Bergerac is a cheerful town on the north bank of the broad Dordogne, with straight modern streets and few antiquities. During the religious wars of the sixteenth century it was sufficiently important to give its name to the sixth peace concluded between Catholics and Protestants, and it became one of the eight places of safety where Protestants could worship unmolested. About 1620 Cyrano de Bergerac, the author, was born in the town.
There is a large modern church in the style of the thirteenth century. Nearer the river there is a network of narrow, and a trifle unsavoury, streets. The mouldering old houses often have their upper stories projecting on massive stone corbels or the ends of huge beams, and the half-timber work is filled in with thin bricks laid in thick mortar. Among these narrow ways, in the Rue des Rois de France, is a larger and better-built structure of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, called the Château de Henri IV., but it is not worth looking for unless one has time to spare. The street leads down to the river at the point where the old bridge stood. The abutment on the south bank remains.
Crossing the Dordogne, the route is due south through a country of vineyards. On reaching some steep hills, the road curves to the right, to take the ascent as easily as possible, and soon afterwards winds down into and out of the valley of a small tributary of the Dordogne.
The tops of the hills here and there are crowned with small round towers with conical roofs.[D] After winding among the hills for several kilometres, there appears a great view towards the east as the road drops into the valley of the Drot above the picturesque village of Eymet. The houses on the road are modern, but behind them is a little medieval town, with its machicolated château grown over with ivy, a picturesque gateway and walls, as well as some interesting Gothic houses.
No. 10. BERGERAC TO MONT-DE-MARSAN.
In Miramont, which is entered almost at right angles, one turns to the right for Marmande by a curious arcade of considerable width, which runs beneath some of the old houses. Some of the oldest shops have the primitive doorway and window in one, exactly the same as those one finds in the old Italian towns, and even in Pompeii.
The small churches dotted over the country generally have bell-cotes, and are surrounded with sentinel cypresses. Fruit-trees and vineyards are everywhere, and the slow-moving bullock-carts constantly passed make the roads exceedingly attractive.
After the village of Seyches the country becomes flatter and flatter, and the road is lined with plane-trees.
MARMANDE