The bold front of an early Renaissance castle, with round towers at the angles, capped with pointed roofs, drew me from the highroad.  It was the Chateau de Montal, in connection with which I had already heard the story of one Rose de Montal, a young lady of some three centuries ago, who had given her heart to a nobleman of the country, Roger de Castelnau.  By-and-by the charms of another lady caused him to neglect the fair Rose de Montal.  She remained almost constantly at a window of one of the towers, scanning the country, and longing to catch sight of the faithless Roger.  One day he came down the valley of the Bave, and she sang from the height of her tower a plaintive love-song, hoping that he would stop and make some sign; but he passed on, unmoved by the tender appeal of the noble damsel.  As he disappeared, she cried, ‘Rose, plus d’espoir!’ and threw herself from the window.

The metayer, now placed in charge of the castle, showed me over it.  It was a sad spectacle.  The building, one of the best preserved and most elaborately decorated works of the Renaissance in this part of Guyenne until a few years ago, then fell into the hands of a vulgar speculator, who detached all the carvings that could be removed without difficulty, and sold them in Paris.  The noble staircase and all its delicate sculpture remain, but these only add to the regret that one feels for what is no longer there.  Had the Commission of Historic Monuments placed the Chateau de Montal upon its list, it would probably have escaped spoliation, although, in the case of private property, the State has no power to prevent destruction, however grievous the national loss.

I entered St. Cere at sundown.  This bright little town lies in the midst of fertility.  It is on the banks of the Bave, and at the foot of a hill that rises abruptly from the plain, and is capped by two towers of a ruined feudal stronghold, which show against the horizon far into the Quercy, the Correze, and the Cantal.  Some of the old streets have quite a mediaeval air, with their half-wood houses with stories projecting upon the floor-joists, and others of a grander origin with turrets resting on encorbelments.  I had the luck to find a good old-fashioned inn here, and to pass the evening in very pleasant company.

The next morning I climbed to the top of the neighbouring hill to have a closer view of those towers which had been my landmarks on the previous day, passing through the little village of St. Laurent-les-Tours, which lies immediately under the old fortress after the manner of so many others of feudal origin.  The towers are rectangular donjons of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, one being nearly a hundred and fifty feet high.  The castle was raised upon a table of calcareous rock; but only the towers, a portion of the outer wall built of enormous blocks of stone, and a ruined archway marking the spot where the drawbridge once hung, remain to tell the tale of the past.