Although the Germans in 1870-71 did not show themselves in Guyenne, the resentment of the inhabitants towards them is intense, and it is the vivacity of this feeling that renders them so suspicious of foreigners.  I noticed, however, that as I went farther down the Lot the people became more genial, so that the long evenings in the rural inns generally passed very pleasantly.  Dinner over, I usually took possession of a chimney-corner, the only place where one can be really warm on autumnal nights, and while satisfying the curiosity of the rustic intelligence concerning the English and their ways I gathered much information that was useful to me respecting local customs and the caverns, castles and legends of the district where I happened to be.  By nine o’clock everybody was yawning, and if the village blacksmith, the postman, and the bell-ringer had not left by that time, they were in an unusually dissipated frame of mind.  By ten o’clock the great kitchen was dark, and the mice were making up a quadrille upon the hearth, supposing no cat to be looking on.

Early the next morning I was climbing the hill towards the Castle of Cenevieres.  This building is a most picturesque jumble of the castellated styles of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.  The oldest part of the structure—­and it is very considerable—­is that of a frowning feudal fortress of great strength, built upon a rock, which on the side of the Lot is a perpendicular wall some 200 feet high.  The inhabitants agree in saying that the feudal walls are the work of the English, but they are probably in error.  The original castle belonged to Waifre.  It afterwards passed to the Gourdon family, who doubtless rebuilt it upon the old foundations.  The last descendant of this family was one of the most ardent Huguenots in the Quercy.  The late Gothic superstructure, which is still inhabited, has a very high-pitched roof, with dormer windows covered by high gables with elaborate carvings.  Very near this castle, in the side of the cliff, is a fortified cavern, which for centuries has gone by the name of La Grotte des Anglais.  It must have been in communication with the castle, of which it may have served as an outwork or a place of refuge in the last extremity.  I might have passed the whole day trying to find it but for the help of a peasant, who led the way down the rocks, hanging on to bushes of box.  The remains of a small tower, pierced with loopholes on one side of the opening, and the other ruined masonry, leave no doubt as to the defensive use to which this cavern was at one time put.