all as swift as a swallow on the wing. The river, however, had risen
considerably during the night, and the strength of the current having much
increased in consequence, my belief in the _perissoire's_ worthiness was
not sufficient to make me run the risk of being swamped at the third
bridge. I therefore landed at the next one, which was close to the village
of Siorac. It seemed that I had only just started from St. Cyprien, and yet
I had travelled about six miles. With the help of a willing man the boat
was carried to the railway-station, which was not far off, and its journey
home having been paid, I ceased for awhile to be a waterfarer, and became
again a wayfarer.

Although there was not much to interest me at Siorac, I stayed there to
lunch in a small inn, where an old woman grilled me a chop over the embers,
and then set before me a pile of grapes, another of pears, and a third of
fresh walnuts. The fruit was to me the best part of the meal, for the long
hot summer had caused me to look upon meat very much as a necessary evil in
the routine of life. While I was seated at the table, the old woman, who
now dozed over her distaff in the chimneycorner, would start up every five
minutes or so, as if from the beginning of a nightmare, and rush at the
flies, which were ravenously busy upon the grapes and pears that I had set
aside for them. She hated them with a hatred so fierce and bitter that I
thought it rather unbecoming at her time of life.

'_On ne pent rien manger,_' she said, '_sans que ces diables y touchent._'

This was quite true; but it was not the flies' fault that their parents
were prolific, and that they had been hatched in a climate eminently
conducive to their vigour and happiness. Their numbers and their voracity
showed that they, too, were compelled by the struggle for life to be active
and enterprising. Unlike some beings of a higher order, they did not take