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The victorious Saracen overran the provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than lost, in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou: his standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the kingdom of Burgundy as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and Besancon.

In a lateral chapel is a hole in the vault, through which the ropes passed to pull the bells that were hung in a tower above, but which has been destroyed. In 1450 Aubeterre was in the possession of the English, and they sold it to the Count of Perigord.

Jaufré, the prior of Vigeois, an abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, is the only chronicler during the reigns of Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion who mentions Bertran's name. From these materials, and from forty-four or forty-five poems which have come down to us, the poet's life can be reconstructed. Bertran de Bern's estates were situated on the borders of Limousin and Périgord.

The Hundred Years' War, that has left ineffaceable traces in the south of France, began in 1336 before the conclusion of the Treaty of Bretigny, which was in 1360, and it lasted till 1443 over a century, though not without interruption; and it desolated the fields of Perigord, Quercy, and to a less degree Rouergue and the Limousin, and wrought havoc to the gates of Paris.

Half an hour later Monsieur de Crillon received the report of his chief employé, which was to the effect that the young marquis had been overheard whilst discovering himself to Jean Perigord, and that he and the young female who had previously reached the "Great Gun" had been seized and conveyed to the prison of Bouffay, where they awaited Monsieur de Crillon's further orders.

It was found necessary to suspend the operation of the tax, but it was with great trouble that the movement of Quercy was put down, and the peasants, who had armed and collected together, induced to retire into their villages. In Perigord they rose, pillaged the bureaux, and rendered themselves masters of a little town and some castles, and forced some gentlemen to put themselves at their head.

While Calvin is putting everybody exactly right in his "Institutes," and hot-headed Knox is thundering in the pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side in his library in Périgord, and predicting that they will find as much to quarrel about in the Bible as they had found already in the Church. Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other.

Although they all speak patois among themselves, they are reluctant to sing the songs of Perigord in the presence of strangers. The young men are proud of their French, bad as it is, and a song in the cafe-concert style of music and poetry fires their ambition to excel on a festive occasion like this, whilst their patois ditties seem then only fit to be sung at home or in the fields.

Evidence substantiating the thesis of Lyall had been accumulating, and the researches of Lartet and Christy in the Vezere valley, published in 1865-75, as Reliquiae Aquitanicae, conclusively proved that man in Perigord had been a naked savage, contemporary with the mammoth, the reindeer and the cave-bear, that he had not learned to domesticate animals, to sow fields, to make pots, and that he was entirely ignorant of the use of the metals.

"And to think that such a scoundrel should be trusted by madame the baroness! Shame upon her! It is abominable!" Saying which M. Perigord, who had by this time let go the valet's throat, snatched off his own wig and dashed it passionately on the floor.