comprenais pas français, you.' You_ did not apply to me, but to
himself, for it means _I_ in the Southern dialect.

Here was a boy unable to speak French, although all children in France
are now supposed to be educated in the official language of the
republic. Such cases are uncommon. In the Haut-Quercy, where _patois_
is the language of everybody, even in the towns, one soon learns the
advantage of asking the young for the information that one may need.

I found the road I wanted, and also the spot marked on the map as the
Saut de la Pucelle. It is one of those numerous _gouffres_ to be found
in the Quercy, especially in the district of the Dordogne.

Here a stream plunges beneath the surface of the earth to join the
subterranean Ouysse, or the Dordogne. A ravine, sinking rapidly,
becomes a deep, dark, and gloomy gully, at the end of which is a wall
of rock. The stream pours down a tunnel-like passage, at the base of
the rock, with a melancholy wail. Where the sides are not too steep
they are covered with trees and shrubs.

As I stood amidst the poisonous dog-mercury, under the hanging ivy and
the hart's-tongue ferns, watching the stream glitter on the edge of
everlasting darkness, and listening to its death-dirge, I pictured
awful shadows issuing from the infernal passage and seizing the
terror-stricken ghost of the guilty horseman, of whom I had heard from
a local legend.

This legend, as it is commonly told, is briefly as follows: Centuries
ago a virtuous young woman was persecuted by the lord of a
neighbouring castle, who was not at all virtuous. One day, when she