to see if anything more enduring than man had been left there, but that he found nothing but very fine dust.  Every bone had become powder.  This priest was a companionable man, and he must have looked upon me with a less suspicious eye than most people hereabouts, for he invited me into his house to take a petit verre with him.  But the sun was getting near the end of his journey, and I had to fare on foot to the next village; so I thought it better to decline the offer.

The next village was St. Pierre-Toirac, also built upon the hillside above the Lot.  It is a larger place than Frontenac, and must have been of considerable importance in the Middle Ages, to judge from its fortified church, whose high gloomy walls give it the appearance of a veritable stronghold.  Some of the inhabitants say that it was built by the English, but the architecture does not indicate that such was the case.  The interior is a beautiful example of the Romanesque style.  The capitals of the columns are fit to serve as models, so strongly typical are the designs, and so exquisite is their workmanship.  It is probable that the walls of the church were raised, and that it was turned into a fortress during the religious wars of the thirteenth century between Catholics and Albigenses, which explain the existence of so many fortified churches in Languedoc and Guyenne, as well as so many ruins.

I had reached this church by an old archway, whose origin was evidently defensive, and crossing the dim and silent square, surrounded by mediaeval houses, some half ruinous, and all more or less adorned with pellitory, ivy-linaria, and other wall-plants which had fixed their roots between the gaping stones.  I passed through another archway, and stopped at a terrace belonging to a ruined chateau or country-house.  Here I was looking at the valley of the Lot in the warm after-glow of sunset, when an elderly gentleman came up to me and disturbed my contemplative mood by asking me not very courteously if I wanted to see anybody.  I was somewhat taken aback to find such an important-looking person in such a dilapidated place.  I tried, however, not to appear too much overcome, and explained that it was only with the intention of seeing the picturesque that I had found my way to that ruinous spot.  The agreeable person who had questioned me now let me understand that it was his spot, and informed me that nobody was allowed to see it ‘sans etre presente.’  Then, looking at me very fiercely, he said: 

‘Are you an Englishman or a German?’

‘An Englishman,’ I replied, whereupon his ferocious expression relaxed considerably, but he did not become genial.

I retired from his ruin considerably disgusted with its owner, who contrasted badly with all Frenchmen in his social position whom I had previously met.  I asked a woman who he was, and she replied that all she knew about him was that he was an ‘espece de noble.’  Her cruelty was unintentional.  The next morning I learnt from an old Crimean soldier, who knew I was English because he had drained many a glass with my fellow-countrymen, that the magnates of the village had held a consultation overnight upon the advisability of coming down upon me in a body and asking me for my papers.  Nothing came of it, which was well for me, for I had come away without my papers.