After passing the Nine Brothers—a name given to nine rocks of rounded outline standing by the water like towers of a fortress built by demi-gods—we had our worst fight with the rapids, and were nearly beaten. It was the last push of the pole from the man behind me, when he had no more breath in his body, that saved us from being whirled round and carried back. Before one gets used to it, the sensation of struggling up a river where it descends a rocky channel at a rather steep gradient is a little bewildering. The flash of the water dazzles, and its rapid movement makes one giddy. There is no excitement, however, so exhilarating as that which comes of a hard battle with one of the forces of nature, especially when nature does not get the best of it. This tug-of-war over, we were going along smoothly upon rather deep water, when I heard a splash behind me, and on looking round saw my companion in a position that did not afford him much opportunity for gesticulation. He was up to his middle in the water, but hitched on to the side of the boat with his heels and hands. He had given a vigorous push with his pole upon a stone that rolled, and he rolled too. Now, the boat being very light and narrow, an effort on his part to return to his former position would have filled it with water; so he remained still while I, bringing my weight to bear on the other side, managed to haul him up by the arms. After this experience, he was restless and apparently uncomfortable, and we had not gone much farther before he expressed a wish to land on the edge of a field. Here he took off the garments which he now felt were superfluous, vigorously wrung the water out of them, and spread them in the sun to dry. I left him there fighting with the flies, whose curiosity and enterprise were naturally excited by such rare good luck, and went to dream awhile in the shadow of the rock, on the very edge of which are the ramparts of the ruined castle of La Madeleine. This is the most picturesque bit of the valley of the Vézère; but to feel all the romance of it, and all the poetry of a perfect union of rocks and ruin, trees and water, one must glide upon the river, that here is deep and calm, and is full of that mystery of infinitely-intermingled shadow and reflection which is the hope and the despair of the landscape-painter. Now, in this month of May, the shrubs that clung to the furrowed face of the white rock were freshly green, and the low plaint of the nightingale, and the jocund cry of the more distant cuckoo, broke the sameness of the great chorus of grasshoppers in the sunny meadows.
When I returned to my companion, I found that he was clothed again, but not in a contented frame of mind. He accompanied me as far as Tursac, and then started off home on foot. He had had enough of the river. There was still sufficient daylight for me to continue the voyage to Le Moustier, but, apart from the fact that I could not get up the rapids alone, I was quite willing to pass the night at Tursac.
Having chained the boat to a willow, I walked through the meadows towards a group of houses, in the midst of which stood a church, easily distinguished by its walls and tower. When I had arranged matters for the night, I passed through the doorway of this little church, under whose vault the same human story that begins with the christening, receives a new impetus from marriage, and is brought to an end by the funeral, had been repeated by so many sons after their fathers. The air was heavy with the fragrance of roses from the Lady Chapel, where a little lamp gleamed on the ground beside the altar. As the sun went down, the roses and leaves began to brighten with the shine of the lamp, like a garden corner in the early moonlight.
At the inn I met one of those commercial travellers who work about in the rural districts of France, driving from village to village with their samples, fiercely competing for the favours of the rustic shopkeeper, doing their utmost to get before one another, and be the first bee that sucks the flower, taking advantage of one another's errors and accidents, but always good friends and excellent table companions when they meet. I learnt that my new acquaintance was 'in the drapery.' We were comparing notes of our experience in the rough country of the Corrèze, when he, as he rolled up another cigarette, said:
'I had learnt to put up with a good deal in the Corrèze, but one day I had a surprise which was too much for me. I had dined at one of those auberges that you have been speaking of, and then asked for some coffee. It was an old man who made it, and he strained it through—guess what he strained it through!'
I guessed it was something not very appropriate, but was too discreet to give it a name.
'Eh bien! It was the heel of an old woollen stocking!'
'And did you drink the coffee?'
'No. I said that I had changed my mind.'
We did not take any coffee that evening. We had something less likely to set the fancy exploring the secrets of the kitchen, where, through the open doorway, we could see our old peasant hostess seated on her little bench in the ingle and nodding her head over the dying embers of her hearth. Her husband was induced by the traveller to bring up from the cherished corner of his cellar a bottle of the old wine of Tursac, made from the patriarchal vines before the pestilential insect drew the life out of them. The hillsides above the Vézère are growing green again with vineyards, and again the juice of the grape is beginning to flow abundantly; but years must pass before it will be worthy of being put into the same cellar with the few bottles of the old wine which have been treasured up here and there by the grower, but which he thinks it a sacrilege to drink on occasions less solemn than marriages or christenings in the family.
'You can often coax the old wine from them,' said my knowing companion, 'if you go the right way to work.'
'And what is the secret?'
'Flattery: there is nothing like it. Flatter the peasant and you will be almost sure to move him. Say, 'Ah, what a time that was when you had the old wine in your cellars!' He will say, 'Nest-ce pas, monsieur?' and brighten up at the thought of it. Then you will continue: 'Yes, indeed, that was a wine worth drinking. There was nothing like it to be found within fifty kilomètres. What a bouquet! What a fine goút du terroir!' He will not be able to bear much more of this if he has any of the wine. Unless you are pretty sure that he has some, it is not worth while talking about it. Expect him to disappear, and to come back presently with a dirty-looking bottle, which he will handle as tenderly as if it were a new baby.'
Those whose travelling in France is carried out according to the directions given in guide-books—the writers of which nurse the reader's respectability with the fondest care—will of course conclude that the best hotels in the wine districts are those in which the best wine of the country is to be had. This is an error. The wine in the larger hotels is almost invariably the 'wine of commerce'; that is to say, a mixture of different sorts more or less 'doctored' with sulphate of lime, to overcome a natural aversion to travelling. The hotel-keeper, in order to keep on good terms with the representatives of the wine-merchants—all mixers—who stop at his house, distributes his custom among them. Those who set value on a pure vin du pays with a specific flavour belonging to the soil, should look for it in the little out-of-the-way auberge lying amongst the vineyards. There it is probable that some of the old stock is still left, and if the vigneron-innkeeper says it is the old wine, the traveller may confidently believe him. I have never known in such cases any attempt at deception.
The next morning I reached Le Moustier. Here the valley is broad, but the rocks, which are like the footstools of the hills, shut in the landscape all around. These naked perpendicular masses of limestone, yellow like ochre or as white as chalk, and reflecting the brilliance of the sun, must have afforded shelter to quite a dense population in the days when man made his weapons and implements from flints, and is supposed to have lived contemporaneously with the reindeer. Notwithstanding all the digging and searching that has gone on of late years on this spot, the soil in the neighbourhood of the once inhabited caverns and shelters is still full of the traces of prehistoric man.
