IN THE VISCOUNTY OF TURENNE.


What gives us the zest to wander until the hour comes when we must fain be
content to sit in the porch, thankful if the evening sun shines warmly, is
the fascination of the unknown. As children, did we not long to get at
the horizon's verge, to touch the painted clouds of the morning or of the
sunset--ay, and to grasp with our outstretched hands that reached such a
little way the blood-red glory of the sun itself? The garden, with its
glowing tulips and its roses haunted by gilded beetles, became too small
to satisfy the mind of infancy fresh from the infinite. Surely, I thought,
when I was again in the open country beyond Beaulieu, I must have carried
something of my childhood on with me, for me to go wandering over these hot
hills exposing myself to sunstroke, weariness, and thirst for the sake of
the unknown.

The road at first led up vine-covered slopes towards the west, where the
waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride
upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up _soutane_ showing his
gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this
one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed
in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the
solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling
steed. On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a
little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber
house, its porch aglow with climbing petunias.