and more than a sufficiency of fleas, would be overcome somehow, as they
had been elsewhere during my peregrinations in out-of-the-way districts,
where the traveller who nurses his dignity, and has a proper regard for the
comforts of life, never thinks of stopping. But things did not settle down
this time quite so quickly as I had expected.

After the arrival of the 'caravan' I took to fishing--always with the same
rod borrowed of the blacksmith-innkeeper--with a zeal that I had not known
since I was a boy. I found that things settled down better when I was out
of the way. But there was something that settled down only too rapidly.
This was the kitchen floor. There was a bare rock forming the back wall of
the house, and down it a runnel of water gently trickled. In the wet season
it lost all modesty, made a lake that rose above the boards, and tried to
find an exit by the back of the chimney. This explained why the fire needed
two days' coaxing and blowing before it would burn, notwithstanding that
our servant had been reared in the knowledge of such chimney-places and
their humours. It also explained why somebody's foot went through the floor
in a fresh place two or three times a day. At the end of the first week
one had to stride or jump over half a dozen chasms to get from one side to
another. About the same time four or five of the lower stairs gave way from
rottenness, so that it needed no little agility to reach the bedrooms.
The old man had to come and mend his house, and because he had a guilty
conscience he brought a basket of figs with him; but, instead of owning
that the wood was rotten, he insinuated that it had been maliciously danced
upon.

But the heat was the worst tribulation. The house, with all its windows
without _persiennes_--a detail I had quite overlooked--faced the south, so
that during the hottest hours of the day the sun was full upon it, and the
heat was over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. It was the most