon some bastion of this rampart, with the deep valley far below
him and the sky above him, the wanderer may allow his fancy almost to
convince him that he is really standing upon some 'castle in the air.'
Of the many rock-perched towns of the South, this is one of the most
remarkable; although, with the exception of the fortifications, little
remains of archaeological interest.

According to the chronicles of Jean Tarde, a canon of the neighbouring
town of Sarlat, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth century, Domme was first taken by the English in 1346, but
not without the help of '_quelques traistres_.' From this stronghold they
harassed the surrounding country, 'while the armies of one and the other
party were in Normandy and Picardy, and that battle of Cressi (Crecy) was
fought to the disadvantage of the party of France. Towards the end of the
year a truce was accorded, but it was in no way observed in Périgord by the
English.'

The correct date of the capture of Domme appears to have been 1347. The men
who treasonably delivered up the place were afterwards hanged by the French
party when they regained possession of the stronghold. In 1369 the English
again invested the rock, this time under the command of Robert Knolles.
(Tarde, who spelt all English names as he had heard them pronounced in the
country, writes Robert Canole.) The place was then so well defended, and
success appeared so far off to the partisans of Edward III., that the siege
was raised in despair at the end of a month; and the annalist goes on to
say that the English then marched into the Quercy and took Roc-Amadour.
Domme, however, fell into the English power again; but in 1415 it was once
more in the hands of the French. Then we read that the seneschal sent
the crier into the public place to proclaim '_de par le Roy_' that every
inhabitant of Domme was forbidden to leave the town with the intention of
living elsewhere, under the penalty of having any property that he might
possess in the town confiscated. The motive of this ordinance is explained
as follows: 'The wars had already rendered the country so desolate, that at
Domme, where the ordinary number of inhabitants who were heads of families
was a thousand, there were now no more than a hundred and twenty. The
people who had left had abandoned everything, and gone to Spain or
elsewhere.'

From the bare and windy hill I went down again into the quiet valley,
where, when a few more miles were left behind, I came to La Roque-Gageac,
a village at the foot of high-reaching rocks of fantastic outline, not far
from the Dordogne. Many houses long ago seem to have climbed far up the
warm limestone under the shelter of cornice and canopy, fashioned by the
sculptor Time, braving all the storms of centuries, and the danger of being
hurled in fragments towards the valley by some falling crag.

In an open space, forming a little square, a man and a woman were holding
down a pig, one at each end of a board, where the animal had been stretched
out against its inclination, while a third person had the knife ready for
action. And the spot chosen for the execution was immediately in front of
a very old and interesting shrine, with gabled roof, surmounted by a rude
Gothic crucifix. I caught a glimpse of the pale statue and the flowers
before it; but only a glimpse, for the struggles of the doomed pig, and the
momentary expectation of seeing the red stream gush forth, made me turn
away. One sees much that is anything but poetical in the romantic land of
the troubadours.

Near this strikingly-picturesque village is a cave such as one might read
of in a story of fanciful adventure. It is in a rock beside the Dordogne,
where, the river rests in a deep pool. The entrance is under water, and it
can only be reached with safety by a good diver when, the sun shining at a
certain hour, and the light striking in a particular way, the passage into
the cavern is lit up. A boy had made the dive successfully not long before
my visit to this place, but he found so much to interest him in the cave
while it was lighted a little by the borrowed gleam from the water, that he
lingered there until, the sun moving on his course, the angle of refraction
suddenly changed. The child had not the courage to take a plunge into the
dark gulf, where there was no beacon to guide him, and where he might have
struck against the rock. He therefore remained the rest of the day and all
night in the cavern. When the sun again lit up the passage leading from his
prison, the boy plunged, and a few seconds afterwards he was sitting on the
river-bank drying himself in the sun.

         *       *       *       *       *

I have entered upon the tenancy of a small house beside the Dordogne at
Beynac, a village a few miles below La Roque, partly crouching beneath a
very high rock, and partly built upon its terraces or ledges up to the
inner wall of a feudal castle that was much modified and refashioned in
later ages under the pressure of two forces--time, that ruins, and the
eternal striving of each generation to attain its own ideal of comfort and
elegance. But the grand old keep still rears its rectangular mass behind
and far above the later masonry, and when the evening sun shines upon it,
the stones, no longer gray, wear again their bright colour of six or seven
centuries ago. Presently, as the glow moves higher, the battlements and
machicolations take a golden clearness that marks every detail against the
blue depth of sky whose fire is fading and preparing to change into the
calm splendour that mingles with the dusk. Between the base of the rock and
the river is just space enough for a road, which is dazzlingly white now,
and well powdered with dust; but in winter it not infrequently disappears
under water.

[Illustration: BEYNAC.]

On the opposite shore, above a shelving beach of yellow pebbles and a
broken line of osiers, stretch meadows that are intensely green in spring,
and would be quickly so again if rain were to fall; but now they are very
brown, and the long-tailed sheep that wander over them, tinkling their
bells, like to keep near the Dordogne, where they can moisten their mouths
from time to time, and thus help themselves to imagine that they are eating
grass. Beyond the reach of meadow, almost at the foot of high wooded hills
which mark the boundary of the valley on that side, is a modern château;
but the architect found his model for it in the past, when castles were
more picturesque than comfortable. When the amber-tinted towers are seen
through the haze of a summer morning against the background of wooded hill,
one thinks that in just such a castle as this Tasso or Spenser would have
put an enchantress, whose wiles, combined with the indolent influence of
the valley, few pilgrim knights taking the eastward way to Roc-Amadour
would have been able to resist.

