everything that they cannot account for by the light of reason and
observation. They have their legend with regard to the Puit de
Padirac, and it is as follows: St. Martin, before he became Bishop of
Tours, was crossing one day this stony region of the Dordogne to visit
a religious community on the banks of the Solane, whither he had been
despatched by St. Hilary. He was mounted on a mule, and was ambling
along over the desert plunged in pious contemplation, when he heard a
little noise behind, and, looking round, he was surprised to see a
gentleman close to him, who was also riding a mule. The stranger was
richly dressed, and was altogether a very distinguished-looking
person, but the excessive brilliancy of his eyes was a disfigurement.
They shone in his head like two bits of burning charcoal. 'What do you
want, cruel beast?' said St. Martin. This would scarcely have been
saintly language had he not known with whom he had to deal. The
gentleman thus impolitely addressed returned a soft answer, and forced
his company upon the saint, who wished him--at home. Presently
Lucifer, for it was he, began to 'dare' St. Martin, after the manner
of boys to-day. 'If I kick a hole in the ground I dare you to jump
over it,' was the sort of language employed by the gentleman with the
too-expressive eyes. 'Done!' said St. Martin, or something equivalent.
'Digging pits is quite in my line of business!' exclaimed the devil,
in so disagreeable a voice that the saint's mule would have bolted had
the holy rider not kept a tight rein upon her. At the same moment the
ground over which the infernal mule had just passed fell in with a
mighty rumble and crash, leaving a yawning gulf. 'Now,' said Lucifer,
'let me see you jump over that!' Whereupon, the bold St. Martin drove
his spurs into his mule and lightly leapt over the abyss. And this was
how the Puit de Padirac was made. The peasants believe that they can
still see on a stone the imprint left by the hoof of St. Martin's
mule. This adventure did not cause the saint and the devil to part
company. They rode on together as far as the valley of Medorium
(Miers). 'Now,' said St. Martin, 'you jump over that!' pointing to a
little stream that was seen to flow suddenly and miraculously out of
the earth. Before challenging the arch enemy he had, however, taken
the precaution to lay two small boughs in the form of a cross on the
brink of the water. In vain the devil spurred his mule and used the
worst language that he could think of to induce the beast to jump. The
animal would not; but, as the spurring and swearing were continued, it
at length went down on its knees before the cross. But this did not
suit the devil's turn. On the contrary, the proximity of that emblem
which St. Martin had placed unobserved on the ground made him writhe
as though he had fallen into a font. Then with the speed of a
lightning flash he returned to his own kingdom--possibly by the Puit
de Padirac. A church dedicated to the saint was afterwards built near
the scene of his triumph, and the healing spring where it comes out of
the earth is still known by the name of _Lou Fount Sen Morti_--St.
Martin's Fountain.
Having left the pit, we went in the direction of Loubressac, to which
village my companion belonged. While still upon the _causse_ a spot
was reached where a small iron cross had been raised. The stone
pedestal bore this inscription:
'SOUVENIR DE HÉLÈNE BONBÈGRE,
MORTE MARTYRE EN CE LIEU EN 1844.
VIEILLE-ESCAZE ET LAVAL ONT FAIT CONSTRUIRE CETTE CROIX.
PRIEZ POUR CES DEUX BIENFAITEURS.'
The old man knew Hélène Bonbègre when he was young, and he told me the
tragic story of her death on this spot. She was going home in the
evening, and her sweetheart the blacksmith accompanied her a part of
the distance. They then separated, and she went on alone. They had
been watched by the jealous and unsuccessful lover, whose heart was on
fire. Where the cross stands the girl was found lying, a naked corpse.
The murderer was soon captured, and most of the people in the district
went to St. Céré to see him guillotined. It was a spectacle to be
talked over for half a century. The blacksmith never forgave himself
for having left the girl to go home alone, and it was he who forged
the cross that marks the scene of the crime and sets the wayfarer
conjecturing.
