called St. Jean-Lespinasse. Another saint! The map of France is still
covered with the names of saints, in spite of all the efforts of
revolutionists and pagan reformers to make the people abandon their
'Christian superstitions.' Those who in the 'ages of faith' built up
this association of saints and places could have had no conception of
the power that these names would have in binding Christianity to the
soil in the faithless or doubting ages to come. The only inn at St.
Jean-Lespinasse was kept by a blacksmith, and the room where I had my
meal was over the forge. Bread and cheese and eggs were, as I
expected, the utmost that such a hostelry could offer in the way of
food for a wayfarer's entertainment. Before leaving the village I
found the church--a curious old structure of the Transition period,
with a large open porch covered with mossy tiles, held up by rough
pillars. There were stone benches inside, on which generations of
villagers had sat and gossiped in their turn. In the interior were
columns engaged in the wall of the nave, with the capitals elaborately
and heavily foliated with pendent bunches of flowers and fruit, much
more in accordance with English than French taste.

I crossed the Bave, and followed a road bordered with hedgerows of
quince that presently skirted sunny slopes covered with lately-planted
vines. Thunder was moaning and growling in the distance when I reached
the much-embowered village of Castelnau, upon a height immediately
under the reddish walls and towers of the immense feudal stronghold,
the fame of which went far and wide in the Middle Ages. Its name in
the Southern dialect means 'new castle,' but it dates from the
eleventh or twelfth century. Extensive additions were made in
subsequent ages, notably a wing in the Renaissance style, which was
inhabited until the middle of the present century, when all but the
walls was destroyed by fire.