It was fitting that he should light the pyre—he who had most suffered. That was why he had been borne to the head of the cliff.
Rossignol drove the flaming torch into the mass of vine-faggots, and instantly up leaped the flame. It ran aloft in the mass, licked and lighted the tallow, it caressed, then exploded the casks of tar, and the whole pyre roared as a beast ravening for its prey.
And its prey was given it.
With their forks, with staves, the whole flaming, raging mass was cast over the edge after the avalanche of stones had been discharged. [3]
[ [3] The rock castles on the Vézère and the Dordogne all bear traces of having been burnt. History is silent, but tradition among the peasantry is very precise. They state that it was they who, at the close of the Hundred Years' War, ridded themselves of the Free Companies, and that they did it by the means described in this chapter.
CHAPTER XI.
THE TEN CROSSES.
Ogier del' Peyra, with a much larger body of men, murderously, if not well, equipped, had left Ste. Soure an hour after the departure of Jean. The Vézère makes a great sweep to meet the Beune, but, as though disgusted at the insignificance of its tributary, after having received its waters, it at once turns and flows in an almost directly opposite direction, leaving a broad, flat tongue of land round which it curls, a tongue of rich alluvial soil, interspersed with gravel that is purple in autumn with crocus, and in summer blue with salvia.