[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.]

I wonder if the wooden cross beside the tobacco-field was put there to
mark the spot where somebody died, in accordance with an old and beautiful
custom still much practised in these rural districts of France; but the
thought of the laid table at the auberge changes the train of ideas, so,
following in the wake of the last goose, I, too, take refuge from the night
in the now animated village.

Sitting alone at a great table in a room large enough for a marriage feast,
ill-lighted by an oil-lamp, whose flame appears to be afflicted with St.
Vitus's dance--a room quite free from ornament, with furniture responding
exclusively to the purposes of resting, eating, and drinking, with
curtainless windows looking out upon the moonless night that is beginning
to sigh and moan at the approach of a storm--my dinner is not a very
cheerful one. Not that I am necessarily unhappy when I take a solitary
meal. In this matter all depends upon the mood, and the mood frequently
depends upon influences too subtle to be analyzed. The dinner was as good
as I had a right to expect it to be. A dish on which the hostess had
evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce
of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl--an unfortunate bird
that was just going to roost with an easy mind, when my coming upset the
arrangements of the inn and the poultry house. One fowl, at all events, had
had good reason to think it was an ill wind that blew me into the village.

It is a bad custom in rural France to kill fowls just when they are wanted
for the spit. Not only is it unpleasant to think that a creature is not
allowed time to cool before it begins to turn in front of the fire, but the
art of cooking is placed at a disadvantage by the practice. It is of no