Shortly before my coming, a savant—everybody is called a savant here who goes about with his nose towards the ground—gave a man two francs to be allowed to dig for a few hours in a corner of his garden. The man was willing enough to have his ground cleared of stones on these terms. The savant therefore went to work, and when he left in the evening he took with him half a sackful of flints and bones.
In a side valley close to Le Moustier is a line of high vertical or overleaning rocks. A ledge accessible from the ground runs along the face, and nearly in the centre, and at the back of it, are numerous hollows in the calcareous stone, some natural, others partly scooped out with the aid of metal implements, whose marks can still be seen. Each of these shelters was inhabited. Holes and recesses have been cut in the walls to serve for various domestic purposes, and on the ground are traces of fireplaces, reservoirs for water, etc. The original inhabitants of these hollows may have been savages no more advanced in the arts than those who worked flints, but it is certain that the latest occupiers were much more civilized. Rows of holes roughly cut in the limestone show where the ends of beams once rested, and the use of these timbers was evidently to support a roof that covered much of the ledge. It is quite certain that people lived here in the Middle Ages, and they might do so now but for the difficulty of bringing up water. The security which the position afforded could hardly have been lost sight of in the days when the inhabitants of Guyenne were in constant dread of being attacked. One must therefore be guarded against wild talk about prehistoric man in connection with these rock dwellings, which in many cases were used as fortresses during the three hundred years' struggle between the English and French in Aquitaine.
My waterfaring back to Les Eyzies was far easier than the voyage up-stream. Nevertheless, there was some excitement in it, for when the rapids were reached, the current snatched the boat, as it were, from me, but carried me with it, by little reefs each marked out as an islet as white as snow, by the floating flowers of the water ranunculus; but when its strength failed, it left me to drift where, in the dark shadow of rock and tree, the water rested from its race. Presently the rapids were seen again dancing in the sun, and the boat, gliding on to just where the smooth surface curved and the current took its leap without a ripple, darted forward like a startled water-bird. Once a back current whirled my fragile boat completely round. Then I remembered the good advice of the friendly Otter at Beynac with reference to going down these streams, where the water has to be watched with some attention if one does not wish to get capsized: 'Tenez-vous toujours dans le plus fort du courant.'
Again in calm water, I recognised, beyond the still grass and the scattered flame of the poppies, the high walls of the fortress-like church of Tayac, with the light of the sinking sun upon them. Then a little lower down at the ford, which was my stopping-place, a pair of bullocks were crossing the river with a waggon-load of hay; so that the picturesque, the idyllic, and the sentiment of peace were all blended so perfectly as to make me feel that the pen was powerless, and that the painter's brush alone could save the scene from passing away for ever.
Tayac and Les Eyzies form one very straggling commune, and the church where the slain men of Sarlat lie serves for the entire population. This edifice of the eleventh and twelfth centuries deserves a brief description. There is much grandeur in its vast, deeply-recessed Romanesque portal, with marble columns in the jambs and numerous archivolts. Then its high, narrow windows, and the low, square towers, pierced with loopholes, give to it that air of the fortress which immediately impresses the beholder. Without doubt it was built like so many other churches of the same stormy and uncertain period, to be used as a place of refuge in case of danger. The entrance to the principal tower is artfully concealed at the back of a chapel at the east end, and can only be reached with a ladder. The very narrow passage makes two or more right angles before it leads to the foot of the spiral staircase—a disposition of great value in defence.
Having heard of a cavern in the garden of the presbytery which, in the memory of living people, was the refuge of a murderer whom the gendarmes were afraid to follow underground, because it was believed that he would knock them on the head one after the other while they were wriggling through the passage, and then quietly walk out by a back way unknown to anyone but himself, I felt a strong desire to explore this cave of evil repute. The idea was all the more enticing because I was assured that nobody had entered it but the murderer. I called upon the curé, and asked him how he felt at the prospect of a little trip underground in his own garden. He did not seem to feel very eager for the adventure; but when I proposed to go alone, he was too polite to let me depart with his best wishes. He decided to accompany me. When he had put on his oldest soutane, we started with a packet of candles and a ball of string.
Priests' gardens are often very interesting, and the one through which we now passed pleased me greatly. It was a long strip, in two or three terraces, upon the rocky hillside. Many fruit-trees, but chiefly almond, cherry, and peach, were scattered over it. There was also a straggling vine-trellis, from which there now spread in the June air that sweet fragrance of the freshly-opened flower-buds of which the poet-king Solomon sung. In the highest part was the cavern. We had to crawl in upon our hands and knees, and in some places to lie out almost flat. As my friend the curé insisted upon going first, I could not help thinking that the back view of him, as he wormed his way along the low gallery, was not exactly sacerdotal. Sometimes we passed over smooth sand—evidently left by a stream that once issued here; at other times over small stones, which were bad for the knees. We kept a keen look-out for the remains of prehistoric men and beasts, but only found the shells of eggs which a fox had probably stolen from the curé's fowl-house. There were also rabbits' bones, whose presence there was to be explained in the same way. My companion, however, having once entered his cave, was resolved upon returning another day and digging conscientiously in the sand, which appeared to be very deep in places. He may since have unearthed some pre-historic treasures there. The cavern was interesting as showing the honeycombing effects of water on limestone rock, but it did not lead very far into the hill. The belief that the murderer escaped by another opening than the one by which he entered was founded on fiction.
After the cave exploration, the curé was so good as to accompany me to a mysterious ruin in the neighbourhood, which he believed to be of English origin, because it was always spoken of by the people of the locality as William's Chapel. The English pronunciation of the name William had been preserved in the patois. After this, I did not doubt that his supposition was correct. Some Englishman was connected with the history of the building; but was it really a chapel? The hill that we had to climb to it was very high, and, although covered with herbage, almost precipitous. The building was not on the summit, but on a ledge of rock some distance down the cliff. The ruin consisted of only a few fragments of wall, built very strongly of well-shaped stones laid together without mortar. Holes cut in the rock showed where the ends of beams had rested. The position was rather one for a fortress than for a chapel; but no doubt Englishmen of an eccentrically religious turn appeared as early as the thirteenth or fourteenth century, if not earlier. If the people of the valley climbed up to William's Chapel to say their prayers, they must have been very pious indeed.
The strength of the current in the Vézère had turned me from my first plan, which was to ascend the river as far as Montignac, and take the road thence to Hautefort, the birthplace of Bertrand de Born, who was put into hell by Dante for having encouraged Henry Plantagenet's sons to rebel against their father. The sombre Florentine treated the troubadour baron with excessive harshness, for it is recorded of Bertrand that his repentance for the sins of his restless and agitated life was so sincere that he ended his days as a monk in the monastery of Cîteaux. [Footnote: 'Mobile, agité, comme son aventureuse existence qui commenca au donjon d'Hautefort et s'éteint dans le silence du cloitre de Cîteaux.—'Discours sur les célébrités du Périgord,' par L. Sauveroche.]
