where, when a few more miles were left behind, I came to La Roque-Gageac,
a village at the foot of high-reaching rocks of fantastic outline, not far
from the Dordogne. Many houses long ago seem to have climbed far up the
warm limestone under the shelter of cornice and canopy, fashioned by the
sculptor Time, braving all the storms of centuries, and the danger of being
hurled in fragments towards the valley by some falling crag.

In an open space, forming a little square, a man and a woman were holding
down a pig, one at each end of a board, where the animal had been stretched
out against its inclination, while a third person had the knife ready for
action. And the spot chosen for the execution was immediately in front of
a very old and interesting shrine, with gabled roof, surmounted by a rude
Gothic crucifix. I caught a glimpse of the pale statue and the flowers
before it; but only a glimpse, for the struggles of the doomed pig, and the
momentary expectation of seeing the red stream gush forth, made me turn
away. One sees much that is anything but poetical in the romantic land of
the troubadours.

Near this strikingly-picturesque village is a cave such as one might read
of in a story of fanciful adventure. It is in a rock beside the Dordogne,
where, the river rests in a deep pool. The entrance is under water, and it
can only be reached with safety by a good diver when, the sun shining at a
certain hour, and the light striking in a particular way, the passage into
the cavern is lit up. A boy had made the dive successfully not long before
my visit to this place, but he found so much to interest him in the cave
while it was lighted a little by the borrowed gleam from the water, that he
lingered there until, the sun moving on his course, the angle of refraction
suddenly changed. The child had not the courage to take a plunge into the
dark gulf, where there was no beacon to guide him, and where he might have
struck against the rock. He therefore remained the rest of the day and all