I found the valley so hot in the steady blaze of summer that, having
reached Beynac, I felt no inclination to go any farther. I thought I would
stop there until cooler weather came, and live meanwhile principally in the
Dordogne. Several families from different parts of Périgord had already
come here to spend a mildly exciting and not too costly river season; and
there they were, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, splashing in the
blue tepid water, with their clothes laid carefully in little heaps upon
the pebbly beach or upon the brown grass by the osiers. Despising the
shelter which in more fashionable watering-places is thought indispensable,
they lazily undressed and dressed in the open air with an appreciation of
sunshine and regardlessness of apparel that was almost lizard-like in its
freedom from conventional restraint.

I was charmed by the spectacle as I meditated upon the opposite bank. The
more I meditated the better I liked the idea of tarrying in a spot where
Arcadian simplicity of life was so unaffectedly cultivated. I resolved that
I, too, would take a house at Beynac if there was one to be had, and that I
would have what I figuratively termed my 'caravan' brought up here. At the
auberge--the only one in the place--I learnt that there was but a single
house still vacant, and that it was not a very beautiful one. A young
fisherman started off barefoot to fetch the owner from his village, four
miles away. The country had to be scoured for him, so that it was long
before he showed himself.

While waiting, I went out and amused the fish in the Dordogne by pointing
a borrowed rod at them, and tempting them with the fattest house-flies I
could find; but as soon as they saw the bait they all turned their tails
to it. My angling was a complete failure. And yet there were multitudes of
fish swimming on the surface; the water seemed alive with them. I concluded
that they were observing a solemn fast.

At length the fisherman returned, looking very hot and dusty, and of course
thirsty. He was accompanied by a hard-baked man of about sixty--a peasant,
apparently, but one who had put on his best clothes in view of an important
bargain that was to be made. He had cunning little eyes, and a mouth that
seemed to have acquired from many ancestors, and from the habits of a
lifetime, a concentrated expression of rustic chicanery which told me that
no business was to be done with him without a fight.

He led the way to his house, which was on the road just above the river. I
came to terms with him for a month, after the expected fight; but it
was not until he had gone away that I began to realize that I had not
distinguished myself by my wisdom in this transaction. Even the villagers,
who are not dainty in the matter of lodging, described the house as a
_baraque_. It gave me the same impression when I saw the inside of it; but
I closed my eyes to its drawbacks, because I had taken a fancy to Beynac,
and this was the only furnished dwelling to be obtained there. I thought
all the little drawbacks belonging to it, such as the rustic hearth to cook
upon, pots with holes in them, rusty frying-pans, deficiency of crockery,
and more than a sufficiency of fleas, would be overcome somehow, as they
had been elsewhere during my peregrinations in out-of-the-way districts,
where the traveller who nurses his dignity, and has a proper regard for the
comforts of life, never thinks of stopping. But things did not settle down
this time quite so quickly as I had expected.

After the arrival of the 'caravan' I took to fishing--always with the same
rod borrowed of the blacksmith-innkeeper--with a zeal that I had not known
since I was a boy. I found that things settled down better when I was out
of the way. But there was something that settled down only too rapidly.
This was the kitchen floor. There was a bare rock forming the back wall of
the house, and down it a runnel of water gently trickled. In the wet season
it lost all modesty, made a lake that rose above the boards, and tried to
find an exit by the back of the chimney. This explained why the fire needed
two days' coaxing and blowing before it would burn, notwithstanding that
our servant had been reared in the knowledge of such chimney-places and
their humours. It also explained why somebody's foot went through the floor
in a fresh place two or three times a day. At the end of the first week
one had to stride or jump over half a dozen chasms to get from one side to
another. About the same time four or five of the lower stairs gave way from
rottenness, so that it needed no little agility to reach the bedrooms.
The old man had to come and mend his house, and because he had a guilty
conscience he brought a basket of figs with him; but, instead of owning
that the wood was rotten, he insinuated that it had been maliciously danced
upon.

But the heat was the worst tribulation. The house, with all its windows
without _persiennes_--a detail I had quite overlooked--faced the south, so
that during the hottest hours of the day the sun was full upon it, and the
heat was over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. It was the most
scorching August that had been known even in the South of France for years.
The recollection of those burning hours in that shanty will be ever green.

Nevertheless, the time spent at Beynac left some pleasant memories. The
days were fiery, and, when the south wind blew, almost suffocating; but
when the sun went down into the west there usually came a beneficent
change. During the few minutes that the golden circle lay seemingly upon
the edge of the world, a boat crossing the river appeared to glide over
unfathomable depths of splendour; then gradually over the fields of maize
and tobacco, and where the yellow stubble of the corn long since reaped had
been left, there spread the deep-toned lustre of evening. As the brown dusk
filled the valley, and under the sombre walnut-trees the wayside cross
became like the spectre of one, shrill voices of old women were heard
calling the geese and turkeys that still lingered in the fields.

The geese were often left to come home by themselves, after spending the
day along the banks of the river. They belonged to various people, but,
being eminently sociable birds, they started off together in flocks of
fifty or more. Although there must have been causes of jealousy and rivalry
among them, they never seemed to quarrel. They knew when it was time to go
home by the failing light, and in the dusk I often met them marching along
the road like a regiment of soldiers. As they reached houses to which some
of them belonged, detachments would fall out and the others would go
on. Every bird would return to the place which had for it the sweet
associations of its gosling innocence.

It is now night--the calm summer night without a moon, but spangled with
stars. Among those which the Dordogne reflects and holds as if they were
its own, is the planet Mars, which gleams readily in the midst of a swarm
of lesser yellow lights. The river here is broad and still; there is not
ripple enough to make a beam tremble. If the stars in the water flash, it
is because the rays are flashed from above. Just below the village there
are rapids, and a faint murmur comes up from them, but it is borne under by
the shrilling of the crickets that have climbed into the osiers and poplars
all along by the water's edge. Now and again there is a great splash in the
middle of the stream, which makes one think that a fish large enough to
swallow some unsuspecting Jonah of Périgord must be there in a playful
mood; but this is merely the effect upon the imagination of a sudden noise
breaking in upon the monotonous sounds of the night which are so much like
silence.

