the method so much practised by the Romans, and known as _opus
reticulatum_. Moreover, the coins, pottery, and arms found here seem
to afford conclusive proof that this remarkable hill was one of the
fortified positions of the Romans in Gaul.

The spot has its Christian legend, which is briefly this: In the
castle that crowned the height in the time of the Visigoth kings was
born St. Esperie, daughter of a Duke of Aquitaine. Being pressed to
marry, notwithstanding the vow she had made to consecrate her life to
God, she hid herself in a neighbouring forest for three months. She
was at length discovered by her enraged brother and lover, who cut off
her head. Like St. Denis, St. Esperie picked up her head, to the
unspeakable astonishment and dismay of her persecutors. They fled from
her, but she followed them as far as a little stream that flows into
the Bave at St. Cere. Esperie is a saint much venerated in the
Haut-Quercy. The church of St. Cere is dedicated to her, and the name
given to the town is supposed to be a corruption of Esperie.

From St. Cere I took the road to Castelnau-de-Bretenoux, returning for
some distance by the way I came. Inns being now very scarce in the
district, I decided to take my chance of lunch in a small village
called St. Jean-Lespinasse. Another saint! The map of France is still
covered with the names of saints, in spite of all the efforts of
revolutionists and pagan reformers to make the people abandon their
'Christian superstitions.' Those who in the 'ages of faith' built up
this association of saints and places could have had no conception of
the power that these names would have in binding Christianity to the
soil in the faithless or doubting ages to come. The only inn at St.
Jean-Lespinasse was kept by a blacksmith, and the room where I had my
meal was over the forge. Bread and cheese and eggs were, as I
expected, the utmost that such a hostelry could offer in the way of
food for a wayfarer's entertainment. Before leaving the village I
found the church--a curious old structure of the Transition period,
with a large open porch covered with mossy tiles, held up by rough
pillars. There were stone benches inside, on which generations of
villagers had sat and gossiped in their turn. In the interior were
columns engaged in the wall of the nave, with the capitals elaborately
and heavily foliated with pendent bunches of flowers and fruit, much
more in accordance with English than French tast