hard as leather. I ate in a small room where there was a bed with a red
curtain. No knife was given me, for in these out-of-the-way inns you are
expected to carry your knife in your pocket, which a century ago was the
case in most of the French hostelries. In the remotely rural districts the
ways of life have changed very slightly in a hundred years. But, if
the knife was overlooked, the white napkin and small tablecloth were
remembered. While talking with the _aubergiste_ over the coffee--there was
really some coffee here that was not made either from acorns or beans--he
told me, as an example of the low rate of wages in the district, that a
road--mender, who worked in all weathers, was paid forty francs a month.
In the whole commune there were only two or three persons who had wine in
their houses. He lent me his two sons--the _seminariste_ and his young
brother--to walk with me as far as the Luxege, and put me on the path to La
Page, at which village I proposed to pass the night.

As we left, a grand expanse of chestnut forest came into view, following
the hills that bordered the curved line of the Luxege. The little river,
like all the tributaries of the upper Dordogne, runs at the bottom of a
deep gorge. Standing upon the brink of it, I perceived that I was about
to enter another sylvan solitude of enchanting beauty. The dense forest
descended the abrupt escarpments to the channel and hid the stream, and
over the leafy masses was that play of sunshine, shadow, and thin vapour
which I had so often watched in a dreamily joyous mood lying at the foot of
some pine in the Vosges.

About half-way down the gorge was a ruinous Romanesque chapel upon a rock,
the polygonal apse being on the very edge of a precipice. At each exterior
angle of the imperfect polygon was a column with a cubiform capital. The
interior was all dilapidated; the floor of the sanctuary had fallen in, but
the altar-stone--a block of granite--remained in its place. This chapel