Lured by the freshness of the air and the serene glory of the starlit sky,
I wander off down the valley to a spot where the river, all in turmoil,
washes and wears away the flanks of rocks rising sheer from its bed like a
wall. Looking back, I can see very distinctly the dark mass of the castle
and the church by its side high above me against the sky, and every minute
or so the lightning-flash from a storm far away in the west brightens the
sombre masonry and the rock beneath.

Centuries ago in this light, the rock, the fortress, and its church must
have looked much the same as now. An Englishman, who had campaigned with
the Black Prince, standing where I am--the road was probably a mule track
then---would have seen against the sky the picture that sets me dreaming of
the past. But the quietude of the summer night might have been disturbed
by sounds that are not heard now. It is unlikely that so large a castle,
containing so many men-at-arms and officials as must have been deemed
necessary to its safety and dignity, would at this early hour have been
wrapped in silence more complete than that of the valley. There would
surely have been some people breathing the cool air on the platform of the
keep besides the watchman, some soldiers pacing the _chemin de ronde_,
although peaceful days may have returned to the unlucky land of Guyenne;
and the clamour of strong voices would have come down to the river. But now
the castle is quiet as its rock which was beaten by the waves of a vanished
sea, and those who still live in it are like the keepers of a cemetery.
That _donjon_, whose dark form seems to stand amidst the stars, only serves
to mark one of the many tombs of feudalism which rise above the smiling but
capricious Dordogne like menhirs--monuments of older illusions--along the
ocean-scalloped coast of Brittany.

Animated as Beynac became late in the afternoon, when the little society,
composed of extraneous particles, met in costumes that were airy,
fantastic, elementary, anything but ceremonious, to exchange civilities in
the water, life on the whole was so mildly exciting that when one day a
small caravan, drawn by a donkey and preceded by a young man half hidden by
a great straw hat and wildly beating a drum, entered the place, there was a
great and tumultuous movement of the population. Everybody wanted to know
what the donkey and the young man proposed to do at Beynac. On the caravan
had been painted '_Théâtre de la Gaîté_,' which threw light upon the object
of the intruders. The donkey drew up in front of the inn, and the excited
crowd waited with ill-contained impatience to see the company of players
descend from the battered travelling trunk on wheels. At length a pretty
little girl of about twelve, with large and lustrous brown eyes, came out
of the box. She was the company. She was in the charge of her mother,
who superintended the artistic arrangements, as well as the culinary and
financial, but did not venture upon the stage. The young man looked after
the donkey and the drum, and filled up his time by catching fish for the
company and her mother. The stable of the auberge was hired for evening use
as a _salle de spectacle_, and at one end a very diminutive stage was set
up by means of rough planks and old pieces of carpet.

Everybody who could afford to spend a penny or twopence upon vanity and
worldliness went to see the performance. It was quite a fashionable
gathering. The best society were by common consent allowed to take the best
seats--very hard benches--the less ambitious crowded behind, with minds
fully made up not to allow themselves to be carried by enthusiasm beyond
the expenditure of two sous when the plate went round; while favoured
children, who were not expected to pay anything, because they had nothing,
climbed into the mangers, and packed themselves as close together as aphids
on a rose-stalk. The stable had been carefully cleansed, but the horsey
odour that belonged to it could not be swept out. This, with the bad
ventilation, and a temperature almost equal to the hatching of eggs without
hens, was a drawback; but the audience was in no humour to be critical. A
small handbell was rung, two pieces of old carpet were drawn back, and the
little girl made her bow to the audience in a costume as near to that of
Mignon as she and her mother could make it. She sang:

  'Connais-tu le pays òu fleurit l'oranger?'

and other airs from the opera in a small, bird-like voice, unaccompanied
by any music. For three hours the child sang, acted, and danced in the
suffocating stable, lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw
Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the
'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the
donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of
Beynac with his diabolical _rataplan_ hours before each performance.

One morning, soon after sunrise, the donkey, which had begun to think that
this time it had really been pensioned off, was put into the shafts, and
the caravan gradually disappeared upon the white road. Then the village
became quite dull again; but it was roused from its torpor by the annual
fête. This was the chief event of the year. The peasants came in from the
scattered villages and from the isolated farms lying in the midst of the
chestnut woods. All the women coifed themselves with their best
kerchiefs, the heads of most of the young girls being resplendent with
brilliant-coloured silk. This coiffure resembles that of the Bordelaise,
but it is not so small, nor is it folded so coquettishly. There was much
love-making--sometimes exquisitely comic by its rustic naïveté--and
there was a good deal of dancing to the maddening music of two screaming
hurdy-gurdies.

At Beynac I made the acquaintance of a French-man who, after angling for
riches--a sport at which he lost much bait and caught nothing--turned all
his attention to the fish in the Dordogne. He resolved that he would run
no more risk by casting his bread upon the wider waters, but that he would
make the most of what remained to him by withdrawing to some riverside
nook, where his love of the unconventional, and his taste for a free life
in the open air, could expand, emancipated from all servitude to society,
including the necessity of keeping up what is called 'an appearance.'

What, to my mind, helps greatly to make France such a pleasant country to
live in is the large amount of social liberty that one enjoys there. Except
in great towns, and in those places which are thronged at certain seasons
by cosmopolitan crowds, people can live as simply as they please, and they
can wear anything, however cheap or even shabby, without risk of being
diminished on this account in the opinion of others. They are liked or
disliked, respected or despised, as their conduct and dealings become known
and judged.

