It was evident that the people of St. Bazile quite understood their cure,
and that he was just the one for them. He was a strong man, over sixty
years of age, and he spoke with a rich southern accent. Under his
sacerdotal earnestness there was a sense of humour ever ready to take a
little revenge for a life of sacrifice. There are many such priests in
France.

I had no sooner walked out of this village, on my way to Argentat, than I
became aware that the Girondin climate was beginning to make itself felt.
The influence of the plains was overcoming that of the highlands. The warm
rocky slopes on each side of the valley were covered with vines--alas! dead
or dying. There was no hope for them. On the level of the river were fields
of maize, now ripening, and irrigated meadows intensely green. There were
beehives, fifteen or twenty together on the sunny slopes, and as I went on,
the signs of human industry and ease increasing, I saw petunias climbing
over cottage doors. There was a steep descent to Argentat. The town lay in
a wide valley by the Dordogne, in the midst of maize and buckwheat fields
and green meadows, the surrounding hillsides being covered here with
chestnut woods, and there with vines. I met a woman returning from market
with melons in her basket. Truly I had come into a different climate. At
the small town, made pretty by the number of its vine trellises, I lunched.
The inn where I stopped is not worth describing; but it gave me a dish of
gudgeons caught in the Dordogne that deserved to be remembered.

I did not remain long at Argentat, for I was determined to reach Beaulieu
that night. A little out of the town some girls whom I passed on the road
looked very suspiciously at me out of the corners of their eyes, and
reminded me that another whom I had met that morning higher up the valley
took to her heels at the sight of me. An old woman who had lived long