Every day I noticed a larger fleet of floating leaves upon the water, hurrying through the ever-curving valley, drifting over the golden reflections of other leaves that waited for the gust to cast them too upon the water; passing into the deep shadow of bridges whose arches resounded with mournful murmurs, riding the white foam of the weirs, whirling in the dark eddies beyond, gliding in the brown shade of vine-clad hills and under the beetling brows of solemn rocks, now mingling with the imaged dovecot with pigeons perched upon the red-tiled roof, now with the tracery of Gothic gables or the grim blackness of feudal walls splashed with fern and pellitory, now in a warm glow of dying summer, and now in the melancholy gray of wintry clouds heavy with rain. Away they went, the multitudinous leaves--children of the poplar, the willow, the fig-tree, and vine; some broad and clumsy like rafts or barges, others slender and graceful like little skiffs; all stained with some brilliant colour of autumn.
I had reckoned upon getting a mid-day meal at a village called Crégols on the opposite bank, but when I at length reached it I had another trial. The only place of public entertainment was an exceedingly dirty hovel that called itself a _café_, and the woman who kept it declared that she had no victuals of any sort in the house. This, of course, was not true, but it was a polite way of saying that she did not wish to be bothered with me. The wayfarer in the little-travelled districts of France must not expect to find in all his stopping-places a fowl ready to be placed on the spit for him. Had I obtained a meal at Crégols, I should have looked for some dolmens said to be in the neighbourhood, but failure in one respect spoilt my zeal in the other. I am afraid, moreover, that I only half appreciated the grandeur of some prodigious walls of rock which I passed in my rapid walk to the little town of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. It is deplorable to think how much the mind is influenced by internal circumstances which ought to have nothing to do with the spirit.
After climbing a steep wood where there were unripe medlars, I came in sight of a small burg, lying high above the Lot in a hollow of the hill. A fortress-like church towered far above the closely-packed red-tiled roofs sprinkled with dormer windows, and upon a still higher rock were the ruined walls of a castle. This was Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, a place no less quaint than its name. I was presently seated in a dimly-lighted back-room of an auberge, whose walls--built apparently for eternity--dated from the Middle Ages. The hostess, who, as I entered, was gossiping with some cronies in the dark doorway, while she pretended to twist the wool that she carried upon the most rustic of distaffs--a common forked stick--laid this down, and, blowing up the embers on the hearth, proceeded to cook some eggs _sur le plat_. This with bread, goat-cheese and walnuts, and an excellent wine of the district--the new vintage--made my lunch. The fact that there was no meat in the auberge reminded me that it was Friday.