The Otter--this nickname had been given to my new acquaintance by those who
were jealous of his fishing skill--when he was out in his boat never wore
anything finer than corduroy trousers, a short blue jacket of the cotton
material from which blouses are made, a straw-hat, and _espadrilles_,
into which he put his bare feet. No heavier clothing is consistent with
happiness in such a climate as that of the Dordogne Valley during the
summer months. When, by gliding over the transparent water, which revealed
the pebbles at the bottom almost in the deepest places, and the shoals of
fish as they passed up and down the stream, the temptation to plunge became
irresistible, the blue jacket and the other garments were thrown off in a
few seconds, and the fish were startled by the descent of a black head and
beard, followed by the rest of that human form which Carlyle has compared
to a forked radish.

Sometimes the Otter made nocturnal expeditions far up the channels of the
little streams that fall into the Dordogne. Then he was after crayfish.
The ordinary method of catching these crustaceae, namely, with a piece of
netting covering a small wire hoop, and baited with meat, had little charm
for him. There was another much more in keeping with his passion for
movement. He would walk up the beds of the streams quite heedless of the
water, holding in one hand a lantern, and having the other free to make a
grab at every crayfish he might see scuttling out of harm's way over the
stones or sand. As he went slowly up the narrow valleys, the gleam of
his lantern through the osiers, the tall loose-strife and hemp-agrimony
startled the owls, the hedgehogs and the weasles; but not the sound of
water wailing in the darkness, nor the cries of disturbed animals, nor
the weird blackness of overhanging trees that hid the stars, troubled his
nerves. On he went, through water-meadows, at the bottom of gloomy little
gorges, and by the fringe of the forest, until he had wandered miles away
from Beynac. We very nearly met one night, both being out with the same
object in view. I, however, had very little of his zeal for the sport, and
was less interested by the crayfish than by the fantastic indistinctness
of trees and shrubs and flowers, which, in the light of the stars and the
lantern, seemed to belong to a world with which I was but vaguely familiar,
although I had travelled all over it in dreams.

Sometimes I used to go out fishing with the Otter on the Dordogne. When
the casting-net was left at home (it was of little use when the water was
clear) chub-fishing with the flying-line was generally the chosen form
of sport. Here I may say that my companion, who could turn his hand
to anything, made his own rods from hazel-sticks. Where the water was
sufficiently deep, the boat was rowed and steered with a single-bladed
paddle, but where it was shallow much better progress could be made by
polling. These are the two methods invariably used by the fishermen and
ferrymen of the Dordogne, and it is astonishing with what success they can
get a boat up the rapids without having recourse to the towing-line.

When we went chub-fishing, we took the boat a mile or so up-stream, and
then let it drift down with the current near a bank that was fringed with
willows and acacias. Although we needed only six inches of water, the depth
was sometimes miscalculated, and we went aground on a bank of pebbles. Then
the Otter, whose bare feet were always ready for such emergencies, stepped
out into the sparkling current, and hauled or pushed the boat over the
obstacle. What with rapids and banks of pebbles, the excitement of boating
on the Dordogne above Lalinde never flags. It looked very easy to throw a
line with a worm on it towards the shore, and then draw it back, but the
chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally
preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in
the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When
the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time he
threw the line.

There are few trout in this part of the Dordogne, but in tributary streams,
like the charming little Céou, they are plentiful. Carp are abundant, but
they are very difficult to take with the line, and even with the net,
except in time of flood, when they get washed out of their holes, and the
water being no longer clear, their very sharp eyes are of little use
to them. Then a lucky throw will sometimes bring out two or three carp
weighing several pounds each. The fish commonly caught are mullet, perch,
barbel, gudgeon, bream, and chub. As a food-supplying river, the Dordogne
is one of the most valuable in France, and, owing to the rapid current and
the purity of the water, the fish is of excellent quality.

The fixed belief of all the riverside people in this and other valleys is
that fish should be cooked alive. You enter an inn and ask for a _friture_
of gudgeon. In a few minutes you see the victims, which have been pulled
out of a tank with a small net on the end of a stick, jumping on the
kitchen table, and they are still jumping when they go into the boiling
grease. I am not among those who have grown callous to such sights, common
as they are in France. To see fish scraped, opened, and cooked while still
alive gives me disgust for it when it afterwards appears on the table. I
can imagine somebody saying: 'Why look at what goes on in the kitchen?'
That somebody does not quite understand what rural France is. In a country
inn we invariably pass through the kitchen to reach the room set apart for
guests, and it has often fallen to my lot to seek rest, shelter, and food
in a poor auberge, where the kitchen is also the common room of the family
and outsiders.

