Suzette told the story without bitterness; she recognised the law of nature
in this expulsion of the mother when she was of no further use to her
children, and accepted thankfully the ten francs a month which her son
allowed her. She managed to live by fetching and carrying for anyone who
would give her two or three sous for an hour's trudging. She used to take
my letters to post at the nearest railway-station, and no one who merely
noted how nimbly her bare feet moved along the hot, dusty road would have
supposed that she had left her youth so far behind her. Battered and
pinched and harassed as she had been by destiny, she still believed in the
working out of eternal justice, and one day before sunrise she started off
on a pilgrimage to a distant sanctuary, and did not return until after many
hours. With all this she was gay, and could tell a lively story with plenty
of Southern salt. She was a good bit of human nature, worth studying.

Sarlat, where old Suzette went to sell her husband's fish, was a very
important stronghold of Black Perigord in the Middle Ages, and the chief
place in that Sarladais which the English kings of Norman and Angevin
descent found such a tough bone to pick. The way to it from Beynac leads up
steep valleys and gorges, covered with dense forest. Here wolves are to be
seen occasionally in winter, but the wolf country begins a little to the
north of Sarlat, and stretches towards the Limousin. The town appears to be
composed of one long street, and to be dismally uninteresting. There is,
however, an old Sarlat that lies a little off the main artery, and which a
lazy visitor who does not like the trouble of asking questions might easily
miss. There are few scenes more original and picturesque in France than
that presented by the ruinous old church, half open to the weather, and
the ancient houses that form a framework round it. Under the lofty Gothic
vaulting are wooden shops and shanties, and, looking up, you see the smoke
from bakers' ovens hanging about the ribs of the great arches, which it has
blackened.