year is perhaps a reason why he should feel that he has earned the right
to let his sentiments expand, and to light the lamp of conviviality in his
breast during the remaining two or three weeks that he may be away from
home.

There is this, however, to be said: whatever money he may possess,
he trusts himself with very little when he goes off on his annual
river-voyage, and when he has sold his wood he is anxious to get out of
danger as quickly as possible.

I had to return some distance up-stream before I was able to cross to
Limeuil. This is one of the most picturesque villages on the banks of the
Dordogne. It is built on the side of an isolated rock, close to the point
where the Vezere falls into the broader river. Before crossing the bridge
I lingered awhile gazing at all those high-gabled roofs with red and
lichen-stained tiles rising from the blue water towards the blue sky; vine
trellises mingling their sunny green with the red of the roofs. Where no
houses clung, the yellow rock was splashed with the now crimson sumach.

Then I climbed the long street over the rock and cobble stones between
walls half green with pellitory, houses with high gables and rough wooden
balconies where geraniums shone in the shadow, and from which the trailing
plants hung low in that supreme luxuriance which is the beginning of their
death. A few old women sat at their doors spinning, and geese, in small
companies of three or four, waddled out of the way; but there was no sound
of any kind--Limeuil was as silent as a cemetery. And yet there were cafes,
which gave the place a false air of liveliness. Some tourists, attracted by
the caverns in the valley of the Vezere, had possibly wandered as far as
Limeuil; but where were the inhabitants now? Had there been an epidemic,
and were the old women, whose heads were bent towards their knees while