James of Spain cut out the imprisoned princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt gave our early bards many a poetic lesson; but I can imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry greenwood," and the joys of the "greenwood tree." As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray the reader to glance to the right, towards the summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by the name of the Black Mountains--a good "Mysteries of Udolpho" sort of title--and they form part of a range which separates the basin of the streams which descend to the north, and form the head waters of the Garonne, and those which descend to the south, and form the head waters of the Aude. Somewhere about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, attended by two labouring-looking men, who paid him great reverence. The little party toiled up and down in the hills, and frequently erected and gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy Mary!" said the peasants, "they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all!" For years and years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers haunt the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and down, climbing ridges, and plunging into valleys, and always seeming to seek something which they could not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching his thirst at a fountain. The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought he was going to be murdered, and screamed out; but a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What fountain is this?" "The fountain of the Greve," said the boy. "And it runs both ways along the ridge of the hill?" "Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes north, and half goes south--any fool knows that." "And I only discovered it now. Thank God!" We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of the fountain of the Greve, was, when we arrive at Beziers. Meantime the reader may be astonished that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees, a week or two later in the season brought me into a region of dry parched land, the sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight--the sun glaringly hot, and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores of the skin. But we have left the mist-gathering and rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered the "austere South," where the sky for months and months is cloudless as in Arabia--where, at the season I traversed it, the sun being hot by day does not prevent the frost from being keen at night; and where the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with knives; while in every sheltered spot the noon-day heat bakes and scorches it. But such is Languedoc.