life. It was at its best on Sunday, for then the tailor--who also did
a little shaving between whiles--had put on his fine braided official
coat, as well as his sword and best _képi_. (On very grand days he
wore his cocked hat, and was then quite irresistibly beautiful.) He
had to look after the women as well as the water. The latter was
precious, and it was necessary to protect it in the interest of the
community. Then the pump was parsimonious, and all the women being
impatient to get their allowance and go, it was needful that someone
in authority should stand by to decide questions of disputed priority,
and to nip quarrels in the bud which might otherwise lead to a fight.
Poor man! how those women worried him every morning with their
_badinage_, and how glad he was to chain up the pump-handle and turn
the key!

But this was only the opening act of the day's comedy, or rather the
_lever de rideau_. The little square by the old gateway, whose
immediate neighbourhood lent a mediaeval charm to my cottage, was the
centre of gossip and idling. I did not think of this when I pitched my
tent, so to speak, in the shadow of the old masonry. Knowing full well
that the noise of tongues is one of the chief torments of my life, I
am always leaving it out of my calculations, and paying the same bill
for my folly over and over again. But then I know also that in
provincial France, unless you live in an abandoned ruin upon a rock,
it is well-nigh impossible to obtain the quietude which the literary
man, when he has it not, imagines to be closely allied to the peace
that passeth all understanding. The square served many purposes,
except mine. The women used it as a convenient place for steaming
their linen. This, fashioned into the shape of a huge sugar-loaf, with
a hollow centre, stood in a great open caldron upon a tripod over a
wood-fire. At night the lurid flames and the grouped figures,