’Reine puissante, Mere d’Amour,
Sois-nous compatissante,
O Vierge d’Amadour!’

It is now the vigil of All Souls—­the ‘Day of the Dead.’  No more pilgrims come to Roc-Amadour.  A breeze would send the sapless walnut-leaves whirling through the air, but there is no breeze; Nature seems to hold her breath as she thinks of the dead whom she has gathered to her earthy breast.  At sundown the people creep out of their houses silently and solemnly; they meet at the bottom of the steps, and when they are joined by the clergy and choirboys, all move slowly upward, praying for the dead and kneeling upon each step.  As their forms seen sideways show against the dusky sky, they look like shadows from the ghostly world, and still more so when the rocks on the other side of the gorge brighten again, as with the blood of the pomegranate made luminous, and through the air there spreads a beautiful solemn light that is tenderly yet deeply sad, and which adds something unearthly, something that cannot be named, to the ascending figures.

As the dusk deepens to darkness the funereal glas begins to moan from St. Saviour’s Church.  Two bells are rung together so as to make as nearly as possible one clash of sound.  At first it is a moan, but it soon becomes a strident cry with a continuous under-wail.  At the Hospitalet on the hill the bell of the mortuary chapel is also tolling.  It is the bell of the dead who lie there in the stony burying-ground upon the edge of the wind-blown causse, calling upon the bells of Roc-Amadour to move the living to pity for those who have left the earth.

As I return to my cottage the dim street is quite deserted, and the arch of the ruined gateway, so often resounding with the voices that come from light hearts, is now as dark and silent as a grave.  For two hours the bells continue to cry in the darkness, from the church overhead and from the chapel by the tombs.  I can neither read nor write, but sit brooding over the fire on the hearth, piling on wood and sending tall flames and many sparks up the chimney; for that continuous undercry of the iron tongues, ’Pray for the dead! pray for the dead!’ fills the valley and seems to fill the world.  No fireside feeling can be kindled; it is wasting wood to throw it upon the hearth to-night, for that doleful wail penetrates everywhere:  even the demon that lurks at the bottom of Pomoyssin must shudder as he hears it.  When at length the bells stop swinging and their vibrations die away, a screech-owl flies close by the open gallery of the house, which we call a balcony, and startles me with its ghostly scream.