Bertrand de Born was an evil counsellor to Henry Court-Mantel, but a singularly attractive figure of the twelfth century was this troubadour noble, whose life in the world was divided between the soothing charm of the 'gai sçavoir' and the excitement of war, and who was equally at his ease whether he was holding the lance or the pen. He had the tenderest friendship for the young Prince, and mourned his death in the best elegy that appeared at the dawn of modern literature.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE HAUTEFORT.]
Of the ancient fortress of Bertrand de Born, Viscount of Hautefort, a few vestiges are left, which may be easily distinguished from the later masonry of the castle with which they are combined.
[Illustration: A HOUSE AT PÉRIGUEUX.]
IN THE VALLEY OF THE ISLE.
It was in the full flame of noon on a hot June day that we arrived at the headquarters which I had chosen for my second summer in Périgord. It was a little château, of which I was to occupy a small wing, and also a low building that was quite detached—all very plain and rustic, as, indeed, most of the really old châteaux that are still inhabited are. At this burning hour the place seemed as quiet as the ideal retreat of a literary hermit could be. In the large old-fashioned garden, where magnolias and firs mingled with all kinds of fruit-trees, and lettuce-beds were fringed with balsams, golden apricots hung upon the branches that were breaking with their weight, and seemed to say: 'There is nobody here to eat us. We are quite tired of waiting to be gathered.'
Suddenly there was a great noise of barking, and three or four dogs that had smelt or heard strangers rushed through the archway that led to the court, which was so much like a farm-yard that no one would know the difference from the description.
'Mees! Mees! Black! Black!' cried a voice from within.
There was nothing in the sound of these words to cause astonishment, for most French dogs that move in good society have English names. If you were to call out at any respectable gathering of these animals, whether in the North or the South, 'Fox,' 'Stop,' 'Black,' 'Mees' (not Miss), the chances are that they would all try to reply at once.
After the dogs came bare-footed domestics of both sexes, who stared at us wonderingly, while saluting politely, and evidently not wishing to show their curiosity. Then, when we entered the court, we were met by a great many fowls, ducks, and turkeys of various ages. Not a few had apparently just jumped out of their shells. Lastly came the master and mistress of the house, advancing in the slow and stately style of the times when the drawbridge would have had to be lowered, but moving in the midst of the poultry. They were gracious and hospitable, and very soon we settled down, altogether well pleased with our new quarters.
Here we were surrounded by trees just as Robinson Crusoe was by his grove when it had grown tall and thick. Now, the traveller in Southern France who lingers as I am wont to linger in my wanderings, will probably have cause to pine, as I have pined, for trees about his house to shelter him from the fury of the summer sun. There are few houses that are not hovels or ruins to be found, except where the land is fertile, and wherever it repays labour the owner loathes a tree that produces nothing but its wood. Thus we get those wide, burning plains, where so few trees are to be seen save poplars along the watercourses and walnuts bordering the roads. Even these become rare, as in journeying farther south the last low buttresses of the rocky highlands are left behind.
Here, close to this retreat that I had chosen on the banks of the Isle, some twenty miles below Périgueux, rose, on the opposite side of the river, high cliffs of white limestone with wooded brows. The château was on a small island formed by a curve of the river under the cliffs, and a short canal drawn across the loop to facilitate the navigation of the Isle.
A very lazy kind of navigation it was. Two or three barges would pass in a day on their way to Périgueux or Bordeaux. They were of considerable size, and were capable of some sea-faring, but their masts were now laid flat, and they were towed along at the rate of two or three yards a minute by a lean and melancholy horse that had ceased to care for cursing, and was almost indifferent to beating. As the navigation had been nearly killed by the railway, the canal was allowed to fill itself with water-plants, which were interesting to me, but exceedingly hurtful to the temper of the bargees. They vented their fury upon the engineer, who was absent, and the horse that was present—unfortunately for the poor brute, for somehow he seemed to be looked upon as a representative of the negligent functionary.
'You appear to be having a bad time,' said I one day to a great dark bargee who was streaming from every pore, as much from bad temper as from the exertion of cracking his whip, and whose haggard horse looked as if he would soon break off in the middle from the strain of trying to move the barge, which was stuck in the weeds.
'A bad time of it! I believe you. Sacr-r-r-re! If I could only send that pig of an engineer to Nouméa I should be a happy man!'
If wishes could have wafted him, he would have gone farther than New
Caledonia long before.
One day, far on in the summer, this engineer actually appeared upon the canal in his steam yacht, and there was great excitement in the country. The peasants left their work in the fields and ran to the banks to gaze at him. He did not go very far before he got stuck in the weeds himself. Then he reversed his engine, made back as fast as he could, and was seen no more.
But I am going on too fast. I have not yet described the château. The picture of it is clearly engraved upon the memory, and a very pretty picture I still think it; more so now, perhaps, than when the reality was before me, for such is the way of the mind. I can see the extinguisher roofs of the small towers through openings in the foliage rising from a sunny space enclosed by trees. I can see the garden, with its old dove-cot like a low round tower, its scattered aviaries, its rambling vines that climb the laden fruit-trees, its firs, magnolias, great laurels, its glowing tomatoes and melons, its lettuces and capsicums and scattered flowers, all mingled with that carelessness which is art unconscious of its own grace; its daedalian paths, its statues so quaintly placed in unsuspected corners, its—well, the picture is finished, for now begins the effort to recall its details. The eye's memory is a judicious painter that never overcrowds the canvas. I can see on that side of the building, which looks upon a much wilder garden, where peach and plum trees stride over grassy ground adjoining the filbert-grove that dwindles away into the wooded warren, a broad line of tall nettles in the shade against the wall. Hard by, on the line—so it was said—of the filled-up moat, is a row of ancient quinces, with long crooked arms, green, gray, or black with moss and lichen, stretching down to the tall grass, where in the dewy hours of early darkness the glow-worms gleam.
This little château was never a stronghold to inspire an enemy with much respect; it was rather a castellated manor-house, dating from the times when even the residences of the small nobility were fortified. Marred as it had been by alterations made in the present century without any respect for the past, it was still very interesting. In one of the towers, said to be of the fourteenth, and certainly not later than the fifteenth, century, was a chapel on the ground-floor with Gothic vaulting, and which still served its original purpose. A contemporaneous tower flanking the entrance contained the old spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms. I often lingered upon it in astonishment at the mathematical science shown in its design, and the mechanical perfection of its workmanship. What seemed to be a slender column round which the spiral vaulting turned was not really one, for each of the stone steps was so cut as to include a section of the column as a part of its own block. The contrivances by which this staircase en colimaçon was made to hold together, and to hold so well as to have lasted several hundred years, with a promise to continue in the same way another century or two, were deftly hidden from the eye of those unversed in such technicalities. In the hollow at the foot of the stairs was what I took to be a very old and rough christening font, such as I had seen in village churches. But it was not that; it was called a pierre à l'huile. Its purpose a long time ago was to receive the oil taken from the first pressing of walnuts after the annual gathering. Then the priests came and fetched what they wanted of it to serve for the rites of the Church during the year.
