i86 EARLY REMINISCENCES this is mere conjecture. The round supporting piece is of yellowish sandstone, whereas the quoit is of bluish-grey granite. Both pieces must have been put simultaneously in position, for if either be disturbed the other would infallibly be precipitated down the hill upon the farm below. But the juxtaposition is due probably to the ice age. A Mass is said every year at Argelez on behalf of the menaced farm-house. But the tenants of that farm rely as much on the plantation of trees under the Balandrau to arrest the rock should it be disturbed. There was no such plantation in 1850. I saw it in 1914. A proof how scepticism had grown in sixty-four years. The priest at Argelez should redouble his exertions and exhortations, or I suspect that the farmer will give up the protective Mass and place his whole reliance on the grove of elms. The magnificent Val d'Azun is reached from Argelez by an ascent to a high level; the river that traverses it discharges through a chasm it has sawn for itself in the barrier of rock. The valley, once little visited, is now accessible by the fine carriage road carried up it and over the Col de Tortes to the Eaux Bonnes. Previously it was a little world to itself with its own laws and customs. It is closed on the west by the glaciers and snows of the Balaitons, 10,318 ft. high, the Pic du Midi d'Arreins, and the Pic du Midi d'Arrieugrand. At Aucun is an old church dedicated to S. Felix, containing a white marble benitier on which is sculptured a wedding, at which a bagpiper is performing. The whole of this fertile valley was once the bed of a lake. Far up it is the miserable village of Arreins, and hard by rises the rocky hill crowned with the pilgrimage chapel of Our Lady of Poeylahun. The parish church has its tower and spire crowned by a sword-blade. During the Revolution a soldier climbed to the top, plucked down the cross and fastened his sword in its place. When we were at Argelez, the blade was still there ; whether it has since been removed I cannot say. The chapel of Poeylahun is planted on the solid rock, and formerly a little stream traversed the floor ; this, however, has been drained away. The decorations are rococo and tawdry. The ceiling is only ten feet from the floor. The chapel almost certainly occupies a site that was sacred in pagan times. When the functionaries of the Directory came during the Revolution to remove the image of the Virgin
