When I met the valley of the Vers again the storm had passed far away; the evening rose was in the calm heaven, and the topmost oaks along the rocky ridge burnt like tapers upon a high altar of the vast temple whose roof is the vaulted sky.  Already the deep aisles were dim with gathering shadows.  When I reached the inn at Vers it was nearly dark, and after my day’s tramp I was very glad to exchange the outer gloom for the brightness of the cheery fireside and the warmth of the chimney-corner beside the redly glowing logs.

The next day brought me to the end of my long journey down the valley of the Lot, for I had decided to leave the country below Cahors until some future day.  I reached the city of Divona when the yellow glow of the autumnal rainy sunset was stealing up the ancient walls.

It is always with a certain dread that I say anything about history, because when I am once upon such high stilts I do not know when I shall be able to get down again.  Moreover, when one is so mounted, one has to step very judiciously, especially in a region like this, where the roads to knowledge are so roughly paved.  Nothing would be easier, however, than to fill a book with the history of Cahors, for the place, since the days of the Romans, has gone through such vicissitudes, and witnessed such stirring events, that those who wish to turn over the leaves of its past have abundant facilities for doing so; but it will be better for me to speak rather of what I have seen than what I have read.  Nevertheless, my impressions of this old town at the present day would be like salad without salt if no flavour of the past were put into them.

When, a mud-bespattered tramp, I came down the road by the winding Lot, and saw the pale golden light rising upon the walls of churches and towers high above me, I could not but think of some of the terrible scenes which, in the course of 2,000 years, were witnessed by the inhabitants of Cahors.  In the fast-falling twilight I saw the ghosts of the Vandals and Visigoths who helped to destroy the works of the Caesars, and passed onward to the unknown; of the Franks who burnt Cahors in the sixth century; of the Arab hordes, dabbled with blood, who afterwards came up from the South slaying, violating, plundering; of the English troops under Henry II. besieging and taking the town, accompanied by the Chancellor, Thomas-a-Becket; of the Albigenses and Catholics, who cut one another’s throats for the good of their souls; of the Huguenots and Catholics, who repeated these horrors in the sixteenth century for the same excellent reason; but of all these shadows, the most interesting and the most dramatic was that of Henry IV.  He was then Henry of Navarre, and the hope of the Protestants in the South, while Cahors was one of the strongholds of Catholicism.  What a feat of war was that capture of Cahors by Henry with only 1,400 men, after almost incessant fighting in the streets for five days and nights!  How