The peasant changed his ideas by filling his pipe. He smoked tobacco
that he grew in a corner of his garden for his own use, and which he
enjoyed all the more because it was _tabac de contrebande_. He gave me
some, which I likewise smoked without any qualm of conscience, and
thought it decidedly better than some tobacco of the régie. He lit his
pipe with smuggled matches. Had I been an inspector in disguise, I
should never have made matters unpleasant for him; he was such a
cheery, good-natured companion. He had brought up his family, and had
now just enough land to keep him without breaking his back over it. He
was quite satisfied with things as they were. I did not ask him if he
was a poacher, but took it for granted that he was whenever he saw a
good chance. Almost every peasant in the Haut-Quercy who has something
of the spirit of Nimrod in him is more or less a poacher. Those who
like hare and partridge can eat it in all seasons by paying for it.
Occasionally the gendarmes capture a young and over-zealous offender,
but the old men, who have followed the business all their lives, are
too wary for them. They are also too respectable to be interfered
with.
At Loubressac I took leave of my entertaining friend, but not before
we had emptied a bottle of white wine together. It was a _vin du
pays_, this district having been less tried by the phylloxera than
others farther south and west. I was surprised to find white wine
there, the purple grape having been almost exclusively cultivated for
centuries in what is now the department of the Lot.
In the room of the inn where I lunched there were four beds; two at
one end and two at the other. There was plenty of space left, however,
for the tables. The rafters were hidden by the heads of maize that
hung from them. The host sat down at the same table with me, and when
he had nearly finished his soup he poured wine into it, and, raising
the plate to his lips, drank off the mixture. Objectionable as this
manner of drinking wine seems to those who have not learnt to do it in
their youth, it is very general throughout Guyenne. Those who have
formed the habit would be most unhappy if they could not continue it.
_Faire chabron_ is the expression used to describe this sin against
good manners. The aubergiste was very friendly, and towards the close
of the meal he brought out a bottle of his old red wine that he had
treasured up 'behind the faggot.'
Before reaching this village I had heard of a retired captain who
lived here in a rather dilapidated château, and who was very affable
to visitors, whom he immediately invited to look through his
telescope, which, although not a very large one, had a local
celebrity, such instruments being about as rare as blue foxes in this
part of the world. Conducted by the innkeeper, I called upon this
gentleman. The house was one of those half-castellated manors which
became scattered over France after the Renaissance, and of which the
greater number were allowed to fall into complete or partial ruin when
the territorial families who were interested in them were extinguished
or impoverished by the Revolution. They are frequently to be found in
Guyenne, but they are generally occupied by peasants either as
tenant-farmers or proprietors; two or three of the better preserved
rooms being inhabited by the family, the others being haunted by bats
and swallows and used for the storage of farm produce. It suited the
captain's humour, however, to live in his old dilapidated mansion,
scarcely less cut off from the society that matched with his position
in life than if he had exiled himself to some rock in the ocean.
The ceremony of knocking or ringing was dispensed with for the
sufficient reason that there was neither bell nor knocker. We entered
by the open door and walked along a paved passage, which, was
evidently not held as sacred as it should have been by the roving
fowls; looked in at the great dark kitchen, where beside the Gothic
arch of the broad chimney was some ruinous clockwork mechanism for
turning the spit, which probably did turn to good purpose when
powdered wigs were worn; then ascended the stone staircase, where
there was room for four to walk abreast, but which had somewhat lost
its dignity by the balusters being used for hanging maize upon.
Presently we came to a door, which the aubergiste knocked sharply with
his knuckles.
There was a sound of footsteps within, and then the door opened. I was
standing before a rather florid man of about fifty, with close-cropped
hair, a brush moustache, and a chin that seemed undecided on the score
of shaving. He wore a flannel shirt open at the throat, and a knitted
worsted _tricot_. This was the captain. He evidently did not like
Sunday clothes. When he settled down here, it was to live at his ease,
like a bachelor who had finished with vanities. But although no one
would have supposed from his dress that he was superior to the people
around him, his manners were those of a gentleman and an officer who
had seen the world elsewhere than at Loubressac. The simple, easy
courtesy with which he showed me his rooms, and pointed his telescope
for me, was all that is worth attaining, as regards the outward polish
of a man. This was so fixed upon him that his long association with
peasants had taken none of it away. The few rooms that he inhabited
were plainly furnished; in others were heaps of wheat, maize and
beans. Passing along a passage I noticed a little altar in a recess,
with a statue of the Virgin decked with roses and wild flowers. '_C'est
le mois de Marie_,' said the captain. He lived with a sister, and she
took care that religion was kept up in the house.
