I was parched with thirst, for the sun had been broiling me for hours; therefore, when I saw this village on the hillside, I hurried towards it with the impatience of a traveller who sees the palm-trees over a well in the sands of Africa.  In a place that could give so much attention to colour there must surely be an auberge, I thought.  And I judged rightly, for there were two little inns.  I found the door of the first one closed, and learnt that the people were out harvesting.  I walked on to the next, and found that likewise closed, and was again informed that all the family were out in the fields.  The whole village was nearly deserted; almost everyone was busy reaping and putting up the sheaves.  I stopped beside the village pump and reflected upon my misery.  I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns.  Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness—­perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying ‘To-whit!  To-whit!’ That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer.  And the room was so cool that butter would not have melted in it.  These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer.  I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn; but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed.  Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing-machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for awhile quite at home.  The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing in the southern provinces of France.

At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companionship of a charming stream.  Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy.  Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was loosened.  I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets and the rapids of the little river, when a woman passed me on the road and murmured ‘Adicias!’ (God be with you!). ’Adicias! I replied, and then I was again alone.  Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded diligence.  The sound of the bells grew fainter and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night.  The stars began to shine, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and broke the peace with a cry of trouble.