harbour, that feed on ghostly moths which flit in the pitch darkness,
and when caught between the fingers resolve themselves into a trace of
silver dust. But on what did these spectral moths feed? A pallid boy of
sixteen who guided me about the town told me that he had been born in a
cave; that he slept in one every night, and worked underground all day.
His large brown eyes could see objects in the dark where all was of
inky blackness to me. It is astonishing with what unconcern mites of
children romp and ramble through these corridors, where there is danger
not only on account of pitfalls, but also of the roof falling in. Where
I went, guided by a child of ten, every now and then I was warned--
"Prenez garde, c'est ecroule."

The town--it was a town once, but now contains 783 inhabitants only--is
partly built at the foot of the bluff, but very few houses are without
excavated chambers, store-places or stables. The cafe looks ordinary
enough, but enter, and you find yourself in a dungeon. There is but one
street--La Grande Rue--and that has space and landscape on one side,
and houses built against and into the rock on the other. A notice at
the entrance to the street warns that no heavy traffic, not much above
the weight of a perambulator, is permitted to pass along it, for the
roadway runs over the tops of houses. A waggon might crash through into
the chamber of a bedridden beldame, and a motor be precipitated
downwards to salt the soup of a wife stirring it for her husband's
supper. At Troo chimneys bristle everywhere, making the hill resemble a
pin-cushion or a piece of larded veal. There are in the depth of the
hill wells, and to these mothers fearlessly despatch their children to
fill a pitcher, as often as not without a light.

Many of the cave-dwellings have but a ledge a few feet wide, and
perhaps only a dozen or twenty feet long before their doors, and at the