the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.

[Illustration: LA ROCHE GAGEAC. A town and castles on the Dordogne,
never captured by the English, but afterwards sacked and ruined by the
Huguenots.]

[Illustration: LE PEUCH S. SOUR. A series of refuges in the face of the
cliff. Originally a place of retreat of S. Sour, a hermit.]


S. Sorus or Sour was a hermit, born about the year 500; he set off with
two companions, Amandus and Cyprian, to find a desert place where he
might take up his abode. I will quote from the Latin life. "All at once
in their wanderings they arrived at a place in the midst of vast
forests, and dens of wild beasts, a place so barren and abrupt, of
access so difficult, that surely no one had ever hitherto ventured to
reach it either to dwell there, or for pleasure, even to visit it for
curiosity. A rock very lofty furnished him above with a shelter that
sufficed; out of the flanks of the rock issued a spring and watered the
little valley that was on the other side surrounded by the Vezere."

I think that it was in the Peuch S. Sour that the hermit settled,
though afterwards through the favour of King Gontram he moved to lands
granted him at Terrasson. And now for a story. Here he resolved to live
alone, and here he parted with his companions. But before they
separated, "Let us have a love feast together," said he. But he had
with him only a bit of fat bacon. He divided it into three parts, and
gave a share to each of his companions. Now it was Lent, and one of
them was scandalized at the idea of eating bacon in Lent, so he put the
bit of meat into his bosom, where it was at once transformed into a