On the other side of the house is a small balcony that looks upon the road,
the peaceful valley, and the darkly-wooded cliffs just beyond the Vezere.
During the brief twilight--the twilight of the South, that lays suddenly
and almost without warning a rosy kiss upon the river and the reedy pool--I
sometimes watch from the balcony the barefooted children of the neighbours
playing upon the white road. Poor village children! As soon as a wanderer
gets to know them, he leaves them never to see them again. Living in
a great city is apt to dull the sensibility, and to close men up in
themselves. In a village you become forcibly interested in surrounding
humanity, and enter into the lives and feelings of others. A young woman
died yesterday in child-birth, and was buried to-day. Everybody felt as if
the awful shadow that descended upon the lonely house across the river
had passed close to him and her, and left a chill in the heart. When the
uncovered waggon bearing the deal coffin wrapped in a sheet, and having at
the head an upright cross of flowers and leaves that shook and swayed with
the jolting of this rustic hearse, moved towards the church, nearly the
whole of the population followed. Only the day before another woman was
carried along the same white road towards the little cemetery, but the
coffin then was borne upon the shoulders of four persons of her own sex.
Now and again fatigue brought the bearers to a standstill; then they would
change shoulders by changing places. And the white coffin, moving up and
down as a waif on the swell of the sea, passed on towards the glowing west,
where presently the purple-tinted wings of evening covered it.

But the peasants are not sentimentalists--far from it. Always practical,
they are very quick to perceive the futility of nursing grief, and
especially the unreasonableness of wishing people back in the world who
were no longer able to do their share of its work. A young man came into
the village with a donkey and cart to fetch a coffin for his father who had
just died.