rebelled in 1369, and the town became again French. Speaking of this event,
Tarde observes:

'And behold how and when the salamander [Footnote: This reptile was borne
in the arms of Sarlat.] was again placed under the three fleurs-de-lys,
having carried the leopards in chief only eight years two months and a
half.'

The people of Sarlat often boast that their town never submitted to the
English. In this matter, however, they are in error.

September came, and I was still at Beynac, although I had found another
house. The fruit season was then at its height. Peaches were sold at three
sous the dozen, a good melon cost about the same sum, and figs were to be
had almost for nothing. On these terms quite a mountain of fruit could be
placed upon the table for half a franc. There was often no necessity to run
into this extravagance, for the people at Beynac are good-natured, and they
would frequently send a basket of their earliest grapes or other fruit.
Although the present might have been made by a woman with bare feet, her
feelings would have been hurt had money been offered in return.

One day rather late in the month, having grown ashamed of inactivity, I
carried my knapsack down to the river and put it into the Otter's smallest
boat, which he called the _perissoire_, although it was not really a canoe.
He was the chief builder of it, and as a contrivance for bringing home
to man the solemn truth that life hangs to a thread or floats upon a
plank--perhaps the worst state of the two--it certainly did him infinite
credit. It was a flatbottomed outrigged deal boat, very long, and so narrow
that to look over one's shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme delicacy,
especially where the rapids caused the water to be in wild commotion. I was