patchwork quilts over big bundles of dry maize leaves.  It is thus that many of the peasants of the Aveyron sleep.  This is not a part of France where the study of cleanliness and comfort is carried to excess.  If the floor of the room that I now entered had ever been washed, the boards must have forgotten the scrubbing sensation a century or more ago.  The appearance of everything indicated that I was in a fleas’ paradise; but as it was by no means the first of the kind of which I had had experience, I merely took the precaution of keeping my feet off the ground, so as to offer as few travelling facilities as possible to the enemy.  The room, although it was dirty, was cheerful; for the sunshine streamed in through the open window, and the view of the green valley beneath and the woods beyond soon drove the fleas out of mind.  Upon the sill were plums laid out on wooden trays to dry in the sun and become what English people call prunes.

The excellent woman, who installed me before a little table on which she laid a cloth, said that she had little to offer me; but that all she had was at my service.  She first fished out of the wood-ashes in which it was preserved one of those dry, stringy sausages with which everyone who knows this part of France must be familiar.  Then she brought in some white bread which a presentiment of my coming had perhaps caused her to buy a month before, for it was green with mildew.  She thought that I should prefer this to the very dark bread of her own making.  The choice was perplexing.  My meal was chiefly made upon a dish of firm cream like that of Devonshire, with plums and fresh cob-nuts for dessert.  Then my hostess made me some coffee, a luxury rarely used in the house; and when she had set it on the table, I induced her to stay and talk awhile.  The conversation was made easier because, notwithstanding her poverty, she spoke French with much more facility than most of the people in these rural districts.  She told me that her husband and children had not yet returned from the fields, and that she was at home because she was so tired after threshing buckwheat all yesterday in the sun.

‘In winter,’ I said, ‘you have an easier time?’ ’Oh no!  In winter we are always working at something or another.  We then make our linen from the hemp, patch up the clothes, prepare the walnuts for pressing, and blanch the chestnuts.[*] We have always something on hand.’

  [*] Blanchir les chataignes.  In Guyenne, after the first sale of
     chestnuts in their natural state, the peasants prepare a large
     quantity of those that remain in a special manner, which consists
     of removing the first and second skins, and artificially drying
     the nuts until they become quite hard.  They will then keep an
     indefinite period, and can be boiled for food when required.  In
     the winter evenings, while the women work at their distaffs, the
     men frequently skin chestnuts either for drying or for food the
     next day.