The Moors, surging northward from Spain, have left their impress in these fertile valleys that border the Vienne--an impress everywhere visible in the olive complexions and the costumes of the people, and audible in their language. The ethnologist is astonished at discovering so far to the North all the characteristics of a Spanish population. On fair-days, when the peasantry from a wide circuit are gathered on the Champ de Foires, one hears spoken a dialect incomprehensible to ordinary Frenchmen. It is a patois, a rolling, mellifluous brogue, much resembling the Gascon or the tongue spoken in the Basque provinces among the Pyrenees. Nor are the country-people the sole monopolists of this singular accent: the talk of most of the town-people is more or less tinctured with it. It is to the pure French what a good sweet Irish brogue is to the pure English. It is "Gascon"--and, after all, that is the only word that describes it--and you hear it spoken at every corner in Limoges, just as you meet everywhere swarthy faces, lustrous black eyes, raven hair and a marked dominance of the Southern type.
Limoges has had many masters. Charlemagne made a present of it to his son, Louis le Débonnaire. On another occasion, though the place is nearly two hundred miles inland, the Norman pirates came marching in and sacked it utterly. Louis the Stammerer, Carloman and Eudes were each in turn here crowned king of Aquitaine, and the last in 876 established the line of viscounts of Limoges, the last of whom, Henry of Navarre, reunited the domain to the crown of France. These viscounts inhabited from the thirteenth century the castle of Chalusset, about ten miles distant from the city. Its ruins are still interesting, and are a favorite resort for pleasure-parties. But still more frequently visited are the ruins of the castle of Chalus or Chabrol, where Richard C[oe]ur de Lion fell in 1199. A railway-ride of an hour to Bussière-Galand, and another hour by stage, bring the visitor there. The very spot on which Richard fell is pointed out, and even at this late day it is proposed to erect there a monument bearing this inscription:
ANNO DOMINI 1199, HIC TELUM LEMOGIÆ OCCIDIT LEONEM ANGLIÆ.
