serpent, which enwrapped him in its coils. Terrified, he screamed to
Sour to deliver him, which the hermit did, and the monster was at once
resolved into a bit of bacon. "Eat it," said the hermit, "and remember
that Charity is above all rules."

The description of the place so well accords with the Peuch that bears
his name, that I cannot doubt but that Sour occupied for some years the
cave high up in the cliff, and only to be reached by crawling to it
sideways, holding on to the rock by fingers and toes. But afterwards it
was greatly enlarged to serve as a place of retreat by the peasants of
the hamlet below. It consists of three groups of chambers cut in the
rock, one reached by a very long, forty-round ladder, when a chamber is
entered which has a hole in the roof through which, by another ladder,
one can mount to a whole series of chambers communicating one with
another. The face of some of these was originally walled up. A second
group is now inaccessible. A third is reached by climbing along the
face of the cliff, with fingers and toes placed in niches cut in the
cleft to receive them.

[Illustration: Beginning of a Gallery.]

[Illustration: The Pick employed.]

A recess at the foot of the crag, arched above, contains three
perpendicular grooves. This was the beginning of another artificial
cave, never completed, begun maybe in 1453 and suddenly abandoned, as
the glad tidings rang through the land that the English had abandoned
Aquitaine and that the Companies were disbanded.

At the Roc d'Aucor, in the valley of the Vers (Lot), a gaping cave is