Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale
and upland, to the base of the snow peaks; and, though I come
from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen
few sights that outdo this.

It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet,
and, dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into
the place at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a
glory of ruddy beech leaves, through the silence of forest roads,
across clear brooks and glades still green. I had seen more of
the quiet and peace of the country than had been my share since
boyhood, and for that reason, or because I had no great taste for
the task before me--the task now so imminent--I felt a little
hipped. In good faith, it was not a gentleman's work that I was
come to do, look at it how you might.

But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling
would not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the
spur of necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that
once begun, I should lose the feeling. When a man is young he
seeks solitude, when he is middle-aged, he flies it and his
thoughts. I made therefore for the 'Green Pillar,' a little inn
in the village street, to which I had been directed at Auch, and,
thundering on the door with the knob of my riding switch, railed
at the man for keeping me waiting.

Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean,
poor place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at
me suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the
host came. He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half-