'Not a small number.'

'Do you make cheese?'

'Yes.'

'For sale?'

'No.'

'Do you make the _liqueur?_'

'Oh no.'

He would have allowed me to leave with the impression that the Carthusians
of Vauclaire did nothing beyond observing the canonical hours; but I learnt
from the peasants of the country that, like the Trappists, they laboured
industriously in clearing and draining the desert.

My walk across the Double ended at Montpont, a small agricultural centre on
the banks of the Isle, offering no charm to the traveller, unless he be a
commercial one. It was a little fortified town of some importance in the
Middle Ages. In 1370 the Bretons in garrison at Perigueux besieged it, and
it was surrendered without a struggle by the baron, Guillaume de Montpont,
an English partisan. The Duke of Lancaster then hurried up and besieged the
place with one hundred men-at-arms and five hundred archers. For eleven
weeks the little band of Bretons held out, but a breach having been made in
the wall, Montpont again fell into the power of the English.