A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE
in Bordeaux; but the façade of Civray is aston-
ishingly topped by fifteenth-century machicola-
tions, which somehow, in spite of their later date,
give it an air of greater age, of reaching back to a
wild warring past.
Angoulême, set on a promontory between
Charente and Anguienne, commands to the
north, south and east a vast circuit of meadowy
and woody undulations. The interior of the
town struck one as dull, and without character-
istic detail; but on the front of the twelfth-
century cathedral, perched near the ledge of the
cliff above the Anguienne, detail abounds as
profusely as on the façade of Notre Dame at
Poitiers. It is, however, so much less subordi-
nate to the general conception that one remem-
bers rather the garlanding of archivolts, the
clustering of figures in countless niches and
arcades, than the fundamental lines which
should serve to bind them together; and the
interior, roofed with cupolas after the manner of
Saint Hilaire of Poitiers, is singularly stark and
barren looking.
But when one has paid due tribute to the
cathedral one is called on, from its doorway, to
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