Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine | Page 9

des Anglais.' It is 100 feet
deep, and those who made it had to work thirty feet through solid rock.
* * * * *
After wandering and loitering by rivers too well fed by the mountains
to dry completely up like the perfidious little Alzou, I have returned to
Roc-Amadour, my headquarters, the summer being far advanced. The
wallflowers no longer deck the old towers and gateways with their
yellow bloom, and scent the morning and evening air with their
fragrance; the countless flags upon the rocky shelves no longer flaunt
their splendid blue and purple, tempting the flower-gatherer to risk a
broken neck; the poet's narcissus and the tall asphodel alike are gone;
so are all the flowers of spring. The wild vine that clambers over the
blackthorn, the maple and the hazel, all down the valley towards the
Dordogne, shows here and there a crimson leaf; and the little path is
fringed with high marjoram, whose blossoms revel amidst the hot
stones, and seem to drink the wine of their life from the fiery sunbeams.
Upon the burning banks of broken rock--gray wastes sprinkled with
small spurges and tufts of the fragrant southernwood, now opening its
mean little flowers--multitudes of flying grasshoppers flutter, most of
them with scarlet wings, and one marvels how they can keep
themselves from being baked quite dry where every stone is hot. The
lizards, which spend most of their time in the grasshoppers' company,
appear equally capable of resisting fire. In the bed of the Alzou a
species of brassica has had time since the last flood to grow up from the
seed, and to spread its dark verdure in broad patches over the dry sand
and pebbles. The ravens are gone--to Auvergne, so it is said, because
they do not like hot weather. The hawks are less difficult to please on
the score of climate; they remain here all the year round, piercing the
air with their melancholy cries.
I needed quiet for writing, and could not get it. Of all boons this is the
most difficult to find in France. It can be had in Paris, where it is easy
to live shut off from the world, hearing nothing save the monotonous
rumble of life in the streets; but let no one talk to me about the blessed
quietude of the country in France, unless it be that of the bare moor or
mountain or desolate seashore. In villages there is no escape from the

clatter of tongues until everybody, excepting yourself, is asleep. The
houses are so built that wherever you may take refuge you are
compelled to hear the conversation that is going on in any part of them.
In the South the necessity of listening becomes really terrible. The men
roar, and the women shriek, in their ordinary talk. A complete stranger
to such ways might easily suppose that they were engaged in a wordy
battle of alarming ferocity, when they are merely discussing the pig's
measles, or the case of a cow that strayed into a field of lucern, and was
found the next morning like a balloon. It is hard for a person who needs
to be quiet at times to live with such people without giving the
Recording Angel a great deal of disagreeable work.
I would not have believed that so small a place as Roc-Amadour, and
such a holy one, could have been so noisy if my own experience had
not informed me on this subject. Every morning at five the tailor who
did duty as policeman and crier came with his drum, and, stationing
himself by the town pump, which was just in front of my cottage,
awoke the echoes of the gorge with a long and furious tambourinade.
While the women, in answer to this signal, were coming from all
directions, carrying buckets in their hands, or copper water-pots on
their heads, he unchained the pump-handle. Now for the next two hours
the strident cries of the exasperated pump, and the screaming gabble of
many tongues, all refreshed by slumber and eager for exercise, made
such a diabolic tumult and discord as to throw even the braying of the
donkeys into the minor key. Of course, sleep under such circumstances
would have been miraculous; but, then, no one had any right to sleep
when the rocks were breaking again into flame, and the mists which
filled the gorge by night were folding up their tents. I therefore
accepted this noise as if it had been intended for my good, and the
crowd in front of the pump was always an amusing picture of human
life. It was at its best on Sunday, for then the tailor--who also did a
little shaving between whiles--had put on his fine braided official coat,
as