Monsieur d'Aubrac bore testimony to the gravity of the affair, amply
excusing Duchemin's interference and its fatal sequel; while the
statements of Mesdames de Sévénié et de Montalais, duly becoming public
property, bade fair to exalt the local reputation of André Duchemin to
heroic stature. And, naturally, his papers were unimpeachable.

So that he found himself, before his acquaintance with Nant was
thirty-six hours of age, free once more to humour the dictates of his
own sweet will, to go on to Nimes (his professed objective) or to the
devil if he liked. A freedom which, consistent with the native
inconsistency of man, he exercised by electing to stop over in Nant for
another day or two, at least; assuring himself that he found the town
altogether charming, more so even than Meyrueis--and sometimes
believing this fiction for as much as twenty minutes at a stretch.

Besides, the weather was unsettled ....

The inn, which went by the unpretending style of the Grand Hôtel de
l'Univers, he found clean, comfortable, and as to its cuisine
praiseworthy. The windows of the cubicle in which he had been
lodged--one of ten which sufficed for the demands of the itinerant
Universe--not only overlooked the public square and its amusing life of
a minor market town, but commanded as well a splendid vista of the
valley of the Dourbie, with its piquant contrast of luxuriant alluvial
verdure and grim scarps of rock that ran up, on either side the wanton,
glimmering river, into two opposed and overshadowing pinnacles of crag,
the Roc Nantais and the Roc de Saint Alban--peaks each a rendezvous
just then for hosts of cloud that scowled forbiddingly down upon the
peaceful, sun-drenched valley.