There was rain that night, and when morning came it had changed the face of the world.  The sun was shining again and warmly, but summer had gone and autumn had come.  Upon the rocky slopes the maples were on fire; in the valley the large leaves of the walnut-trees mimicked the sunshine, and by the river-side the tall poplars, as they bowed to the water deities, cast upon the mirror of many tones the image of a trembling golden leaf repeated beyond all power of numbering.  A little rain had been enough to produce this magical change.  It had opened the great feast of colour that brings the year to its gray, sad close.

But the sky was brilliantly blue when I left St. Pierre-Toirac.  The next village was Laroque-Toirac.  The houses were clustered near the foot of an escarped hill, where thinly-scattered pines relieved the glare of the naked limestone.  Upon a precipitous rock dominating the village is a castle, the lower works of which belong to the Feudal Ages, the upper to the Renaissance epoch—­a combination very frequent in this district.  The mullioned windows and the graceful balustrade, carried along a high archway, are in strong contrast to the stern and dark masonry of the feudal stronghold.  This picturesque incongruity reaches its climax in the lofty round tower upon which a dovecot has been grafted, whose extinguisher-roof, with long drooping eaves, is quite out of keeping with the machicolations which remain a little below the line of the embattled parapet that has disappeared.  The castle is now used for the schools of the commune, and a score or so of little boys and girls whom I met on my way up the rough path stared at me with much astonishment.  I climbed to a bastion of the outer works, where a fig-tree, growing from the old wall, and reaching above it, softened the horror of the precipice; for such it really was.  The masonry was a continuation of one of those walls of rock which give such a distinctive character:  to the geological formation of this region.  The village lay far below—­a broken surface of tiled roofs, sloping rapidly towards the Lot, itself a broad ribbon of many blended colours, winding through the sunlit plain.  The castle of Laroque belonged to the Cardaillac family.  In 1342 it was stormed and taken by Bertegot Lebret, captain of a strong company of English, who had established their headquarters at Grealou.

As I approached Montbrun, the next village, the rocks which hemmed in the valley became more boldly escarped.  In their lower part the beds of lias were shown with singular regularity.  Box and pines and sumach were the chief vegetation upon the stony slopes, where the scattered masses of dark-green foliage gave by contrast a whiter glitter to the stones.  Montbrun, like so many of the little towns and villages hereabouts, is built upon rocks immediately below a protecting stronghold, or, rather, what was one centuries ago.  The windows of some of the dwellings look out upon the sheer precipice.  The vine clambers over ruined houses and old walls built on to the rock, and seemingly a part of it.  Of the mediaeval castle little is left besides the keep.  The Marquis de Cadaillac, to whom it belonged, strengthened the fortifications with the hope that the stronghold would be able to resist any attack by the English; but it was nevertheless captured by them.