but with mean and sordid fingers; and the result was pitifully dreary. It made our hearts ache. The very people we saw in the streets looked pallid and hopeless, like people going down the hill. Such a town, so desolate, so moribund, does not exist, thank heaven, in our more populous England. Yet in our way we enjoyed it. We gloated with something of the zest of ghouls over its decay, until having cloyed our souls with sadness, we got hurriedly away into the sunshine and the fields, where the patient, fawn-colored oxen were dragging the plough, and the countryman stood leaning on his goad to see us pass between the rows of poplars. No doubt he thought us mad to be toiling out of St. Marie with our faces set countrywards, when no great distance off lay the railway, which would take us in a few hours to Bordeaux, to the delights of café and boulevard. "Oh! but they are droll, these English!" Any one leaving St. Marie must remark a singular, conical hill which rises abruptly from the plain before him. It is topped by a wooden steeple, while the dark outlines of walls and towers form a crown about its summit, and a row of cypresses rising solemnly above the lower buildings impart something of mystery to the place. It seemed to me like nothing so much as Mont St. Michel. In vain we ransacked our guide books. We could find no word of this fortress town which looked down on road and river; only in our map we discovered that its name was Clermont Dessus. Nothing daunted, however, we discovered a field path, and, climbing the hill, passed through a ruined gateway into the silence of the place. On three sides the walls were yet fairly perfect, and within them stood some fifty houses, many in ruins, more empty, a few inhabited. The floor of one was on a level with the roof of another, and the only means of access was by steep, tortuous alleys. The church had been partially restored, but was old and still bore marks of violent usage. The graveyard on a terrace displayed twenty-four cypresses, and an ancient stone cross. Above all this rose the ruins of a castle, smaller than that at La Réole and with traces of more recent occupation. Woodwork and iron still remained adhering to the walls. What, we wondered, had been its history. A few women and children were the only human creatures it held, and we could gather nothing from them save that it belonged, or had belonged, to the "Seigneur." For our climb, however, we felt amply rewarded by the view over the valley of the Garonne, and so ran quickly down the hill and stepped out stubbornly for Agen, which we reached after twice losing our way through a too ardent desire to cling to a pleasant green path by the river. It was dark when, footsore and tired, we gained the principal street; and we failed to discover our hotel. "Would you direct us to the Hôtel de St. Jean?" I asked a decent-looking man who was passing.