the gorse arrayed in its new flowers of bright gold, added to the charm of
the sunlit scene.


To me the weather was all the more delightful by being very warm, for I had
run away from winter on the Auvergne mountains. The whirring noise of the
grasshoppers as they flew across the road, and the tremulous sheen of
their wings, coloured like blooming lavender, brought back to me the best
recollections of other wayfaring days in the warm South, when all these
things were new, and the sight feasted upon them with the eagerness of bees
that suck the first flowers of spring.

I passed a little field of buckwheat that had been cut some days and had
fully ripened. A woman was threshing out the grain with a flail upon a
spread canvas, surrounded by a circle of purple-tinted cones, the sheaves
leaning together. Now the wide level moor returned, but Nature was not
quite the same here as she had been before. The vast expanse was dotted
over with dark little juniper bushes. These were covered with berries which
nobody seemed to think worth the picking. Rock-cist flourished, starring
the turf all over with its yellow discs. This moor was an absolute desert.

Long I walked without seeing another human being. At length I met a woman
carrying a distaff, and tried to get into conversation with her, but it was
impossible; she could not speak a word of French, and I knew nothing of her
Limousin patois.

By steadfastly following the road, I came to the village of St. Pantaleon,
on the brow of a hill overlooking the Luxege, and stopped at a wayside inn.
It was a poor auberge; but there was an air of reaching toward some ideal
of superior life and softened manners that made itself felt in small