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Updated: May 24, 2025
What helps much to render these dingy streets, passages, and courts of Figeac so delightfully picturesque is the vegetation which, growing with southern luxuriance in places seemingly least favourable to it, clings to the ancient masonry, or brightens it by the strong contrast of its immediate neighbourhood in some little garden or balustraded terrace.
A man of Figeac told me that since the vines had failed in the district the death-rate had diminished remarkably. 'Why? I asked. 'Why? replied he, with a sad smile, 'because in the happy times everybody drank wine at all hours of the day; but now, in these miserable times, nearly everybody drinks water.
I have been assured by a priest that they never think of confessing the lies that they tell in bartering, because they maintain that every man who buys ought to understand his business. I much wondered why, at a Figeac fair, when there was a question of buying a bullock, the animal's tail was pulled as though all his virtue were concentrated in this appendage.
That the lands suitable for wine-growing could be rendered remunerative is absolutely certain if those who undertook the task had the money necessary for the first outlay of planting and could afford to wait for the return. The valley of the Celé between Figeac and the junction of the little river with the Lot contains some of the most picturesque scenery to be found in the Quercy.
That of the fête-Dieu at Figeac would have been suppressed some years ago by the Municipal Council had it not been for the outcry of the tradespeople.
This river was also in the grip of the English. Below Figeac the limestone precipices first appear at Corn, and the cliff is full of caves in which there are remains of fortifications. The cliff is not beautiful, but is wondrous strange, white, draped with fallen folds of stalactite, black as ink, as though a tattered funeral pall had been cast over it.
The deciphering of hieroglyphics is one of the greatest achievements of the human race in this century. Jean François Champollion was the man who accomplished this great feat. He is surnamed "le jeune," the younger, to distinguish him from his elder brother, Champollion Figeac, whose life was one of paternal devotion and the most unselfish sacrifice for his younger brother.
Champollion Figeac, in his book on Egypt, tells us that in some cases even the mummies of certain eminent men were placed in their coffins with the arms in that position. That this same mark of respect was in use amongst the Mayas there can be no possible doubt.
The brothers were banished to their old homestead, Figeac, where they found leisure in abundance to complete several unfinished works; and when in 1818, through the influence of the Duke of Decazes, their banishment was pronounced at an end, François had completed his great work, "L'Égypte sous les Pharaons."
There was nothing new for me upon the bare hills, where all vegetation was parched up except the juniper bushes and the spurge. At length I found the road that went down with many a flourish into the valley of the Célé, and I reached Figeac in the evening, covered with dust, and as thirsty as a hunted stag. Here I took up my quarters for awhile.
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