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 II

POITIERS TO THE PYRENEES

HE road from Poitiers to Angoulême carries one through a country rolling and various in line—a country with a dash of Normandy in it, but facing south instead of west.

The villages are fewer than in Normandy, and make less mark in the landscape; but the way passes through two drowsy little towns, Civray and Ruffec, each distinguished by the possession of an important church of the typical Romanesque of Poitou. That at Civray, in particular, is remarkable enough to form the object of a special pilgrimage, and to find it precisely in one's path seemed part of the general brightness of the day. Here again are the sculptured archivolt and the rich imagery of Poitiers—one strange mutilated figure of a headless horseman dominating the front from the great arcade above the doorway, as at the church of the Sainte Croix [ 95 ]