All this summer we lived out of doors, except at night. Even Rosalie, our servant, did most of her cooking in the open air with the aid of a portable charcoal stove, which she placed in the shade of some noble plane-trees that were planted by accident on the day of Prince Louis Napoléon's coup d'état. They were already tall and strong when his Will-o'-the-wisp, which he had mistaken for a star, sank in the bloody swamp of Sedan. When the rising wind announced a storm, the swaying branches shed their dry bark, which was piled upon the hearth indoors, where a cheerful blaze shot up if by chance the rain fell and the air grew chilly. But very seldom did even a shower come to moisten the parched land and cool the heated air. Thus the plane-trees came to look upon the stove beneath them as a fixture.
These open-air kitchens are by no means uncommon in Southern France during the hot months. I have a pleasant recollection of dining one scented evening in May with my friend the Otter at Beynac in his garden terraced upon rocks above the Dordogne. The table was under a spreading chestnut-tree in full bloom. Not many yards away the swarthy Clodine had her kitchen beneath an acacia. Strange as it may seem, the hissing of her frying-pan as she dropped into it the shining fish did not mingle unpoetically with the murmur of lagging bees overhead and the soothing plaint of the river running over its shallows below. Nor, when the purple flush faded on the water's face, and little points of fire began to show between branches laden with the snow of flowers, did the fragrant steam that arose from Clodine's coffee-pot make a bad marriage with the amorous breath of all the seen and unseen blossoms. What is there better in life than hours such as those?
But now I am by the Isle. The plane-trees are on the edge of a little dell, in the centre of which is a smooth space encircled by many trees, forming a dense grove. A rough table has been set up here with the aid of planks and tressels. It is our dining-table, and the centre of the grove is our salle à manger. Wrens and blackcaps hop about the branches of the filbert-bushes, and when the métayer's lean cat comes sneaking along, followed by a hungry kitten that is only too willing to take lessons in craft and slaughter, the little birds follow them about from branch to branch, scolding the marauders at a safe distance, and giving the alarm to all the other feathered people in the grove. Here the nightingales warble day and night until they get their young, when, finding that hunting for worms and grubs to put into other beaks than their own is very prosaic business, they only sing when they have time to fly to some topmost twig and forget that they are married.
When the sun is near setting, a sound very different from the warble of a bird is heard close by. It is some leader of a frog orchestra in the sedges of the canal giving the first note. It is like a quirk of gluttony just rousing from the torpor of satisfaction. The note is almost immediately taken up by other frogs, and the croaking travels along the canal-banks as fire would if there were a gale to help it. But the music only lasts a few minutes, for the hour is yet too early for the great performance. The frogs are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of moon or stars as noiselessly as I can along the fringe of sedges and flags and bullrushes, hoping to watch them at their gambols. But the frog is a very sly reptile, and you must stay up very late indeed in order to be a match for him in craft, unless you dazzle his eyes with the light of a torch or lantern. Then he is a fool in the presence of that which is out of the order of his surroundings, and his amazement or curiosity paralyzes his muscles. It is in this way that those who want the jolly frog just to eat his hind-legs à la poulette or otherwise catch him with the hand, unless they have the patience and the cruelty to fish for him with a hook baited with a bit of red flannel.
Now I will speak of my own hermitage, my ideal nook for writing, reading, and doing nothing, which, after much wandering and vain searching, I found at length here. Yes, I found it at last; and I much fear that I shall never find another like it. It lay at the back of the château, beyond the shaded nettles and the ancient quinces. My ordinary way to it was through a piece of waste, which, with unintentional sarcasm, was called the 'Little Park.' It was overgrown by burdocks, to which it had been abandoned for years—who could tell how many?—and was rambled over by turkeys, guinea-hens, and other poultry. Then I passed through a little gate, crossed another bit of waste that was neither lawn nor field, skirted a patch of buckwheat, and entered a small wood or shrubbery, where plum and filbert trees grew with oaks and beeches, until I came to water. This was the vivier of the château—fishpond, long drawn out like a canal, and fed by a spring, but which had been left to itself until it was nearly shaded over by alders and other trees. At the end farthest from all habitations was a little structure built of stones, open on one side, and with small orifices in the three remaining walls. These could be closed, and yet they were not windows. Their purpose was much more like that of loopholes in a mediaeval barbican. They were to enable the man inside to watch the movements of migratory birds, and to send his shot into the thick of them when, unsuspecting danger, they chanced to come within range. The little building was an affût. Near to it was a sort of fixed cage, intended for decoy birds, but it had long been without tenants when I took possession of this refuge from all the human noises of the world. The other sounds did not worry me, although they often drew me from my work. The splash of a fish would take me to the water's edge, where I would watch the small pikes lying like straight roots that jut from the banks under water. The cooing of the little brown turtles in the trees overhead, the movements of a pair of kingfishers that would often settle close by upon an old stump, the magpies and jays, and especially the oriels, would make my thoughts wander amongst the leaves while the ink was drying in the pen. The oriels tantalized me, because I could always hear them in the crests of the trees, until, about the middle of August, they went away on their long journey to the South, but could very rarely catch sight of their gold and black plumage. Although they will draw near to gardens to steal fruit when they have eaten the wild cherries, they are among the most suspicious and wary of birds.
The oriel is a strange singer. It generally begins by screeching harshly; then follow three or four flute-like notes, which seem to indicate that the bird could be a musician if it would only persevere. But it will not take the trouble. It goes on repeating its 'Lor-e-oh!' just as its tree-top companions, the cicadas, keep up their monotonous creaking.
From my cabin I could see all the lights, colours, and shadows of the day change and pass, but the sweetest music of the summer hours was heard when the soft sunshine of evening fell in patches on the darkening water, and on the green grass on each side of the brown path strewn with last year's trodden leaves.
Sometimes a hedgehog would creep across the narrow path, shaded with nut-bushes, oaks, and alders towards the water, and at night—I was often there at night—the glow-worms gleamed all about upon the ground, and there were mysterious whisperings whose cause I could not trace. Yes, it was an ideal literary hermitage, but as perfection is not to be found anywhere on land or water, even this spot had its drawback. There were too many mosquitoes. My friend the owner of the château often said to me, 'La moustigue de l'Isle n'est pas mêchante;' but on this point I could not agree with him. I bore upon me visible signs of its wickedness; but in course of time I and the 'mostique de I'Isle' lived quite harmoniously together in the little shanty under the trees.
