Roc Amadour is in the diocese of Cahors, which is a picturesque old town built on and around a cliff in a bend of the river Lot. It is quite worthy of a passing glance and has its historic memories. In ancient times it bore so imposing an appearance that one of its historians pretends Cæsar, when he came in sight of it, could not help exclaiming in his astonishment: “Behold a second Rome!” In the middle ages, if we are to believe Dante, it was notorious as a city of usurers. He ranks it with Sodom; but perhaps this was owing to his strong Italian prejudices against the French popes, for at Cahors was born John XXII., whom he severely consigns to ignominy. We are shown the castle where this pope passed his childhood, at one edge of the town. Passing by the university, we are reminded by a statue of Fénelon, in the centre of a square called by his name, that he was once a student here. There is likewise a street named after Clement Marot, whose version of the Psalms became so popular among the Huguenots. He was born at Cahors, and is now regarded as one of its chief celebrities, though not tolerated in the place in the latter part of his life from a suspicion of heresy, then almost synonymous with treason, which caused him to be imprisoned in the Châtelet. He thus protested against the accusation: “Point ne suis Lutheriste, Ne Zuinglien, et moins Anabaptiste, Bref, celui suis qui croit, honore et prise La saincte, vraye, et Catholique Eglise.”[6] Though released, he was obliged to take refuge in Geneva on account of the use of his paraphrase of the Psalms in the conventicles, but there he was convicted of misdemeanors, and, by Calvin’s orders, ridden on an ass and sent out of the city. Neither fish nor flesh, he now sought an asylum in Italy—“the inn of every grief,” as Dante calls it—and died at Turin in 1546.