We are now in the region of the Causses; around us rise the spurs of Sauveterre and Sévérac. The scenery between Marvejols and Mende is grand; sombre, deep-green valleys, shut in by wide stretches of stupendous rocky wall, dark pinewoods, and brown wastes. Then evening closes in, and the rest is lost to us. As on my first visit to Mende, a year ago, I lose the romantic approach to this wonderfully placed little city. The Hôtel Manse, whither we now betake ourselves, is a great improvement on the other mentioned in my first chapter in matters of situation, sanitation, and comfort; the people are very civil and obliging in both. Here, however, we are not in the very heart of the stuffy, dirty, ill-kept town, but on the outskirts, looking on to suburban gardens and pleasant hills, with plenty of air to breathe. Our rooms are so spacious, well-furnished, and clean that once more we regret we cannot stay for weeks. Such quarters might indeed tempt many a tourist to idle away a month here. The people are well-mannered, affable, and strikingly handsome; and if the town requires an advanced ædileship, no one need see much of it. Abundance of excursions are to be made from Mende, and the prices of hotels are very moderate. At Millau we saw a drunken man, and in the streets of Mende one old woman came up to us begging an alms. I note these facts as we have so rarely encountered either drunkards or mendicants on our way. Strangers might naturally expect a somewhat low standard of morality in a department so isolated from the great French highways and social centres as that of the Lozère. The railway to Mende, as I have before mentioned, dates from a few years only; up till that time the little bishopric in the mountains would often be completely shut off from the outer world by the snow, the only link being the telegraphic wire. Nevertheless, an exceptional freedom from crime distinguishes the country, as may be gathered from the following statement in a French newspaper, dated August 29th, 1888. 'The opening of the assizes of the Lozère, which should have taken place on the 3rd of September, will now be unnecessary, the list of cases being _nil_.' What are called 'white sessions' (assises blanches), for the matter of that, are of no infrequent occurrence in the department of the Lozère, eminently an honest one. This is the second time that 'white sessions' have distinguished it during the present year.