Modieres, one of the English _bastides_ which Edward I. farmed for ten
years; but I made my way back to the Dordogne, with the intention of
ascending the valley of its tributary the Vezere. I did not, however,
return to Buisson, but took the road to Ales, which lies a little lower
down the stream.

While I was recrossing the hills the sun warmed the world again, and led
back the trembling summer which had been scared by the early morning's
frost. The half-benumbed butterflies opened and shut their wings many times
upon the bramble leaves before they could bring themselves to believe that
that pinch of winter was only a joke. It seemed a cruel jest while the
bloom of honeysuckle was upon the hedges.

[Illustration: CHATEAU DE BIRON: THE LODGE.]

At Ales--a mere group of houses round a little old church with a broad
squat tower--I lunched in a very wretched inn. If a pig had not been killed
at an early hour that morning I should have been obliged to be satisfied
with vegetable and egg diet; and the knowledge that the pig had met with
such bad luck only a few hours before did not dispose me in favour of the
various dishes prepared from the external and internal parts of him. The
_aubergiste_ was an old boatman of the Dordogne, who had steered many a
cargo of wine floating with him down-stream in time of partial flood; but
that was before the phylloxera had played havoc with the vines. Now he had
to get along as well as he could by combining husbandry, pig-rearing, and
innkeeping.

On reaching the river again, I perceived that the annual descent of the
Auvergnats had commenced. All the people who live by the higher waters of
the Dordogne, whether they belong to the Puy de Dome, the Cantal, or the