of Angouleme is a sort of promontory marking
out the line of three picturesque valleys. The ramparts and great
gateways and ruined fortress on the summit of the crag still remain to
bear witness to the importance of this stronghold during the Religious
Wars, when Angouleme was a military position coveted alike of Catholics
and Calvinists, but its old-world strength is a source of weakness in
modern days; Angouleme could not spread down to the Charente, and shut
in between its ramparts and the steep sides of the crag, the old town is
condemned to stagnation of the most fatal kind.

The Government made an attempt about this very time to extend the town
towards Perigord, building a Prefecture, a Naval School, and barracks
along the hillside, and opening up roads. But private enterprise had
been beforehand elsewhere. For some time past the suburb of L'Houmeau
had sprung up, a mushroom growth at the foot of the crag and along the
river-side, where the direct road runs from Paris to Bordeaux. Everybody
has heard of the great paper-mills of Angouleme, established perforce
three hundred years ago on the Charente and its branch streams, where
there was a sufficient fall of water. The largest State factory of
marine ordnance in France was established at Ruelle, some six miles
away. Carriers, wheelwrights, posthouses, and inns, every agency for
public conveyance, every industry that lives by road or river, was
crowded together in Lower Angouleme, to avoid the difficulty of the
ascent of the hill. Naturally, too, tanneries, laundries, and all such
waterside trades stood within reach of the Charente; and along the banks
of the river lay the stores of brandy and great warehouses full of the
water-borne raw material; all the carrying trade of the Charente, in
short, had lined the quays with buildings.

So the Faubourg of L'Houmeau grew into a busy and prosperous city, a
second Angouleme rivaling the upper town, the residence of the
powers that be, the lords spiritual and temporal of Angouleme; though
L'Houmeau, with all its business and increasing greatness, was still a
mere appendage of the city above. The _noblesse_ and officialdom dwelt
on the crag, trade and wealth remained below. No love was lost between
these two sections of the community all the world over, and in Angouleme
it would have been hard to say which of the two camps detested the
other the more cordially. Under the Empire the machinery worked fairly
smoothly, but the