Two Summers in Guyenne | Page 8

many yards in
front, were covered with moss, which the morning rays, striking
obliquely, painted the heavenly green of Beatrice's mantle. Down the
narrow road goats were passing, followed by a sunburnt girl with a
barge-like wooden shoe at the end of each of her bare brown legs. The
pure, life-giving air that entered by the window made the blood glow
with a better warmth than that of sparkling wine. I soon went outside to
see something of the place which I had entered in the darkness.
I found that the village was built partly in the bottom of the gorge and
partly on one of its craggy sides. Closely hemmed in by rocks and high
hills overgrown with forest was a bright and fertile little valley, with
abundance of pear and walnut trees, luxuriant cottage-gardens, and
little fields by the flashing torrent, where shocks of lately-cut
buckwheat stood with their heads together waiting for the warm
September hours to ripen their black grain.
Many of the houses were half hidden in leafy bowers. I threaded my
way between these towards some ivy-draped fragments of an ancient
priory upon a mass of rock much overgrown with brambles glistening
with blackberries and briars decked with coral-red hips. Before
descending to the road and beginning the day's journey I indulged for a
little while the musing mood of the solitary wanderer in the grassy
burying-ground on the edge of the cliff.
I started for Bort ere the intensely blue sky began to pale before the
increasing brilliancy of the sun. The road ran along the bottom of the
deep valley, where there was change of scene with every curve of the
Dordogne. A field of maize showed how different was the climate here
from that of the bleak plateau above the deep rift in the rocks. I stopped

beside a little runnel that came down from the wooded heights to pick
some flowers of yellow balsam, and while there my eye fell upon a
splendid green lizard basking in the sun. Here was another proof of the
warm temperature of the valley, notwithstanding its altitude. As I went
on I skirted long fields of buckwheat upon the slope, but reaching only
a little way upwards. The white waxen flowers had turned, or were
turning, rusty; but what a variety of beautiful colour was on the stems
and leaves! Greens and yellows passed into carmine, purple, and burnt
sienna. A field of ripening buckwheat has a charm of warm colour that
gladdens the eye, especially when the morning or evening sunshine is
upon it. But this glow of many tints was a sure sign of approaching
autumn; so, too, were the reddened stalks of persicaria, filling the dry
ditches by the wayside.
The valley narrowed, and upon its rocky sides was many a patch of
purple heather--little gardens for the wild bees, but not for man. Neither
peasant nor local Nimrod ever sets his foot there. Still higher, the
outlines of the topmost crags were drawn hard against the sky, for there
was no vapour in the air. Verily, the ground seemed quite alive with
brown lizards darting along at my approach and raising little clouds of
dust, whilst blue-winged grasshoppers--which, perhaps, would be more
correctly described as locusts--crossed and recrossed the road in one
flight. In the midst of such beautiful scenery, and with such happy
creatures for companions, I felt no wish to hurry. Moreover, the
blackberries sometimes tempted me to loiter. If they are unwholesome,
as French peasants often maintain, I ought to have been dead long ago.
Strange that this prejudice should be so general in France with regard to
the fruit of so harmless a tribe. But these same peasants gather the
leaves of the bramble to make a decoction for sore throat. I passed a
cottage that had a vine-trellis, the first I had seen on this side of the
Auvergne mountains, and it was half surrounded by a forest of beans in
full flower on very high sticks. In a sunny space was a row of thatched
beehives.
After walking some eight miles, I was not unwilling to take advantage
of a village inn. Here I had a meal of bacon and eggs, haricots, cheese
and walnuts, with some rather rough Limousin wine. I soon became
aware that there was something amiss in the rustic auberge, and
catching a dim glimpse of a figure lying in a bed in a small room

adjoining, I asked the young woman who waited upon me if anybody
was ill there. 'Yes,' she replied dolefully. Then I learnt from her that her
father, struck with apoplexy, was lying in a state that was hopeless.
There is no escaping the mournfulness of life. When our minds are least
clouded the shadow of death