A Beynac character that left on my memory a lasting impression was old
Suzette. Suzette might have been any age between fifty and seventy. She had
no beauty, but she must have had a little vanity left, for when I showed
her a photograph I had taken of her, she put her hard old hands together,
swayed her head from shoulder to shoulder, and actually wept. She could not
speak much French, but she said as well as she could that she did not know
that she had grown so ugly. I have noticed, however, that my photographs
have a tendency to draw tears or angry expressions from most of those on
whom I operate, which I can only account for by the reason that these
people have not the pleasure of paying for their portraits. What is
done for nothing is seldom appreciated. Suzette, not wishing to hurt my
feelings, soon wiped out her eyes with her largest knuckle, and, having
composed her countenance, thanked me for having photographed her. She
had had a rough life, but as she had known little else but hardship and
privation, she was contented with what Providence considered enough for
her. This was now a two-roomed cottage to live in, and for food a bunch of
grapes, a peach or a pear to eat with her bread in the fruit season, a few
walnuts to go with it in autumn or winter, chestnuts to boil or roast, and
a piece of fat bacon hanging to a beam, from which she cut only just enough
at a time to disguise the water which, when thickened with bread, a handful
of haricots, and some scraps of other vegetables, made her daily soup. She
was a widow now, but although whenever she spoke of her dead husband her
head began to wag and the tears to start from her eyes, she had less care
and worry and pain as a lonely woman than when she was bearing children
and working harder than any pack-mule to bring them up. Her husband was a
fisherman of the Dordogne, and she sold his fish in the Sarlat market, some
eight miles distant from where they lived by the river. In order to be
early in the market, she had to start at about two in the morning, and the
road, which was uphill all the way, ran between woods where the wolves,
descending from the vaster forests of Black Périgord, often howled in
winter. She told me it frequently happened when she reached the market that
her arms and hands were so benumbed with the cold that she could not take
the basket of fish from her head. As a widow, she had lived for a while
with a married son, but the young woman soon turned the old one out. Poor
Suzette told the story without bitterness; she recognised the law of nature
in this expulsion of the mother when she was of no further use to her
children, and accepted thankfully the ten francs a month which her son
allowed her. She managed to live by fetching and carrying for anyone who
would give her two or three sous for an hour's trudging. She used to take
my letters to post at the nearest railway-station, and no one who merely
noted how nimbly her bare feet moved along the hot, dusty road would have
supposed that she had left her youth so far behind her. Battered and
pinched and harassed as she had been by destiny, she still believed in the
working out of eternal justice, and one day before sunrise she started off
on a pilgrimage to a distant sanctuary, and did not return until after many
hours. With all this she was gay, and could tell a lively story with plenty
of Southern salt. She was a good bit of human nature, worth studying.

Sarlat, where old Suzette went to sell her husband's fish, was a very
important stronghold of Black Périgord in the Middle Ages, and the chief
place in that Sarladais which the English kings of Norman and Angévin
descent found such a tough bone to pick. The way to it from Beynac leads up
steep valleys and gorges, covered with dense forest. Here wolves are to be
seen occasionally in winter, but the wolf country begins a little to the
north of Sarlat, and stretches towards the Limousin. The town appears to be
composed of one long street, and to be dismally uninteresting. There is,
however, an old Sarlat that lies a little off the main artery, and which a
lazy visitor who does not like the trouble of asking questions might easily
miss. There are few scenes more original and picturesque in France than
that presented by the ruinous old church, half open to the weather, and
the ancient houses that form a framework round it. Under the lofty Gothic
vaulting are wooden shops and shanties, and, looking up, you see the smoke
from bakers' ovens hanging about the ribs of the great arches, which it has
blackened.

Of the old houses, one of the most remarkable is that which was the
residence of the philosophical writer, Etienne de la Boëtie, the friend
of Montaigne, It is an interesting example of the French Renaissance, the
exterior being richly ornamented with carvings.

A very rough, bad time had the men of Sarlat during the long years that
they were fighting intermittently for their lives and property with the
lawless bands of so-called English, who had turned so many rocks into
fastnesses, and who issued from their fortified caverns, that they made
almost impregnable, to prey upon the unfortunate people who strove to live
by husbandry. These hardened ruffians and freebooters had no respect for
treaties, and inasmuch as peace never lasted long, and the English kings
of that epoch always liked to feel that they were ready for anything that
might happen in France, the companies of brigand soldiers who preferred to
serve under the leopards rather than under the golden lilies were left to
do pretty much what they pleased in the wilder parts of Guyenne.

After the treaty that followed the battle of Poitiers they continued their
depredations, heedless of the orders communicated to them by the English
commissioners. They carried their raids up to the walls of Sarlat, even at
the time of vintage, although this season was much respected in the Middle
Ages by violent men, from a motive that was perhaps not disinterested. They
seized the bullocks that were harnessed to the waggons, and bore them off
to their strongholds. It is but fair to add, however, that the Sarladais
did not formally submit to English authority until 1361--five years after
the battle of Poitiers. Then Chandos went to Sarlat and received the
submission of the burghers. Soon afterwards Edward III confirmed all the
privileges they had been enjoying under the kings of France. But they did
not remain quiet long. Persuaded by Talleyrand and other nobles, they
rebelled in 1369, and the town became again French. Speaking of this event,
Tarde observes:

'And behold how and when the salamander [Footnote: This reptile was borne
in the arms of Sarlat.] was again placed under the three fleurs-de-lys,
having carried the leopards in chief only eight years two months and a
half.'

The people of Sarlat often boast that their town never submitted to the
English. In this matter, however, they are in error.

September came, and I was still at Beynac, although I had found another
house. The fruit season was then at its height. Peaches were sold at three
sous the dozen, a good melon cost about the same sum, and figs were to be
had almost for nothing. On these terms quite a mountain of fruit could be
placed upon the table for half a franc. There was often no necessity to run
into this extravagance, for the people at Beynac are good-natured, and they
would frequently send a basket of their earliest grapes or other fruit.
Although the present might have been made by a woman with bare feet, her
feelings would have been hurt had money been offered in return.

One day rather late in the month, having grown ashamed of inactivity, I
carried my knapsack down to the river and put it into the Otter's smallest
boat, which he called the _périssoire_, although it was not really a canoe.
He was the chief builder of it, and as a contrivance for bringing home
to man the solemn truth that life hangs to a thread or floats upon a
plank--perhaps the worst state of the two--it certainly did him infinite
credit. It was a flatbottomed outrigged deal boat, very long, and so narrow
that to look over one's shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme delicacy,
especially where the rapids caused the water to be in wild commotion. I was
told that it would go down stream like an arrow, and so it did. There was
no need to row hard, for the current took the fragile skiff along with it
so fast that the trees on the banks sped by as if they were running
races, and every few minutes brought a change of landscape. It was very
delightful; only one sensation of movement could have been better--that of
flying.

