It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the burning sun.  But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep.  To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight.  How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and, taking a carving-knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock’s head before the astonished bird had time to protest.  Having stopped the crowing and assured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent.

I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls.  All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless.  Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people.  The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the ‘number of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God.’  Near a great sundial are these solemn words:  ’Sol et luna faciunt quae precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino.’  The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable.  All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it.  It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the cathedral of Quimper.  As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own sex.

St. Affrique is a small town of about 7,000 inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards.  These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive.  According to the authors of ‘Gallia Christiana,’ a saint named Fricus, or Africus, came at the beginning of the sixth century into the valley of the Sorgues, and was the founder of the burg.  St. Affrique was a strong place in the Middle Ages, and for this reason it was disturbed less by the English than some other towns in the Rouergue.  After the treaty of Bretigny the consuls went to Millau and swore fealty to the King of England, represented there by John Chandos.

As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on the hill above the vineyards.  Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous.  The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, of which I took advantage, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander.