Tourmento. Now, as Caesar made so much use of _tormenta_ as engines of war,
to prevent the besieged Cadurci from drawing water, something may easily
have occurred to associate the stream with one of these machines. It is to
be observed, however, that there are other streams in France to which the
name Tourmente has been given, and of which the explanation is much more
simple.

[Illustration: A PEASANT OF THE CAUSSE.]

How solemnly still seemed this spectre-haunted spot in the quiet evening!
There was the groaning murmur of the stream flowing down its subterranean
passage, and there was the low and fitful warble of a nightingale; but this
was all. Who, passing by here without foreknowledge, would suppose that on
this bit of desert the great struggle between Rome and Gaul was brought
to a close? What a wonderful thing is a book, that it should preserve age
after age, with undiminished reality, all the torment, anguish, and passion
of a siege, and give a human interest to rocks and streams, which without
such aid would tell us nothing of the horrid tumult that raged over and
around them! Now I can see the half-naked Gauls rolling down their barrels
of flaming pitch upon the Roman engineers, and hear that great clamour
of the besiegers and the besieged of which Caesar speaks. Above were the
Celtic heroes defending their last rock with the obstinacy of despair, and
ready to accept death in any form but that of thirst; and here were the
veteran legionaries exposing themselves day after day to the burning pitch,
the stones, and the arrows of the defenders, with that disciplined courage
and unwavering resolve to conquer which made Rome the mistress of the
world. But the most terrible scene must have been that in which the Gaulish
warriors, after their surrender, had their hands cut off. What frightful
business was that, and what a heap of hands must have been buried
somewhere, either upon the table-land or in the valley! A deep-ploughing