It being the _Fête-Dieu_, preparations were being made in the village
for the procession that was to take place after vespers. Sheets were
spread along the fronts of the houses, with flowers pinned to them,
and _reposoirs_ had been raised in the open air. I did not wait for
the procession, as I expected to be in time for the one at the next
village, Autoire. I took a path that led me up to the barren _causse_,
from which the red roofs of Autoire soon became visible under an
amphitheatre of high wooded hills.
As I approached the little village, the gleam of white sheets mingled
with the picture of old houses huddled together, some half-timber,
some with turrets and encorbelments, nearly all of them with very
high-pitched roofs and small dormer windows. The procession was soon
to start. I waited for it at the door of the crowded church, baking in
the sun with others who could not get inside, one of whom was a woman
with a moustache and beard, black and curly, such as a promising young
man might be expected to have. The number of women in Southern France
who are bearded like men shocks the feelings of the Northern wanderer,
until he grows accustomed to the sight. The curé was preaching about
the black bread, and all the other miseries of this life that had to
be accepted with thankfulness. Presently the two bells in the tower
began to dance, and the rapid ding-dong announced that the procession
was forming. First appeared the beadle, extremely gaudy in scarlet and
gold, then the cross-bearer, young men as chanters, little boys, most
strangely attired in white satin knee-breeches and short lace skirts,
scattering rose-leaves from open baskets at their sides; the curé came
bearing the monstrance and Host, followed by Sisters with little girls
in their charge; lastly was a mixed throng of parishioners. Most of
the women held rosaries, and a few of them, bent with age, carried
upon their heads the very cap that old Mother Hubbard wore, if
tradition and English artists are to be trusted. As the last of the
long procession passed out of sight between the walls of white linen,
the wind brought the words clearly back:
'Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et jubilatio.'
Now I entered the little church that was quite empty, and where no
sound would have been heard if the two voices in the tower had not
continued to ring out over the dovecotes, where the white pigeons
rested and wondered, and over the broad fields where the bending
grasses and listening flowers stood in the afternoon sunshine, 'Laus
et jubilatio,' in the language of the bells.
The church was Romanesque, probably of the twelfth century. The nave
was flanked by narrow aisles. Upon the very tall bases of the columns
were carved, together with foliage, fantastic heads of demons, or
satyrs of such expressive ugliness that they held me fascinated. Some
were bearded, others were beardless, some were grinning and showing
frightful teeth, others had thick-lipped, pouting mouths hideously
debased. A few were really _bons diables_, who seemed determined to be
gay, and to joke under the most trying circumstances; but the greater
number had morose faces, puckered by the long agony of bearing up the
church. Such variety of expression in ugliness was a triumph of art in
the far-off age, when the chisel of an unremembered man with a teeming
imagination made these heads take life from the inanimate stone.
The road from Autoire to St. Céré soon led me into the valley of the
Bave, a beautiful trout-stream, galloping towards the Dordogne through
flowery meadows, on this last day of May, and under leaning trees,
whose imaged leaves danced upon the ripples in the green shade. As I
had no need to hurry, I loitered to pick ragged-robins upon the banks,
flowers dear to me from old associations. Very common in England, they
are comparatively rare in France.
New pleasures await the wayfarer every hour, almost every minute, in
the day, and however long he may continue to wander over this
wonderful world of inexhaustible variety, if he will only stop to look
at everything, and so learn to feel the charm of little things.
I met a beggar, and fell into conversation with him. He asked me for
nothing, and was surprised when I gave him two sous. He was a ragged
old man, with a canvas bag, half filled with crusts, slung upon his
side. I had already met many such beggars in this part of France. They
travel about from village to village, filling their bags with pieces
of bread that are given them, and selling afterwards what they cannot
eat as food for pigs. As they rarely receive charity in the form of
money, they do not expect it. This kind of mendicant is distinctly
rural, and belongs to old times.
