Lot, as we have seen, nearly encompassing the city. In this respect, by the way, it resembles Besançon— the Vescontio of Cæsar-which the river Doubs in like manner curiously circumvents on three sides.

To Cahors, again, the old city by the Lot, and seat of the Cadurci, journeyed the youthful Fénelon in the year 1663, when, at the early age of twelve, he was sent from his native Castle of Fénelon in Périgord to pursue his studies at the university for which the capital of Quercy was then noted. Nor can Cahors be said to lie altogether outside the pale of modern, and even current history, inasmuch as the foremost politician in France-the recently elected President of the Assembly is a native not only of Guienne, but of Cahors, where his father settled and married, after leaving behind him an Italian sky and home, where several of the great ex-Dictator's family yet abide.

Returning once more to Figeac, and there leaving the slow but quiet locomotion of the country diligence, with its time-honoured series of compartments-chariot in front, omnibus behind, and cabriolet overhead-whence one may make leisurely acquaintance with 'green fields and pastures new,' let us perforce again take to the dead level of the railroad and its crowd of busy passengers. Some three or four miles south-east of Figeac the train,

taking leave of the cliffs and crags of Quercy, glides across the Lot, and thus passes into Rouergue, coming almost immediately afterwards to a stop at the station of Capdenac. This is an important Junction where lines converge from the four points of the compass from Périgueux westwards, Cler... mont northwards, Toulouse on the south, and Rodez in the east. But although the railway station stands on the Rouergue side of the stream, it behoves anyone who may be bound (like the author of these notes) for Capdenac itself, to turn back again into Quercy, crossing for that purpose a handsome suspension bridge over the Lot, and then climbing a steep, rocky hill crowned by the clustering tenements one is in quest of. Taken in the aggregate these form an antique, straggling bourg or large village, containing a pretty little church, with a good deal of painted glass, whose glaring brilliancy however is more patent than its artistic excellence, yet withal bright and cheerful. Hard by, contributing an old-world colouring to the whole scene, is a grim feudal keep, its seignorial character being now merged in that of a prisonhouse for malefactors.

The narrow, stony, crooked alley which you enter after completing the sharp ascent of the hillside, and which seems to be the main street, shows two or three tiny shops; and just where this rough

paved lane debouches upon the open space in front of church and keep, stands what looked like the parsonage, near to which was a cleric in cassock and sash, broad-brimmed hat and bands—a veritable mediæval figure amid mediæval surroundings. Beside the rambling piazza, with church at one end and castle at the other, the usual village café made itself conspicuous by an inscription. Passing within, however, it proved deserted; nor could any energy of summons draw forth a response. Just as the would-be customer was retiring, a passer-by offered to go in quest of 'le patron,' whose deputy quickly entered an appearance in the form of a girl, who with few words but nimble fingers kindled a fire wherewith to boil some coffee, of which she was good enough to hand the stranger a cup, strong and black, together with a hunch of coarse bread served on the bare board.

From the lofty plateau occupied by the village of Capdenac one gets a fine view over the broad, placid surface of the Lot at foot, and, beyond it, over Rouergue to the east. Surveying the prospect, a sufficiently marked contrast is presented to the mind as the eye falls from this stronghold of former days upon the busy railway station a few hundred yards on the far side of the river. The contrast, that is, between the rude days of the Julian Cæsar (who first in history names the Cadurci and Ruteni, the

progenitors of the men of Quercy and Rouergue); the less rude yet still rough and cruel days of Henry IV of France; and the more humane, if not too robust age in which our own lines are cast. The difference, indeed, between the barbarities committed and recorded by Cæsar as matter of course, half a century before the Christian era, and those in which Sully owns to a share in the sixteenth century, is, in some respects, a measure of the progress made by our race during sixteen hundred years. That progress, judged by this standard, had been sure if slow, notwithstanding that it left a vast deal yet to be desired.

Descending from the ancient feudal fastness of Capdenac, perched on a cliff overlooking the Lot, one crosses the river again by the bridge of chains, and approaches the considerable but quiet station. on the low-lying ground beyond.

Pacing the ample gravel platform, it was a fine sight to watch the train emerging from the west out of the rocky defiles of Quercy, which impend sheer and sharp over the Lot, and then, gliding smoothly and strongly over the railway bridge, draw up some three or four hundred yards within the confines of Rouergue. Thus the station being on the eastern bank of the boundary stream is in one province, while the village which gives name to it-Capdenac-stands high aloft in another, looking

down with its castle like a mountain stronghold of yore, alike upon modern railroad and nature's waterway.

Between Capdenac, then, and the station the river flows in a southerly direction towards Cahors. One of the leading streams of central France, it lends its name to two contiguous departments, those of the Lot and the Lot-et-Garonne, the former being in all respects synonymous with the province of Quercy. Rising in the county of Gévaudan, east of Rouergue, it spans the breadth of the latter province, winding ever westward through a splendid highland country, and splashing on its way the walls of Espalion, chief town of the arrondissement of that name. It is fed in this upper part of its course by numerous tributaries; for, besides the Celle and the Dourdou, several considerable feeders from the mountainous region of Auvergne, on the north, swell its waters, whose volume is further augmented by many a rivulet from the south, which, with its source hidden away among the gorges of Rouergue, empties its noisy torrent into the broader bed of the Lot. Flowing now towards the southwest, it crosses Quercy, and then traversing the diminutive county of Agenais, joins the beautiful and song-famed Garonne. Ranking among the great watercourses of France, the Garonne is beyond question the principal river of Guienne, as