many as seven parishes, and in a ravine of the mountain hidden among great ancient pinewoods, stood a Carthusian monastery, surrounded by huts for penitent pilgrims. On certain days the monks came down, with their white frocks and still whiter beards, and begged alms from door to door in the winding streets. On the other side of the mountain, in humble cabins, dwelt woodmen and half-savage goatherds, men of primitive aspect and rough uncultured speech. In our city the nobles lived according to their rank. The poor obtained firewood from the pinewoods of the convent and worked on the estates of the rich. Then abolition of mortmain drove the Carthusians from the convent; customs changed, new ways, new ideas came in; the noble families were ruined or fled to the capital; their ancestral houses were converted into haylofts. Labraz gradually became deserted and, since carts and mules no longer passed along it, the road was allowed to fall into disrepair. Meanwhile at Chozas, the village of the woodcutters and half savage goatherds, a factory for sawing wood was founded; then another and another, till a town arose with white houses and red roofs, and the timber-merchants, enriched by the sale of the pinewoods belonging to the convent and the trees from our mountain-sides, went to live there. Labraz sold all its trees. The town, which had formerly combined agriculture and pasturage, determined to subsist by agriculture alone; all the land was broken up, more was put under the plough than could be properly cultivated, and the whole of
