peasant may long since have come upon an extraordinary collection of little
bones, and been much puzzled by them. And poor Drappes, who, after his
capture, refused to eat, and died from starvation; he must have been buried
somewhere near. But Nature says nothing about all these things; she covers
up the traces of human ferocity with her new leaves and moss, and smiles
there as tenderly as upon children's graves.

I passed the night at St. Denis, a modern place brought into existence by
the line to Toulouse. At the auberge the evening was enlivened by dancing.
Two maids of the inn found partners in a couple of rustic youths, and a
young soldier _en conge_ provided the music by whistling, or imitating the
hurdy-gurdy with his mouth. For it was the _bourree_ that was danced.

The next morning I was on the road to Martel, with nightingales and
blackcaps singing all around from blossoming quince and hawthorn and copses
filled with a gold-green glimmer, until I reached the bare upland country.
Upon the barren _causse_, besides the short turf, the gray ribs of rock,
and scattered stones, little was to be seen but dark little junipers, tall
broom, not yet in flower, hellebore, with bright tufts of new leaves and
evil-looking green blossoms edged with dull purple, and the numberless
gilded umbels of the spurge, which in springtime lend such beauty to the
Southern desert. In the dips and little dingles there were stunted oaks
with the brown foliage, that had been beaten by the winter winds in vain,
still clinging to them, but which every breath of western breeze now
scattered, because the buds were swelling and the unborn leaves were asking
to come forth. At wide distances above the undulating, sterile land a
farmhouse would appear, with high-pitched tiled roof, and a pigeon-house
rising like a tower at one end. The stranger marvels to see such
substantially-built houses in the midst of such sterility; but he finds
the explanation when he has time to consider that there are so many stones