The water was as blue as the sky above, and over the valley, the wooded
hills, and naked rocks lay the sunshine of early autumn, tender in its
strength, mingling a balm with its burning. I seemed to be floating swiftly
but gently down some lovely but treacherous river of enchanted land. And
where is the river that lends itself better to this illusion than
the Dordogne--ever charming, changing, and luring like a capricious,
fascinating, and rather wicked woman? Now it flows without a sound by
the forest, where the imagination places the fairy people and the sylvan
deities; now it roars in the shadow of the castle-crowned and savage rock,
over which the solitary hawk circles and repeats its melancholy cry; now it
seems to sleep like a blue lake in the midst of a broad, fair valley, where
in the sunny fields the flocks feed drowsily.

The depth of the water was as variable as the strength of the current.
Sometimes I saw the stony bed seven or ten feet below, and then quite
suddenly the boat would get into rushing water that sparkled with crystal
clearness over a bank of pebbles, and I expected momentarily to hear a
grating noise and to feel myself aground; but the little boat went over the
shallows like a leaf. I passed a bank large enough to be called an island.
The water had not covered it for months, and it was all thickly overgrown
with persicaria, which the late summer had stained a carmine red, so that
the island was all aflame. The swallows that dipped their wings in the
water, the kingfishers that flew along the banks or perched on the willow
stumps, and the graceful wagtails, were for some miles my only river
companions--excepting, of course, the fish, with which a treacherous
current or a sunken rock might have placed me at any moment on terms of
still closer intimacy.

But time flew like the boat, and I soon came in sight of a charming little
village whose houses with peaked roofs seemed to have been piled one
upon another. Here upon stones in the water I recognised the human form
supported by two bare legs, and in the posture as of a person about to take
a dive, which is not perhaps very graceful, but is one that certainly lends
character to the riverside scenery of France. Two or three women were
rinsing their linen.

On nearing St. Cyprien the current became swifter and the turmoil of the
rapids so great that I prepared my mind here to being swamped by the waves.
The question whether I would abandon or try to rescue my knapsack after the
wreck was distressing. The risk being over, it was with a sigh of relief
that I beached the boat, now half full of water, at the nearest spot to the
small town. Having moored it and given the sculls in charge of a man whose
house was close by, I was soon walking in the warm glow of the September
afternoon by cottage gardens where the last flowers of summer were
blooming.

The small burg of less than three thousand inhabitants which bears the name
of the African saint was probably, like many others, much more important in
the Middle Ages than it is now. In accordance with the building spirit
of the past, so strongly pronounced throughout Aquitaine, and obviously
inspired by a defensive motive, the houses are closely packed together on a
steep hillside. A few ancient dwellings, notably one with a long exterior
gallery, show themselves very picturesquely here and there. The town grew
up at the foot of an abbey, of which the church still existing exhibits a
massive tower that might easily be mistaken at a little distance for an
early feudal keep. The lower part of this tower is Romanesque. The interior
of the church is in the very simple pointed style of the twelfth century,
but the interest has suffered much from restoration. What is chiefly
remarkable here is the carved oak of the reredoses and pulpit.

The English in 1422 took the town of St. Cyprien and besieged the abbey,
which was a veritable citadel where the inhabitants in the last resort
found shelter. A French force coming, however, to the relief of the people,
the English, who were probably not very numerous, deemed it prudent to
retire.

There being still an hour or more of daylight, I continued the ascent of
the hill above the houses and the solemn old church to find a certain
Château de Pages, which I knew to be somewhere in the locality. A woman
working her distaff and spindle with that meditative air which the rustic
spinners so often have, her bare feet slowly and noiselessly moving over
the rough stones, pointed out to me a little lane that wound up the
deserted hill between briars bedecked with scarlet hips and bits of ancient
wall to which ferns and moss and ivy clung, tinged by the waning golden
light. I passed through vineyards from which the grapes had been gathered,
then rose by broom and blackthorn to the level land.

I looked in vain for the castle. I might have searched for it until
darkness came, but for the help of a boy who was taking home a goat. At
length I found it lying in a hollow, a sufficient sign that it was never
a stronghold. In feudal times it was probably a small castellated manor
belonging perhaps to a knight who could not afford to build himself a
_donjon_ on some eminence and to fortify it with walls; but centuries later
what remained of the original structure was patched up and considerably
enlarged. Now, as I saw it in the dusk, it seemed a very ghost-haunted
place. The building had not fallen into ruin; it was still roofed, and
might easily have been made habitable; but there was no glass in the
windows; all the rooms were silent with that silence so deep and sad of the
long-deserted house which is not sufficiently wrecked by time and decay
to have lost the pathos of human associations. The breath of the dying
twilight stirred the ivy leaves upon the wall of the detached chapel where
never a person had prayed for many a year, and the goblin bats came out
from the shadowy places to flutter against the pale sky. Then I felt that
I had lingered long enough on this desolate spot, and the thought of the
awaking hearths brightening the little town with the blaze of wood made me
hasten through the heather and gorse that had grown up on the grave of many
a vine.

The next morning saw me afloat again. As I was getting away from the shore
a man called out to me: 'Your boat is worth nothing! If you try to pass the
third bridge you will go to the bottom!'

He spoke very seriously, and I wished to take further counsel of him; but
having once got into the current, it carried me off at such a rate that
while I was thinking of putting a question I was taken out of speaking
distance. I shot through one of the arches of the first bridge, and soon
found myself in water that was a little rough for my poor skiff. Here were
the rapids again. I had been warned against these before I left the inn.
There was no turning back now, and if the commotion of water had been ever
so great I should have had to take my chance in it. The Otter's advice
when I came to rapids was to pull as hard as I could in the middle of the
current. I followed it, and my shallow boat, which had just been described
as worthless, darted into the midst of the turmoil, and went through it
all as swift as a swallow on the wing. The river, however, had risen
considerably during the night, and the strength of the current having much
increased in consequence, my belief in the _périssoire's_ worthiness was
not sufficient to make me run the risk of being swamped at the third
bridge. I therefore landed at the next one, which was close to the village
of Síorac. It seemed that I had only just started from St. Cyprien, and yet
I had travelled about six miles. With the help of a willing man the boat
was carried to the railway-station, which was not far off, and its journey
home having been paid, I ceased for awhile to be a waterfarer, and became
again a wayfarer.

