The valley down which I now took my way from St. Laurent was broad and green, but the high rocky cliffs which shut it off from the outer world drew nearer as I went on.  An old tramp who had a bag slung over his back stopped me and said that he was ‘dans la misere.’  Doubtless he guessed that I was not quite so deep in it as himself, and that I might be able to spare him something.  As I always look upon the tramp with a fraternal interest, however disreputable he may appear, because my own wayfaring has helped to teach me contempt for appearances, I stopped to talk with the aged wanderer while hunting for some stray sous.  His matted gray beard and sunken cheeks gave him the air of a Job of the studios; but no such luck had probably ever befallen him as to be asked to pose for thirty sous the hour.  Such a sum would be more than he could gather in a day, even after selling the surplus of his begged crusts.  He talked to me of ‘the picturesque,’ which proved that he had not grown gray and half doubled up without learning something of the world’s wisdom.  I learnt from him that between the spot where we met and St. Geniez there was only a hamlet, but that I should be able to find a house there where I could get a meal.

The old man went hobbling away, wondering, perhaps, when he would meet another foreign imbecile on the tramp, and I was soon alone upon the margin of the river’s broad bed of sand, strewn with pebbles like the seashore.  The stream was still fresh from the mountains, and it had the joyousness and bounding movements of young life.  It was very narrow now, and many plants had grown up since the spring upon its far-shelving banks of mica-glittering sand and many-coloured pebbles; but often its swollen waters had rolled through this smiling valley, a raging and uncontrollable force, spreading terror and destruction.

The cliffs drew nearer and rose higher, and then the river ran through a gorge nearly impassable, and abandoned to all the wildness of nature.  The partial loop here formed by the Lot is hidden and defended by a forbidding wilderness of rocks and forest, as if it were one of the last retreats of the fluvial deities, where they can defy the curiosity of man.  The adventurous spirit prompted me to explore it, but the lazy one said, ‘Leave it.’  I took the advice of the latter, and went on by the road, which now left the river, and ascended towards the plateau under cliffs of red sandstone.  The thirsty sun had by this time drained almost every flower-cup of its dew; but the freshness of the morning still lingered in the hollows of the rocks, and in the shade of the chestnut, the walnut, and elm.  As the earth warmed, it became quieter.  All creatures seemed to grow drowsy, except the sociable little quails that kept calling to one another, ’How are you?’ and the flies of wicked purpose, which become more and more enterprising as the temperature rises.