Where the weedy and shady avenue leading to the château made an angle with the highroad, there was often a caravan or tilt-cart stationed for days together. Sometimes it was the travelling house of a tinker and his family; in which case the man was generally to be seen working outside upon his pots and pans in the shade of a tree. Sometimes it belonged to a party of basket and rustic-chair makers, who gathered the reeds and hazel-sticks that they needed as they passed through the country. Some were gipsies, and some were not; but all were baked by the sun almost to the colour of Moors. Having a taste for nomadic life myself, I used to stay and talk to these people from time to time; but none of them interested me so much as the wandering cobbler and his dog, whose acquaintance I had made higher up the country amongst the rocks.
I can still see them both in the shade of the old gateway; the man seated in the entrance of the little tower, where, at the top of the spiral staircase, is the village prison; the dog lying with his nose upon his paws just within the line drawn by the gateway's shadow across the dazzling road. They both came one evening and took up their position here with as much assurance as if it had been theirs by right of inheritance. They soon set to work, the man mending boots and shoes, and the dog making himself disagreeable to all the male members of the canine population for a couple of miles or so around. Until the cobbler's companion settled down comfortably, he had several exhilarating fights with local dogs that looked upon him as an intruder and an impostor. He really was both. He had no great courage, but he had grown impudent and daring from the day that he had first worn a collar armed with spikes. When his enemies had taken a few bites at this, they came to the conclusion that there was something very wrong in his anatomy. After the first encounter they were not only willing to leave him alone, but were exceedingly anxious to 'cut' him when they met him unexpectedly. They approached the gateway as little as possible; but when they were obliged to pass it, they drew their tails under them, showed the whites of their eyes, and having crept very stealthily to within ten yards or so of the archway where the interloper appeared to be dozing, they made a valiant rush towards the opening. Notwithstanding these precautions, the cobbler's dog, which had been watching them all the while out of the corner of one eye, was often too quick for them.
Man and dog were ludicrously alike both in appearance and character. The beast was one of the ugliest of mongrels, and the man might well have been the final expression of the admixture of all races, whose types had been taken by destiny from the lowest grades of society. They were both grizzly, thick-set, and surly. They both seemed to have reached the decline of life with the same unconquerable loathing of water, except as a means of quenching thirst. The dog, although some remote bull-dog ancestor had bequeathed him short hair, had bristles all over his face just like his master. They were a couple of cynics, but they believed in one another, and loved one another with an affection that was quite edifying. The dog wished for nothing better than to lie hour after hour near his master, hoping always, however, for an occasional fight to keep him in health and spirits. The cobbler did nothing to make himself liked by the inhabitants, but he could afford to work more cheaply than others who were 'established,' and who had a wife and children to keep; consequently the pile of old boots and shoes that looked quite unmendable rose in front of him, and for three or four weeks he remained in the same place stitching and tapping. Having locked up his things at night in the tower—he had obtained permission to make this use of it—he disappeared with his dog, and what became of them until next day was a mystery.
I admired the blunt independence and practical philosophy of this homeless man. Although he was disagreeable to others, he was on good terms with himself, and seemed quite satisfied with his lot. If, when he had named his price for mending a pair of shoes, anybody tried to beat him down, he would say, 'Take them and mend them yourself!' His incivility obtained for him a reputation for honesty, and his prices were soon accepted without a murmur. He talked to nobody unless he was obliged to do so, and by his moroseness he came to be respected. I managed to draw him into conversation once by feigning to be much impressed by the comeliness and amiable nature of his dog, and he then told me that he had been wandering ever since he was a boy in Languedoc and Guyenne, stopping in a village as long as there was work to do and then moving on to another. Wherever people wore boots or shoes—if it were only on Sundays—there was always something to be done by working cheaply.
The silent cobbler might have kept his open-air shop longer than he did in the shadow of the mediaeval gateway, if his dog had not quarrelled with the sole representative of police authority for having put on his gala uniform, which included a cocked-hat and a sword. For this want of respect the animal was imprisoned in the room of the tower, to the great joy of all the other dogs, but to the intense grief of his master, who found it impossible to turn a deaf ear to the plaintive moans that reached him from above. And thus it came to pass that they went away together rather suddenly in search of a gateway somewhere else, the dog earnestly praying, after his fashion, that it might not be one with a tower.
One June morning, soon after sunrise, twenty-seven mowers came to the château to cut the grass in the great meadow lying between the river under the cliffs and my moat—I called it mine because it was almost made over to me for the time being, together with the bit of wood and the cabin. Each mower brought with him his scythe, an implement of husbandry which in France is in no danger of being classed with agricultural curiosities of the past. Here the reaping and the mowing machine make very little progress in the competition between manual and mechanical labour. In the southern provinces, few owners of the soil have ever seen such contrivances. People who cling to the poetic associations of the scythe and the sickle—and who does not that has been awakened by their music in his childhood?—must not cry out against the laws which have caused the land of France to be divided up into such a multitude of small properties, for it is just this that preserves the old simplicity of agriculture as effectually as if some idyllic poet with a fierce hatred of all machines were the autocratic ruler of the country. Whether the nation gains or loses by such a state of things is a question for political economists to wrangle over; but that the artist, the seeker of the picturesque, the romantic roamer, and the sentimental lover of old custom gain by it can hardly be denied.
Some of the mowers were men of sixty, others were youths of seventeen or eighteen: all were contented at the prospect of earning nothing, but of being treated with high good cheer. Now, victuals and drink are a great deal in this life, but not everything, and these men would not have come on such terms had they not been moved by a neighbourly spirit. They were themselves all landowners, or sons of landowners. Had wages been given, two francs for the day would have been considered high pay, and the food would have been very rough. No turkeys would have had their throats cut; no coffee and rum would have been served round. In short, this haymaking day was treated as an annual festival.
A goodly sight was the long line of mowers as their scythes swept round and the flowery swathes fell on the broad mead in the tender sunshine, while the edges of the belt of trees were still softened by the morning mist. After the mowers, all the workers employed on the home-farm, men, women, and boys, entered the field to turn the swathes, which in a few hours were dried by the burning sun. On the morrow a couple of oxen drew a creaking waggon into the field, and when the angelus sounded from the church-tower in the evening the haymaking was over. But I have not yet described the mowers' feast.
At about ten o'clock the big bell that hangs outside the château is rung, and the mowers, dropping their scythes, leave the field and troop into the great kitchen, which has changed so little for centuries. The pots and pans hanging against the walls, and the pieces of bacon from the beams, have been renewed, but not much else. There is the same floor paved with stones, now much cracked and worn into hollows, the same hearth and broad chimney with hanging chain; and the long table and benches stretching from end to end, although their age is uncertain, were certainly fashioned upon the exact model of others that preceded them. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, when campaigning in Guyenne, may have sat down many a time to such a table as this, and to just such a meal as the one that is about to be served to the mowers, with the exception of the coffee and rum.
