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 Lozère; 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 Thégra, 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,