Some miles of forest, then cultivated slopes, and at length the Dordogne
again. I was growing rather weary of searching for the mediaeval town of
Domme, when I recognised it by its old ramparts upon the summit of a high
bare hill, which looked very forbidding indeed where it changed to rock,
whose naked escarpments seemed to float as inaccessible as a cloud in the
blue air far above the valley. As I climbed the shadeless stony hill in the
mid-day sun-glare, I thought that if the soldiers of five or six centuries
ago used strong language as they toiled up here in their heavy armour, it
was excusable. I was wellnigh repenting of my resolution to reach Domme,
when, by a turn of the road, I found myself not many yards in front of a
fortified gateway of the fourteenth century, with a drumtower on each side
connected by a curtain with the ramparts. At first glance nothing seemed to
be wanting. The towers, however, were ruinous in the upper part, and the
battlements had disappeared.
With the help of a local pork-butcher, who kept the key, I was able to
enter the towers of this gateway. In each was a guard-room of considerable
size, and the men-at-arms while on duty there evidently found that in time
of peace the hours lagged, for some of them had carved upon the wall with
their knives or daggers crucifixes and representations of the Virgin and
Child, all closely imitated from church sculpture, painting or window
decoration of the Gothic period.
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