Let us take a look into the great caldrons, which appear to have come out of Gargantua's kitchen. One contains two full-sized turkeys and several fowls, another a leg of pork, and a third a considerable portion of a calf. Then there is a caldron of soup, made very 'thick and slab.' Home-baked loaves, round like trenchers, and weighing 10lb. each, are on the side table, together with an immense bowl of salad and a regiment of bottles filled with wine newly drawn from the cask.
In the evening, when all the grass has been cut, there is another and a greater feast. The work being done, the men linger long at the table. Then all the household is assembled in the great kitchen, including the châtelain and châtelaine, and the young men who are known to have voices are called upon to sing. They do not need much pressing, for what with the heat of the sun during the day, then the wine, the coffee and rum, their blood is rushing rather hotly through the veins. One after another they stand up on the benches and give out their voices from their sturdy chests, which are burnt to the colour of terra-cotta. They make so much noise that the old warming-pan trembles against the wall. Although they all speak patois among themselves, they are reluctant to sing the songs of Périgord in the presence of strangers. The young men are proud of their French, bad as it is, and a song in the café-concert style of music and poetry fires their ambition to excel on a festive occasion like this, whilst their patois ditties seem then only fit to be sung at home or in the fields. At length, however, they allow themselves to be persuaded, and they sing in chorus a 'Reapers' Song,' composed long ago by some unknown Périgourdin poet, who was perhaps a jongleur or a troubadour. The notes are so arranged as to imitate the rhythmic movements of the reaper: first the drawing back of the right arm, then the stroke of the sickle, and lastly, the laying down of the cut corn. There is something of sadness as well as of joy in the repeated cadences of the simple song, and it moves the heart, for now the old men join in, and the sound gathers such strength that the little martins under the eaves must be pressing troubled breasts against their young.
This château had remained in the same family for centuries, and the actual owner, although by no means indifferent to the noble exploits of his ancestors, had long ago settled down to the life of an agricultural gentleman, and devoted what energy may have come down to him from the Crusaders to the cultivation of tobacco, the improvement of stock, the rearing of pigeons and poultry, the planting of trees, and a great deal more belonging to the same order of interest. He was a strongly marked type of the gentilhomme campagnard, in whom blue blood combines perfectly with rustic tastes and simplicity of manners. Like most men who live greatly to themselves, he had his hobbies, and they were all of a very respectable kind. One was to surround himself with trees; another was to have all kinds of captive birds about him. I was never able to know exactly how many aviaries he possessed, for I was always finding a fresh one curiously hidden in some neglected corner. He liked to mix up all sorts of birds together, such as pigeons, doves—tame and wild—blackbirds, linnets, canaries, chaffinches, sparrows, tomtits—no, the tomtits had been turned out. I asked why.
'Because,' said M. de V., 'there is no bird so wicked for its size as the titmouse. It pecks other birds with which it is shut up so often in the same part of the head that at length it makes a hole and picks out the brains.'
He used to catch his birds by means of a long net, and his favourite place for spreading it was along the side of the patch of buckwheat which was sown to feed the captives. He was a true lover of birds, and by observing them had stored up in his mind a fund of curious knowledge respecting their characters and habits. He only worked a portion of his land with the aid of the servants of the château; the rest was farmed on the system of métayage, for which he had a very strong liking. He said it was far preferable from the landlord's point of view to leasing, because the owner of the soil remained absolute master of his property. He could take care that nothing was done which did not please him, for the métayer or colon was on no firmer footing than that of an upper servant. If the landlord was not satisfied with the manner in which his land was treated, or if he suspected his métayer of trying to take an unfair advantage of him in the division of proceeds, all he had to do was to change him for another. But it was the interest of both to work well together, and it was the duty of the landlord to assist the métayer as much as possible, especially when times were hard.
On this estate the colons were housed free, but they paid one-third of the taxes. At the time of sowing, the seed was found by the landlord, but the colon returned half of the amount when the crop was gathered.
Métayage, or the system of sharing results between the landowner and the labouring peasant, still flourishes in France, notwithstanding the severe denunciations passed upon it by various writers. If it were a very bad system, it would have fallen into disuse long before now, for although the French have a tendency to keep their wheels in old ruts, they are as keen as any other people in protecting their own interests. It is a system that would soon become impossible without trustfulness and honesty. On both sides there must be fair dealing. The colon must feel that the landlord will help him in time of trial and need, and the landlord must feel that the colon is not trying to cheat him. In the great majority of cases, the man who does the ploughing, the sowing and the harvesting quite realizes that honesty with him is the best policy, and the owner of the soil knows that it is to his interest to support his métayer, and encourage him with judicious aid when the times are bad. The métayer, who has hope of making a little money over and above what is barely sufficient to support himself and his family, and knows that results will depend largely upon his own sagacity and industry, works with a steady zeal that it would be unreasonable to expect of the hired labourer, who, having his measured wage always in his mind's eye, has no incentive to do more than what is rigorously expected of him.
It may happen that the métayer, with all his labour—carried sometimes to an extreme that degrades the man physically and mentally—and all his frugality, which so often entails constitutional enfeeblement and degeneration, because the nutrition is not sufficient to correct the exhaustion of toil, obtains really less value for his work than an English farm labourer, and is not so well housed; but, on the other hand, he enjoys a large amount of liberty and independence, and has the hope, if he is young, of being able to save money, buy some land, and become his own master. A métairie is seldom so large as to be beyond the working capabilities of a man and his family. In Guyenne an estate of a few hundred acres, if the land is productive, is often divided up into several métairies.
Farm labourers are not an overfed or overpaid class in Périgord. Food that is almost bread and vegetables, and a wage of one franc a day, are the ordinary conditions on which men work from sunrise to darkness. Lodging is not always included. I have known men in the full vigour of life earning only the equivalent of ninepence halfpenny a day, paying rent out of it, and presumably supporting a wife and children.
The daily life at the château was quite old fashioned in its simplicity. Everybody rose with the sun, or very soon afterwards. At nine o'clock the bell in the court rang for the principal meal, which was called dinner. Kings dined at about the same hour in the times of the Crusaders. Early in the afternoon the bell rang again. This was for collation, a very light repast, which was often nothing more than salad or fruit and a frotte—a piece of crusty bread rubbed with garlic. At about seven o'clock the bell rang for supper.
