This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1864 Chapman & Hall "Tales of all Countries" edition.
THE CHATEAU OF PRINCE POLIGNAC
by Anthony Trollope
Few Englishmen or Englishwomen are intimately acquainted with the little town of Le Puy. It is the capital of the old province of Le Velay, which also is now but little known, even to French ears, for it is in these days called by the imperial name of the Department of the Haute Loire. It is to the south-east of Auvergne, and is nearly in the centre of the southern half of France.
But few towns, merely as towns, can be better worth visiting. In the first place, the volcanic formation of the ground on which it stands is not only singular in the extreme, so as to be interesting to the geologist, but it is so picturesque as to be equally