The bold front of an early Renaissance castle, with round towers at
the angles, capped with pointed roofs, drew me from the highroad. It
was the Château de Montal, in connection with which I had already
heard the story of one Rose de Montal, a young lady of some three
centuries ago, who had given her heart to a nobleman of the country,
Roger de Castelnau. By-and-by the charms of another lady caused him to
neglect the fair Rose de Montal. She remained almost constantly at a
window of one of the towers, scanning the country, and longing to
catch sight of the faithless Roger. One day he came down the valley of
the Bave, and she sang from the height of her tower a plaintive
love-song, hoping that he would stop and make some sign; but he passed
on, unmoved by the tender appeal of the noble damsel. As he
disappeared, she cried, 'Rose, plus d'espoir!' and threw herself from
the window.
The _métayer_, now placed in charge of the castle, showed me over it.
It was a sad spectacle. The building, one of the best preserved and
most elaborately decorated works of the Renaissance in this part of
Guyenne until a few years ago, then fell into the hands of a vulgar
speculator, who detached all the carvings that could be removed
without difficulty, and sold them in Paris. The noble staircase and
all its delicate sculpture remain, but these only add to the regret
that one feels for what is no longer there. Had the Commission of
Historic Monuments placed the Château de Montal upon its list, it
would probably have escaped spoliation, although, in the case of
private property, the State has no power to prevent destruction,
however grievous the national loss.
I entered St. Céré at sundown. This bright little town lies in the
midst of fertility. It is on the banks of the Bave, and at the foot of
a hill that rises abruptly from the plain, and is capped by two towers
of a ruined feudal stronghold, which show against the horizon far into
the Quercy, the Corrèze, and the Cantal. Some of the old streets have
quite a mediaeval air, with their half-wood houses with stories
projecting upon the floor-joists, and others of a grander origin with
turrets resting on encorbelments. I had the luck to find a good
old-fashioned inn here, and to pass the evening in very pleasant
company.
The next morning I climbed to the top of the neighbouring hill to have
a closer view of those towers which had been my landmarks on the
previous day, passing through the little village of St.
Laurent-les-Tours, which lies immediately under the old fortress after
the manner of so many others of feudal origin. The towers are
rectangular _donjons_ of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, one
being nearly a hundred and fifty feet high. The castle was raised upon
a table of calcareous rock; but only the towers, a portion of the
outer wall built of enormous blocks of stone, and a ruined archway
marking the spot where the drawbridge once hung, remain to tell the
tale of the past.
That the Romans had fortified this height there is the strongest
evidence in the fact that the substructure of the rampart that once
surrounded the castle is of cubic stones laid together according to
the method so much practised by the Romans, and known as _opus
reticulatum_. Moreover, the coins, pottery, and arms found here seem
to afford conclusive proof that this remarkable hill was one of the
fortified positions of the Romans in Gaul.
The spot has its Christian legend, which is briefly this: In the
castle that crowned the height in the time of the Visigoth kings was
born St. Espérie, daughter of a Duke of Aquitaine. Being pressed to
marry, notwithstanding the vow she had made to consecrate her life to
God, she hid herself in a neighbouring forest for three months. She
was at length discovered by her enraged brother and lover, who cut off
her head. Like St. Denis, St. Espérie picked up her head, to the
unspeakable astonishment and dismay of her persecutors. They fled from
her, but she followed them as far as a little stream that flows into
the Bave at St. Céré. Espérie is a saint much venerated in the
Haut-Quercy. The church of St. Céré is dedicated to her, and the name
given to the town is supposed to be a corruption of Espérie.
From St. Céré I took the road to Castelnau-de-Bretenoux, returning for
some distance by the way I came. Inns being now very scarce in the
district, I decided to take my chance of lunch in a small village
called St. Jean-Lespinasse. Another saint! The map of France is still
covered with the names of saints, in spite of all the efforts of
revolutionists and pagan reformers to make the people abandon their
'Christian superstitions.' Those who in the 'ages of faith' built up
this association of saints and places could have had no conception of
the power that these names would have in binding Christianity to the
soil in the faithless or doubting ages to come. The only inn at St.
Jean-Lespinasse was kept by a blacksmith, and the room where I had my
meal was over the forge. Bread and cheese and eggs were, as I
expected, the utmost that such a hostelry could offer in the way of
food for a wayfarer's entertainment. Before leaving the village I
found the church--a curious old structure of the Transition period,
with a large open porch covered with mossy tiles, held up by rough
pillars. There were stone benches inside, on which generations of
villagers had sat and gossiped in their turn. In the interior were
columns engaged in the wall of the nave, with the capitals elaborately
and heavily foliated with pendent bunches of flowers and fruit, much
more in accordance with English than French taste.
