from their world to this one. Presently, as we drew near
some high rocks, Decros, pointing to a dark hollow in the shadow of
them said, 'There it is.' We went down into the basin to the edge of
the water that lay there, black and still, Decros showing evident
reluctance and restlessness the while, so strongly was his mind
affected by all the stories he had heard about the pool. Moreover, it
was rapidly growing dusk. In this half-light the funnel in which we
were standing certainly did look a very diabolic and sinister hole.
The fancy aiding, everything partook of the supernatural: the dark
masses of brambles hanging from the rocks, the wild vines clinging to
them with leaves like flakes of deep-glowing crimson fire, and
especially the intermittent sound of gurgling water.

I was glad to have seen the Pomoyssin under circumstances so
favourable, but it was with relief that I left it and began to climb
the side of the gorge from this valley of dreadful shadows towards the
pure sky that reddened as the brown dusk deepened below.

IN THE VALLEY OF THE CELE.

It was a burning afternoon of late summer when I walked across the
stony hills which separate the valley of the Lot from that of its
tributary the Cele, between Capdenac and Figeac. I did not take the
road, but climbed the cliffs, trusting myself to chance and the torrid
_causse_. I wished that I had not done so when it was too late to act
differently. There was nothing new for me upon the bare hills, where
all vegetation was parched up except the juniper bushes and the
spurge. At length I found the road that went down with many a flourish
into the valley of the Cele, and I reached Figeac in the evening,
covered with dust, and as thirsty as a hunted stag. Here I took up my
quarters for awhile.

Figeac is not a beautiful town from the Haussmannesque point of
view--the one that is destined to prevail in all municipal councils;
but it is full of charm to the archaeologist and the lover of the
picturesque. There are few places even in France which have undergone
so little change during the last five or six hundred years. Elsewhere,
thirteenth and fourteenth century houses are becoming rare; here they
are numerous. There are streets almost entirely composed of them.
These streets are in reality narrow crooked lanes paved with pebbles,
slanting towards the gutter in the centre. Some are only three or four
yards wide, and the walls half shut out the light of day.