Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/121

 Another very remarkable cliff-refuge is Le Peuch Saint Sour on the Vézère. It is not mentioned in any chronicle as having been a resort of the English in the Hundred Years' War, and we may accordingly conclude that it was a refuge for the inhabitants of the hamlet at its feet.

S. Sorus or Sour was a hermit, born about the year 500; he set off with two companions, Amandus and Cyprian, to find a desert place where he might take up his abode. I will quote from the Latin life. "All at once in their wanderings they arrived at a place in the midst of vast forests, and dens of wild beasts, a place so barren and abrupt, of access so difficult, that surely no one had ever hitherto ventured to reach it either to dwell there, or for pleasure, even to visit it for curiosity. A rock very lofty furnished him above with a shelter that sufficed; out of the flanks of the rock issued a spring and watered the little valley that was on the other side surrounded by the Vézère."

I think that it was in the Peuch S. Sour that the hermit settled, though afterwards through the favour of King Gontram he moved to lands granted him at Terrasson. And now for a story. Here he resolved to live alone, and here he parted with his companions. But before they separated, "Let us have a love feast together," said he. But he had with him only a bit of fat bacon. He divided it into three parts, and gave a share to each of his companions. Now it was Lent, and one of them was scandalized at the idea of eating bacon in Lent, so he put the bit of meat into his bosom, where it was at once transformed into a serpent, which enwrapped him in its coils. Terrified, he screamed to Sour to deliver him, which the hermit did, and the monster was at once resolved into a bit of bacon. "Eat it," said the hermit, "and remember that Charity is above all rules."

The description of the place so well accords with the Peuch that bears his name, that I cannot doubt but that