The small châteaux with which the whole country hereabouts is strewn, notwithstanding that most of them have been partially rebuilt or grossly and wantonly mangled without a purpose such as the rational desire of increasing homely comfort may excuse, even when combined with no respect for the past, nevertheless contain numerous details that call up in the mind pictures of the life of old France. In the rat-haunted lofts and lumber-rooms may still be seen, worm-eaten and covered with dust, the cacolet—a wooden structure shaped like the gable roof of a house, and which, when set upon a horse's back, afforded sitting accommodation for two or three persons on each side. There are people who can still remember, on the roads of Périgord, the cacolets carrying merry parties to marriage feasts and other gatherings. In a few of the great dining-rooms the visitor will still notice the alcôve volante—a bedstead, that is a little house in itself, put into a cosy quiet nook where a person can get into bed without being observed by others in the room. A pretty sentiment caused it to be especially reserved for the grandmothers, who, stretched upon the warm feathers on the winter evenings, could rest their weary limbs while listening to the talk of their descendants and friends, until drowsiness began to make confusion of the present and the past, and then they would pull the cords which closed the curtains and go to sleep. Poor old ladies, now in their graves under the paving-stones of little churches or beneath the grass of rural cemeteries, how happy for them that they did not dream of the future in their snug alcôves near the fire—of a revolution that would kill or scatter their descendants, and of the strangers to their blood who would lie in their beds!
The detached dovecot is seen in almost every old manorial garden. Although pigeons are seldom kept in it, the structure has been preserved because of its usefulness for various purposes and the solidity of its masonry. In some of them is to be seen the old spiral ladder or staircase winding like a serpent round the interior wall from the ground to the domed or pointed roof. By means of this ladder the pigeons could be easily taken from their nests as they were wanted. These great dovecots are an interesting remnant of feudalism. Down to the Revolution the right of keeping pigeons was still a droit seigneurial. To those who enjoyed the privilege, the business was therefore a profitable one, for the birds fed largely at other people's expense.
It is rare to find the ancient walls and towers which stud the hills that rise above these valleys in the hands of families who owned them even in the last century. Terror of the Revolutionists caused most of the small nobility of the country to forsake their homes and lands, which were consequently sold by the State révolutionnairement, and they who acquired them were thrifty, sagacious people of the agricultural, mercantile, or official class, whose political principles bent easily before the wind that was blowing, and whose savings enabled them to profit by the misfortunes of those who had so long enjoyed the advantages of a privileged position. The descendants of the men who seized their opportunity, and who purchased the estates of the refugees—often at the price 'of an old song'—generally cultivate anti-Republican politics, for they have the best of reasons to be suspicious of the 'great and glorious principles' by virtue of which property was made to change hands so unceremoniously at the close of the last century.
The present owners of most of the country houses in Périgord, whether they belong to the old families or the new families, whether they put the noble particle before their names or not, have very much the same habits and manners. Not a few of them have never been to Paris, and in speech they often use old French forms, which sound strange in the ears of the modernized society of the North. Although the accent is often drawling or sing-song, their language is more grammatically correct than that now ordinarily used in conversation. They observe the true distinction of the tenses with an exactitude that sounds stiff and pedantic to those French people who move about, and who consider that they live in the 'world.' To the unprejudiced foreigner, however, it is not unpleasant to hear this old-fashioned literary French spoken in an easy, simple manner that removes all suspicion of affectation.
In the relations of master and servant, something of the old régime still survives. The master still says tu and toi to his servant; but if the latter were to take the liberty of replying with the same pronoun, his insolence would be considered quite unpardonable. And yet no people appear to be troubled less with false pride than the class of whom I am speaking. Relatively large landowners, whose names count for a good deal in the district, think there is nothing derogatory in sending a maidservant to market to sell the surplus fruit and eggs. Those who buy are equally practical. They haggle over sous with their friends' servant just as if she were a peasant driving a bargain on her own account. It is the exception, however, when to this keen appreciation of money warm-hearted hospitality and disinterested kindness are not joined.
There was a château combining the country house, the farm, and the ruin on the summit of the steep hill that rose above our little island just beyond the river. It often tempted me to climb to it, and one day at the end of summer I wended my way up the stony path. I met with that courteous reception which so rarely fails in France to place the visitor completely at his ease. I was surprised to find how extensive the ramparts were, and how easily the castle behind the modern house could have been rendered habitable. But all the windows were open to the weather. A Gothic chapel with groined vaulting at the base of one of the towers had been turned into a coach-house. Following an old servant who carried a lantern along a dark passage leading to an oubliette, I saw what looked like a large cattle trough, and inquired the use of it in such a place. It was put to no purpose now, was the reply, but it was intended for keeping a whole bullock in salt. In the tumultuous ages it was always necessary to be prepared to take immediate measures in view of a siege, and at no period more than during the wars of religion, when the owners of these castles, whether they were Huguenots or Catholics, had to be continually on the alert. When there was fighting to be done, a salted bullock gave less trouble than a live one.
The old man, having tied a string to the top of the lantern, let it down through the round hole of the oubliette until it touched the ground many feet below. Then he told me that, when the dungeon was discovered years ago, immediately beneath the opening an old tree was found stuck about with rusty blades and spikes, with their points turned upwards. This story was confirmed by others.
In the garden on the edge of the cliff the myrtle flourished in a little Provence sheltered from the cold winds; the physalis—beautiful southern weed—now laid its large bladders of a vivid scarlet along the edges of the paths, and the walls flamed with the red fruit of the pomegranate.
The most important feudal ruin in this district is that of the Château de Grignols, the cradle of the Talleyrand family. It was raised by Hély Talleyrand, Seigneur de Grignols, at the close of the twelfth century. Much of the outer wall and a few fragments of the interior buildings remain.
I lived a good deal upon the water when I was not in my hermitage under the trees or wandering across country. I found in the water an ever-growing interest and charm. It often drew me from my work, for my canoe was on the canal only a few paces from my dwelling. On each side the high banks were glorious with their many-coloured clothing of summer flowers. There were patches of purple thyme, of blue stachys, and yellow gallium; there were countless spikes of yellow agrimony and heads of wild carrot, and white ox-eyes looked out from amidst the long grasses like snowflakes of summer. Near the water's edge, mingling with sedges, flags, marsh-mallows, bur-reed, and alisma, were the golden flowers of the shrubby lysimachia in dense multitudes, while from the canal itself rose many a spike of water-stachys, with here and there blossoming butomus, near the fringe of the banks. Then there were the pond-weeds, and other true water-plants, whose summer luxuriance nearly stopped the navigation of the canal, and whose pollen in July, collecting near the locks, lay there upon the water like a thick scum. As my little boat moved over them, I could note all the wondrous beauty and delicacy of the strange foliage that lives below the air, and preserves so much of the character of the earliest vegetation of the earth.
