of the cavern.  It would be just possible, by crouching down in a little boat, to pass under the rock, which is probably no insuperable obstacle.  The roof is just as likely to form a high vault on one side of it as on the other.  The water is the serious obstacle; but it is safe to say, from the character of the formation, that the deep pool does not extend very far.  A peculiarity of these underground streams of the causses is that they generally form a chain of pools.

If a shepherd-boy really lost his life in this cavern, he must have done so by trying to pass the pool, unless he was washed into it by a sudden rush of water after a heavy storm.  It must be confessed that the spot is calculated to fill one with superstitious dread.  The calm of the deep water into which the stream glides makes it quite easy to imagine, with the help of the surroundings, that there is an evil spirit lurking in it—­perhaps that of the wicked Pehautier whom the demons dragged down here.  I had another grim thought:  Supposing this water, in obedience to some pressure elsewhere, should rise suddenly and flood the lower part of the cavern!  There is no knowing what tricks water may play in this fantastic region, where the tendency of rivers is to flow underground, and where one gallery may be connected with a ramification of water-courses extending over many miles of country, and with reservoirs which empty themselves periodically by means of natural syphons.  There is a world full of marvels under the causses of the Lot, the Aveyron, and the Lozere; but although much more will be known about it, a vast deal will remain for ever hidden from man.

I will now return to my wayfaring across the Causse de Gramat in the early summer.

I had passed through the village of Alvignac—­a little watering-place that draws all the profit it can from a ferruginous spring which rises at Miers hard by, but otherwise uninteresting, and had left on my right the village of Thegra, where the troubadour Hugues de St. Cyr was born, when suddenly the landscape struck me with the sentiment of England.  For some hours I had been walking chiefly over the stony causse, searching for a so-called castle that was not worth the trouble of finding.  I had seen spurge and juniper, and ribs of rock rising everywhere above the short turf, until I grew weary of the sameness.  Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree.  The blackbird’s low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling of the grasshoppers.

The little village of Padirac was entered at sundown.  The small inn where I chose my quarters for the night had a garden at the back, where vines in new leaf were trained, over a trellis from end to end.  There were also broad beans in flower, peas on sticks, currant-bushes, and pear-trees.  It was a quiet, green spot, and as I strolled about it in the twilight, vague recollections of other gardens chased one another, but it would have been hard to say whether they were pleasant or sad.  My dinner or supper was of sorrel soup and part of a goose that was killed the previous autumn, and, after being slightly salted, was preserved in grease.