Although there was not much to interest me at Siorac, I stayed there to
lunch in a small inn, where an old woman grilled me a chop over the embers,
and then set before me a pile of grapes, another of pears, and a third of
fresh walnuts. The fruit was to me the best part of the meal, for the long
hot summer had caused me to look upon meat very much as a necessary evil in
the routine of life. While I was seated at the table, the old woman, who
now dozed over her distaff in the chimneycorner, would start up every five
minutes or so, as if from the beginning of a nightmare, and rush at the
flies, which were ravenously busy upon the grapes and pears that I had set
aside for them. She hated them with a hatred so fierce and bitter that I
thought it rather unbecoming at her time of life.

'_On ne pent rien manger,_' she said, '_sans que ces diables y touchent._'

This was quite true; but it was not the flies' fault that their parents
were prolific, and that they had been hatched in a climate eminently
conducive to their vigour and happiness. Their numbers and their voracity
showed that they, too, were compelled by the struggle for life to be active
and enterprising. Unlike some beings of a higher order, they did not take
this trouble sadly; but, then, they were Southern flies.

Having driven them from the table, the aged woman nodded her head with
vindictive satisfaction, and murmured, '_C'est égal; elles vont bientôt
crever_'--unmindful of the fact that she, too, had reached the season of
life when the frost comes suddenly and catches people unawares.

I returned to the river and crossed the bridge. On one side of it was a
high statue of the Madonna and Child, with these words on the pedestal:
'_Protectrice du pont, priez pour nous._.' The inscription further stated
that the statue was raised in remembrance of the flood of 1866. That was
in the time of the Empire; nowadays the Government despises all heavenly
assistance in the department of roads and bridges, and religious statues
are no longer erected in such places. Just before reaching a village
called Coux, I was confronted by a very large army of geese, and while the
foremost row advanced to the attack with outstretched necks and bills laid
near the ground, the others cheered them on. For a minute or so matters
looked very serious; then goose and gander courage failed completely, until
the army worked round to my rear, when the screams of defiance arose again.

Poor wretches! their high spirits were not going to last long. They would
soon have to undergo the cramming process, which a goose detests, for,
unlike a pig, it will never of its own will eat more than it needs. In a
few weeks the livers of most of them would be made into those excellent
truffled _pâtés de foie gras_, which it is the pride and profit of Périgord
to send far and wide.

A grand old elm, such as one does not often see in France, stood in front
of the village church--a Transition building with a Romanesque portal.
Beyond this place the land became marshy, and considerable tracts of it had
been planted with Jerusalem artichokes, each of which had now its yellow
head that tells its relationship to the sunflower. These artichokes are
much grown by damp woodsides, and on other land of little value, in the
valleys of Périgord. They are rarely used as food for man, for the French,
notwithstanding the wide range of their gastronomy, including as it does
squirrels and tomtits, and even snakes in certain localities, as well as
various herbs and vegetables seldom or never eaten in England, have not
been able to acquire a liking for the tubers of the artichoke. The plant
is cultivated for feeding cattle, the whole of it doing good service in a
region where there is but little grass. The multitude of golden flowers
floating, as it were, on sombre green waves light up the autumnal landscape
with a new flame when the skies turn gray.

A solitary man whom I found working a loom in a cottage by the side of the
river kept a ferryboat, and with his help I crossed again to the other
bank. Wandering on with a somewhat vague purpose, I soon found myself--now
under a gray sky--on a marshy flat, which a backwater of the Dordogne had
almost made an island. Here there were many low shrubs of dwarf elder
covered with berries; pools, and wide ditches, where the dark water
scarcely moved, all fringed with tall reeds; while here and there was the
gleam of a white flower upon the erect stem of a marsh-mallow. But what
gave to this spot a strange and almost weird character was the number of
great hoary willows, thirty or forty feet high, with gnarled and twisted
boles, scattered over the dark green grass. It was a melancholy grove of
fantastic dream-haunted willows, such as belongs to the South and the
Virgilian muse:

'Umbrarum hic locus est, somni noctisque soporae.'

And the sad solitude, in which there was not a sound of moving leaf or
singing bird, seemed to be peopled by the ghosts of men who were waiting
and weeping out their hundred years on the Stygian shore.

Hoary willows, dark alders, and then the road. This led me to Le Buisson--a
place possessed of the blue devils, and which exists merely out of
compliment to the railway-junction here. Having made arrangements for
returning to the inn, I wandered out again to look at the river in the gray
evening, and at the bridge where it was predicted that I should go to
the bottom if I remained in the little boat. I crossed fields from which
tobacco and maize had lately been carried, and reached the bridge of evil
prophecy. The river certainly seemed to be doing its best to sweep away the
piers, and when it escaped from the arches it raised its voice to a roar;
but it seemed to me that on one side the _périssoire_ would have gone
through gaily without being swamped. The cry of troubled water in the dusk
fascinated me. I lingered, and yet felt the strong impulse to hurry back to
the society of men, out of the sound of the angry river, whose slaty waves
flashed out strange gleams. What is it in the gloom and horror of nature
that so draws us and yet warns us to flee? The day was ending stormily. The
poplars wailed, and bent under the lash of the rising wind; dark masses of
cloud stood still in the sky, whilst others, torn and scattered below them,
rushed hither and thither madly. Every few minutes the faint gleam of
lightning, still far off, brought to the black woods along the hills a
momentary return of radiance, as though it were the fitful flashing of the
day's dying lamp.