It is twilight, and I am paddling up to the river, gliding now along by one bank and now by another. A humming-bird moth, that seems to have been just created, for the eye cannot follow its movement in the dusky air, appears suddenly upon the topmost flower of a stachys, and in another moment it has vanished. Upon the broader and more open river the day appears to revive. There is a faint lustre upon the distant chalky hills and their corn-fields that rise against the quiet sky. But the pale moon just above them is brightening; already the rays are glinting upon the water. A little later the boat is moving up a long brilliant track, where small waves lap and quiver like liquid fire. It is now night, and the forms of the alders in the air and on the water have become weird and awful. I often come alone at this hour, or later, to be filled with the horror of them. There is a strong fascination in their terrible and fantastic shapes, which may be because the sublime and the horrible are so thinly separated. Rarely does the same tree wear the same ghostly appearance when seen a second time, and a shape that may seem to one person appallingly life-like may convey no meaning to another.
Had the gendarmes met me while water-wandering at night, they would certainly have concluded that I was a fish-poacher. All fishing by night in French rivers and streams is illegal, but it is much practised notwithstanding.
There are many carp in the Isle, weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds, but they are very rarely caught. The river is full of very deep pools, caused by the washing away of the sand down to the solid rock, and the carp seldom get within reach of a net except when they are stirred up and washed out of their lairs in time of flood. Then, when an old fish gets entangled in a net, it is almost certain to break through it, so that it is not with a feeling of pure pleasure that the fisherman recognises by the weight and tug that he has thrown his meshes over one of these monsters. Nor does any better success attend the angler—at all events, the angler who is known in these parts. It is quite an extraordinary event when a carp weighing more than five pounds is taken with the line. The bait commonly used is boiled maize or a piece of boiled chestnut. There is another method of hooking these fish which I have seen practised on the quays at Périgueux. The fisher has a very strong rod, and also a strong line many yards long, at the end of which is fastened, not a bait, but a piece of lead two or three inches in length. To this large hooks are fixed, which barbs turned in all directions. The man, whose eyes have become very keen with practice, sees some carp coming up or going down the stream, and, throwing the plummet far out into the river, he draws it rapidly through the water, across the spot where he believes the fish then to be. It is not often that he feels a tug, but he does sometimes, and then follows a deadly struggle, which may result in his landing a splendid carp that is worth more than he might earn by any other industry in two days.
Among the peasants in this part of Périgord there is a deeply-engrained superstitious horror of what is called a rencontre. If a person falls suddenly ill, especially if his sickness be not a familiar ailment, he will begin to probe his memory, and to ask himself if he has lately sat upon a stone or the stump of a tree. If he remembers having done so, he murmurs, unless he should be free from the popular superstition, 'Ah! I thought so. This is a rencontre!'—by which he means that he has met one of the three unholy reptiles, the snake, the toad, or the lizard, although it was hidden under the stone or stump.
'Marie,' said I to an old farm woman who was hobbling about with a rheumatic leg, 'what is the matter?'
Oh, mossieu,' said she, 'it's a rencontre. I sat down the other day upon a stone.'
This made me inquire what was meant by a rencontre.
I will only set down a few impressions of Périgueux, there being already quite enough written respecting the ancient capital of the Petrocorii. The upper part of the town commands a pleasant view of the valley of the curving Isle, with the wooded hills that lead away towards the upper and wilder country of Périgord; but it is in the lower town near the river, where the odours are strong, that the interest really lies. Here is the cathedral of St. Front, a church in the Byzantine style of the tenth century, and closely imitated from St. Mark's at Venice. It is impossible to see it now, however, without regret and disappointment. In many it stirs both sorrow and anger. It is no longer one of the most precious monuments of old France. What we see now on the site of St. Front is a new church, scrupulously rebuilt, it is true, according to the original plan, and with a great deal of the original material, but its interest is that which belongs to a model: its venerable character, with all the associations of the past, is gone. Whether those responsible for the complete demolition of the ancient structure when it threatened to fall and become a heap of ruins were right or wrong in their decision is a technical question on which very few persons are now competent to give an opinion. The plan of the church is a Greek cross, and, like St. Mark's and St. Sophia's, it has five domes; but the building has, nevertheless, a feature of its own which makes it one of the most original of churches. It possesses a Byzantine tower.
[Illustration: THE TOUR DE VÉSONE.]
In common with many towns of Southern France, Périgueux shows remarkable vestiges of different races and dominations. Remnants of Roman or Gallo-Roman architecture stand with others that belong to the dawn of mediaeval art, and others, again, that are marked by the florid and graceful fancy of the Renaissance. The ruins of the amphitheatre are insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carrée at Nimes; but there is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to archaeologists, but which is now generally believed to be the cella of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the city's tutelary divinities. It is called the Tour de Vésone, and, indeed, it was supposed for centuries to have been originally a tower. Its cylindrical shape and its height (ninety feet) give it all the appearance of one. It is built of rubble, faced inside and out with small well-shaped stones, and has chains of brick in the upper part. The circle of the tower is no longer complete, for about a fourth of the wall has been broken down from top to bottom. The ground is strewn with fragments of immense columns and entire capitals, some Corinthian, others Tuscan. These, doubtless, were parts of the peristyle, which, with the exception of such scattered fragments, has quite disappeared. There is something decidedly barbaric in the fantastic structure that has come down to us, and it is difficult to understand the motive of its height. Such a cylinder rising far above the peristyle could not have had a classic effect. This ruin stands in an open field, and the foulness of the spot, although quite in accordance with the Southern manner of showing respect for antiquities, is nevertheless a disgrace to the ideals of modern Vesunna.
Another curiosity of the lower town is the ruin of a very early mediaeval castle, said to have been built by Wulgrin, surnamed Taillefer, the first of the hereditary Counts of Périgord. Close to this picturesque ruin is one of the ancient gateways of the town. It goes by the name of La Porte Normande, but its slightly pointed arch disposes of the suggestion that the Normans were in some manner concerned in its construction.
[Illustration: THE 'NORMAN GATE' AT PÉRIGUEUX.]
What interested me most at Périgueux was something that very few strangers, or even townspeople, for that matter, ever see, because, it is hidden from public view. This is a considerable fragment of one of the early walls of the town, which, tradition says, was thrown up in great haste at the approach of the Normans during one of the incursions of these adventurers up the valley of the Dordogne and, its tributary, the Isle, in the tenth century. It is a bit of wall that speaks to us in a language by no means common. It is not built of stones such as could be found anywhere in all ages, but is put together with the fragments of temples and palaces which even now tell of the power and splendour of Rome. The shafts of fluted columns, capitals wearing the acanthus, pieces of cornice and frieze, all mortared together with undistinguishable rubbish, bear testimony in the quiet garden of the Ursuline convent to the vanity of human works. Vesunna, splendid city of Southern Gaul, completely Latinized, with native poets, orators, and historians speaking and writing the language of Virgil and Cicero, raised temples, palaces, thermae, and a vast amphitheatre to be used centuries later as material for building a wall to keep out the Northern barbarians!
[Illustration: THE DRONNE AT BOURDEILLES.]