CHAPTER VI.
THE JEW.
Jean del' Peyra left the Bishop's castle, which stood on rising ground above the town, and was well fortified against attack, and entered the city to find Levi. The Jew lived in the little square before the cathedral.
The Bishop might well say that his episcopal seat was shabby, for the minster was small and rude in structure, a building of the Romanesque period such as delighted the monks to erect, and of which many superb examples exist in Guyenne. The monastic body at Sarlat had not been rich enough or sufficiently skilled in building to give themselves as stately a church as Souillac, Moissac, or Cadouin. It consisted, like nearly every other sacred dwelling of the period, of an oblong domed building, consisting of three squares raised on arches surmounted by Oriental cupolas, with an unfinished tower at the west end. The visitor to Sarlat at the present day will see a cathedral erected a century and more after the date of our story, in a debased but not unpicturesque style.
The Jew was not at home. His wife informed Jean that he had gone to La Roque to gather in a few sols that were owing to him there for money advanced to needy personages, and that she did not expect him home till the morrow. Christians were ready enough to come to her husband for loans, but were very reluctant to pay interest, and it cost Levi much pains and vexation to extract what was his due from those whom he had obliged. Accordingly Jean remounted his horse, and rode over the hills due south, in the direction of the Dordogne.
About halfway between Sarlat and La Roque, at the highest point of the road, where the soil is too thin even to sustain a growth of oak coppice, and produces only juniper, Jean passed a singular congeries of stones; it consisted of several blocks set on end, forming an oblong chamber, and covered by an immense slab, in which were numerous cup-like holes, formed by the weather, or whence lumps of flint had been extracted. It was a prehistoric tomb—a dolmen, and went by the name of the Devil's Table. To the present day, the women coming to the market at Sarlat from La Roque rest on it, and if they put their fish which they have to sell into the cups on the table, are sure of selling them at a good price. Yet such action is not thought to bring a blessing with it, and the money got by the sale of the fish thus placed in the Devil's cups rarely does good to those who receive it. The monument is now in almost total ruin: the supports have been removed or are fallen, but at the time of this tale it was intact.
Jean did not pay it any attention, but rode forwards as hastily as he could on his somewhat fatigued horse.
On reaching the little town of La Roque, Jean was constrained to put up his horse outside the gates. There was not a street in the place along which a horse could go. The inhabitants partook of the nature of goats, they scrambled from one house to another when visiting their neighbours. Only by the river-side was there a level space, and this was occupied by strong walls as a protection against assault from the water.