I was again on the banks of this beautiful river—­at no place more beautiful than at Entraygues—­when the rising sun was gilding only the topmost vines of the high western hill that shadows it.  The little town of 2,000 inhabitants is close to the spot where the Thuyere falls into the Lot.  It lies in the angle where two lovely valleys meet.  The Thuyere comes down from the Cantal mountains, and as it reaches Entraygues it spreads out over a broad smooth bed of pebbles, its water as clear as rock-crystal; and when the morning sun looks down upon it over the vine-clad hills, it is like something that has been seen in the happiest of dreams.  There is a castle at Entraygues, and, as in the case of the one at Estaing, it is now used as a convent and school.  The archaeologist will find perhaps more to interest him in the two thirteenth-century bridges which span the Lot and the Thuyere, both noble specimens of Gothic work.

As I left Entraygues the bells in the church-tower were ringing—­not the monotonous ding-dong with which French people generally have had to content themselves since the Revolutionists turned the old bell-metal into sous, but a blithe and joyous peal of high silvery tones that seemed to belong to the blue air, and to be the voices of the little spirits that flutter about the morning’s rosy veil.  My design was to reach the abbey of Conques before evening, but instead of going directly towards it over the hills, I preferred to keep as long as possible in the valley of the Lot, which is here of such witching loveliness.  As there was a road on the river-bank for many miles, I could follow this fancy, and yet feel the comfort of walking on good ground.  Although the season was getting late, I found the valley below Entraygues very rich in flowers.  Agrimony, mint, and marjoram, with a tall inula, and the pretty, sweet-scented white melilot, were in great abundance along the bank.  Upon the rocks, which now bordered the road, were the deep red blossoms of the orpine sedum, and a small crimson-flowered stock with very hoary stem.  A tall handsome plant about three feet high, with large white flowers, drew me down a bank to where it was growing near the water.  I found that it was a very luxuriant specimen of the thorn-apple (datura).  While I was admiring its poisonous beauty a woman stopped on the road just above me, and, after contemplating me in silent curiosity for a few minutes, said to me first in patois and then in French (when I replied to her in this language): 

’It is a wicked plant, that!  The beasts will not touch it, so you had better leave it alone.’