The valley of the Cele between Figeac and the junction of the little river with the Lot contains some of the most picturesque scenery to be found in the Quercy.  About ten miles below Figeac it becomes a gorge, which until past the middle of the present century was almost cut off from communication with neighbouring towns.  All the carrying was done on the backs of mules and donkeys; but since the road was made along the right bank of the Cele, these animals have been used less and less.  It is no uncommon thing, however, to see now a heavily-laden pack-mule coming up the valley to the Figeac fair.  It was in their rock-fortresses by the Cele that the English companies in Guyenne are said to have made their final resistance.  The long and sustained efforts which were needed to dislodge them from their almost inaccessible fastnesses will be understood by anyone who may go wayfaring like myself along the banks of this tributary of the Lot.

For the first two hours the walk was unexciting, for the valley was too wide and too cultivated to give much pleasure to the eye that looks for character in nature.  At the village of Corn there was a decided change.  Here lofty honeycombed rocks rose behind the houses that were built not very far above the stream, whose swiftness is supposed to have been the origin of its name.  Not one of the several caverns extends far into the cliff.  Their chief interest lies in the traditions with which they are associated.  In one of them the inhabitants of the little burg are said to have assembled in the Middle Ages to elect their consuls freely, and to escape possible annoyance from their lord, whose castle was on the opposite hill.  Another, still called the Citadel, was that in which they took refuge from the enemy, especially from the roving bands of armed men who made common cause with England.  In 1380 Bertrand de Bassoran, captain of an English company, captured Corn, and using this place as his point d’appui, he placed garrisons in the neighbouring burgs of Brengues, Sauliac, and Cabrerets.  He also compelled the consuls of Cajarc to treat with him.

After a hasty meal in a little inn where I had to be satisfied mainly with good intentions, I called upon the schoolmaster.  The poor man was spending most of his dinner-hour on the threshold of his small school-house amidst the rocks because some unruly or idle urchins were ‘kept in.’  How much pleasanter, I thought, it would have been for him to have produced in their case a wholesome cutaneous irritation, and set himself, as well as the young reprobates, free!  But the French law does not tolerate the corporal punishment of children nowadays, although the exasperated pedagogue cannot always resist the temptation of applying his ruler upon a bunch of grimy little knuckles.  This schoolmaster, although he was past the age of fifty and had grown corpulent, was still tied fast to the village schoolroom that was much too small to hold thirty children comfortably.