rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression
more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that
threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that has been
stretched out.

Most of the old houses are entered by Gothic doorways, and the oak
doors are studded with large nail-heads. The locks and bolts are of
mediaeval workmanship. Sometimes you see an iron ring hanging to a
string that has been passed through a hole in the door. It is just
such a string as Little Red Riding-hood (an old French fable,
by-the-bye) pulled to lift the latch at the summons of the wicked
wolf. And what a variety of ancient knockers have we here! Many are
mere bars of iron hanging to a ring; but others are much more
artistic, showing heads coifed in the style of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, serpents biting their own tails, and all manner
of fanciful ideas wrought into iron. In wandering about the dim old
streets, paved with cobble stones, architectural details of singular
interest strike one at every turn. Now it is the encorbelment of a
turret at the angle of a fifteenth or sixteenth century mansion that
has lost all its importance; now a dark archway with fantastic heads
grimacing from the wall; now an arcade of Gothic windows, with
graceful columns and delicate carvings--a beautiful fragment in the
midst of ruin.

What helps much to render these dingy streets, passages, and courts of
Figeac so delightfully picturesque is the vegetation which, growing
with southern luxuriance in places seemingly least favourable to it,
clings to the ancient masonry, or brightens it by the strong contrast
of its immediate neighbourhood in some little garden or balustraded
terrace. Wherever there are a few feet of ground some rough poles