I NEVER expected to feel so much like Stephen the
martyr as I did at Anduze.

Not figuratively, like poor little Alphonse Daudet, who
taught school at Alais, less than ten miles distant, and
after the training in wretchedness that he obtained there
was able to enjoy the Paris garret, the three sous' worth
of cabbage-soup, and all the other miseries of his literary
novitiate. No, literally. Anduze like Alais lies in the
fringe of the Cevennes, and the mountain floods have
brought it millions and millions of cobblestones. The
town is built with them; the streets are paved with them;
the walls are laid with them; and as I picked my way
along the glum alleys, they seemed actually bulging from
the mortar in their eagerness to get at me.

Yet rough Anduze (Auduza) was a place of no slight
importance in the age of the troubadours. Bernart, one
of its lords, was among the barons whom Raimbaut de
Vaqueiras assailed for giving up the cause of Guilhem del
Bauz, and this is only one out of many proofs that he was
a leading character of the time. What is more surprising,
we find here literary figures also, that will at least enter-
tain us.

Ugo de Sain Circ, born (about 1170) some ten or fifteen
years later than Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, was of Quercy,

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