I had left this hamlet, and was on the bank of the Tarn, when I heard the patter of bare feet upon the pebbles behind me.  Turning round, I saw the eldest of the boys who had been watching me in the doorway.  He had an idea that I should go wrong, and followed stealthily to see.  He now told me that if I continued by the water I should soon be stopped by rocks, and I accepted his offer to show me the way up the cliff.  His recklessness in running over the sharp stones made me ask him if they did not hurt his feet.  ‘Oh no!’ he replied; ’they are used to it.’  It is indeed astonishing what feet are able to get used to.  The boy’s joy at the few sous which I gave him was almost ecstatic.  He had hardly thanked me when he set off running homeward to show how he had been rewarded—­for his sharpness in thinking that I should lose my way, and allowing me to do so before saying a word.

I was by the river-side not far from Sainte-Enimie when a rather alarming noise broke the silence and became rapidly louder.  I looked up the steep cliff, and saw to my consternation a great stone bounding down the rocks and crashing through the vines.  As I seemed to be in the line of it I hastened on.  I had only gone about ten yards when it bounded into the air and, passing sheer over the path and bank, plunged into the Tarn with a mighty splash.  I reckoned that had I remained where I was it would have just cleared my head.  It was a fragment of rock which, from its size, might well have been two hundredweight.  The same thing happened earlier in the day, but that time I was not so unpleasantly near.  The heavy rain of the previous night, coming after a long period of drought, was probably the cause of these already-loosened stones starting upon their downward career.  All these calcareous rocks are breaking up.  The process of disintegration and decomposition is slow, but it is sure.  Every frost does something to split them, and every shower of rain entering the crevices does something to rot them; so that even they cannot last.  The Tarn is carrying them back to the sea, to be deposited again, but somewhere else.

I was at Sainte-Enimie before sunset, and there I found the air laden with the scent of lavender.  True, all the hills round about were covered with a blue-gray mantle; but I had never known the plant when undisturbed give out such an aroma before.  Looking down from the little bridge to the waterside, my wonder ceased.  There in a line, with wood-fires blazing under them, were several stills, and behind these, upon the bank, were heaps of lavender stalks and flowers such as I had never seen even in imagination.  There were enough to fill several bullock-waggons.  The fragrance in the air, however, did not come so much from these mounds as from the distilled essence.  It was evident that Sainte-Enimie had a considerable trade in lavender-water.