I crossed the Bave, and followed a road bordered with hedgerows of
quince that presently skirted sunny slopes covered with lately-planted
vines. Thunder was moaning and growling in the distance when I reached
the much-embowered village of Castelnau, upon a height immediately
under the reddish walls and towers of the immense feudal stronghold,
the fame of which went far and wide in the Middle Ages. Its name in
the Southern dialect means 'new castle,' but it dates from the
eleventh or twelfth century. Extensive additions were made in
subsequent ages, notably a wing in the Renaissance style, which was
inhabited until the middle of the present century, when all but the
walls was destroyed by fire.
The feudal castle was built upon the plan of a triangle, with a tower
at each angle, the one at the apex being the _donjon_. The form of
this lofty keep is rectangular, and the machicolations and
embattlements which were added in the fifteenth century are in a
perfect state of preservation. Upon the platform, which I was able to
reach by means of ladders and the half-ruinous spiral staircase,
viper's bugloss spread its brilliant blue flowers over the dark
stones, and enticed the high-soaring bees. The view of the wide and
beautiful Dordogne Valley from these old battlements was not less
grand because more than one-half of the sky was of a bluish-black--a
mysterious canopy that concealed the genius of the storm, but from the
turbulent folds of which there darted every minute a dazzling line of
light. The tower on which I stood, although the highest of the three,
had never been struck by lightning, but one of the others had been
repeatedly struck, and the ruined masonry showed abundant signs of the
scorching it had undergone in this way. Lightning is capricious and
incomprehensible in its preferences.
This castle was besieged by Henry Plantagenet in 1159, but without
success. Subsequently he made another effort, and then reduced it. His
son Henry made it his headquarters for some time after he had
revolted. In 1369 Thomas de Walkaffera the English seneschal who held
Réalville on behalf of his sovereign, was besieged there by a Lord of
Castelnau, assisted by other barons. The garrison was overcome and
massacred. Another Lord of Castelnau, John, Bishop of Cahors, convened
a meeting of the States of the Quercy in his fortress, at which a
rising against the English was decided upon. It resulted in their
temporary expulsion from the Quercy.
Besides the towers and exterior walls, there are some chambers of the
old castle in good preservation. The chapel is still roofed, and the
altar-stone is in its place. In an elevated chamber at the lower end,
the dead were laid while awaiting burial.
Descending to the village, I entered the parish church--a Gothic
building of the fourteenth century, containing many interesting
details. The oak stalls, each with a quaint human figure carved upon
it, are exceedingly curious. Outside the church little girls were
playing, in the charge of a Sister who had a beautiful sweet face. She
showed me the way to the next village, where I hoped to find shelter
from the gathering storm. I have a pleasant picture in the mind of
Castelnau--a bowery, ancient, mossy place, with vines climbing about
the houses or on trellises in the little steep gardens, and a golden
bloom of stonecrop upon the rough walls.
I reached the village of Prudhomat just as the storm burst over it,
and took shelter in a small inn, which, like most of those in the
country, had its room for the public upstairs. Two women who were
there made the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed--a
widespread custom of the French peasantry; but a couple of men who
were eating salad and bread paid no heed to the furious cannonade that
was kept up by the darkened heavens. It was four o'clock, and they
were having their _goûter_. The peasants of the Quercy do not live on
the fat of the land; but they generally have five meals a day, two
more than the middle-class French. They begin with soup at a very
early hour in the morning; then they have their dinner about ten,
which is chiefly soup; at three or four they have a _goûter_ of bread
and cheese, salad or fruit; and at six or seven they have their
supper, which is soup again.
The old woman who sat near the window worked diligently with her
distaff laden with hemp, except when the flashing lightning made her
stop to raise her thin hand to her forehead. She was twisting the
thread from which the sheets of the country are made. They are coarse,
but they last longer than the hands that work the hemp, and descend
from mother to daughter.
More than two hours I waited in this auberge while the rain fell in
torrents, the lightning blazed, and the thunder crashed. The whole sky
was the colour of slate. When at length a line of bright light
appeared in the western sky, I could curb my impatience no longer,
and, hoisting my pack, I was soon on the road to Carennac.