The roaring and wailing of the turbid flood now seemed to be repeating in
cruel mockery the despairing cries of all the drowning people who were ever
the prey of the water-fiends that draw downward in whirlpools to depths
where twilight passes into darkness, and take the form of the long waving
weeds that look so innocent, but whose grasp is deadly, or guide the
current that utters never a sound as it seizes its victim and bears him
into an unfathomed gulf under the pitiless rock. A voice within me cried
'Home!' but home had I none anywhere of the staple sort: mine was like a
home on wheels.

As I returned to the inn across the fields, I saw some scattered peasant
figures moving slowly the same way under the wild sky; men with the ox
that was weary like themselves, women with bundles of forage on their
heads--melancholy forms or phantoms in the dusky air, at one with nature
in unconscious sympathy. Then across the dim and dreary plain, where the
narrow path was lost to sight after the first few yards, a railway lamp
flashed like the large red eye of some unimaginable monster of the
primordial marsh.

In the morning I was on the road to Cadouin. The air was keen and a little
frosty, for the hour was early. Men were mowing the last crop of grass,
which was powdered with rime. After the meadows came the woods, for the
road went south, and was therefore carried over the hills which rise above
the valley of the Dordogne. The woods were mainly of chestnut, and, under
the action of the storm, followed by the first frost, many a nut lay
shining on the road within its gaping prickly shell. After two or three
miles of ascent the road sloped downward, and it was not long before I
entered a very neat and trim little town, which, however, was altogether
village-like. This was Cadouin, and in the centre stood its venerable
Romanesque church. I entered the building, which was silent and very dim;
not a soul was there but myself. Presently there was a moan in the tower,
which seemed so far away: the clock was striking one of the quarters. Now
the dim light brightened suddenly, for the sun had risen high enough to
dart its rays through a window, and to flash upon a column the brilliant
colours of the glass. With the exception of the apse, which is purely
Romanesque, the interior of this church is Gothic of the Transition; but
most of the capitals of the pier-columns have a plain Romanesque outline.
There is no clerestory, the light being admitted from small round-headed
windows in the aisle walls. Much of the building dates from the foundation
of the abbey of Cadouin, in the early part of the twelfth century; but the
existing cloisters, which are what is most remarkable here, date from
the fifteenth century, and owe much of their interest to the partial
transformation of their style which they afterwards underwent when the
spirit of the Renaissance set in. The Gothic tracery of the arches that
face the quadrangle unites the strength of stone with the delicacy of
pencil drawing. In the late Gothic and Renaissance part, the ceilings
are richly and floridly groined, angelic and other figures forming the
termination of the low-reaching bosses, the groins converging in fan-like
order towards elaborately-carved canopies against the wall. At one end
of this wing is a doorway, the jambs and lintels of which are heavily
over-worked with carvings very typical of the exuberant fancy of the early
French Renaissance.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF CADOUIN.]

For centuries Cadouin was a famous place of pilgrimage, in consequence
of the claim laid by the abbey to the possession of the Holy Shroud. The
following is the history of the celebrated relic, according to Jean Tarde:

'In the year 1100 Hugh, surnamed the Great, brother of the King of France,
and Bishop of Le Puy, in Auvergne, having gone on a voyage beyond the seas
with Godefrey de Bouillon, found means, after the taking of Jerusalem, to
recover this holy relic, and, dying in Palestine, he left it in charge of a
priest, his chaplain. The priest falling ill on board ship, and perceiving
that his end was drawing near, gave the shroud into the hands of a clerk, a
native of Périgord. He, after the death of his master, took a small barrel,
in the middle of which he placed a partition. In one half he put the sacred
sheet, and his drink in the other. In this manner he carried the relic back
to his native land, and placed it in a church near Cadouin, of which he had
charge. Fearing that someone might steal his treasure, he left it in the
barrel, which he put away in a chest near the altar, showing it only to a
few of the monks of Cadouin. But one day, while he was absent, fire broke
out and gained the whole village. All that was in the church was consumed,
excepting the chest that contained the barrel. The monks of Cadouin,
informed of the fire, hastened to the spot, and, having broken open the
chest, took away the barrel, and carried it to their own church. The clerk,
on his return, asked for what had been taken from him; but the monks said
that, inasmuch as they had risked their lives in saving it from the flames,
it belonged to them. The difference was arranged in this wise: the clerk
was received as a religious, and the keeping of the relic was entrusted to
him during his lifetime. He himself thought it safer there than in a rural
church.'

In 1392, when the country was distracted by the dynastic wars between the
crowns of France and England, the Holy Shroud was taken for safety to
Toulouse. Subsequently, the people of Périgord wished to have it replaced
at Cadouin, and the Abbot and Chapter of St. Etienne at Toulouse resisting,
much litigation ensued. In 1455 some monks of Cadouin took it away by
stealth, and brought it back to their abbey. Tarde mentions, among other
circumstances which tended to increase the importance of the abbey of
Cadouin, '_les bienfaietz d'une reyne d'Angleterre_'.

Had it not been for other plans, I should have continued my journey
southward from Cadouin as far as the Château de Biron, one of the most
instructive relics of the past in Périgord, and have taken on my way
Modières, one of the English _bastides_ which Edward I. farmed for ten
years; but I made my way back to the Dordogne, with the intention of
ascending the valley of its tributary the Vézère. I did not, however,
return to Buisson, but took the road to Ales, which lies a little lower
down the stream.

While I was recrossing the hills the sun warmed the world again, and led
back the trembling summer which had been scared by the early morning's
frost. The half-benumbed butterflies opened and shut their wings many times
upon the bramble leaves before they could bring themselv

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