assurance that I was respectable.  He was a rakish, devil-may-care fellow, who, after being a sub-officer in the army, had lately been moved into the gendarmerie.  His heart had been deeply touched by an English governess whom he had met at Pau, and he spoke to me about her with ‘tears in his voice.’  He talked much about Lourdes, where he said the people were sincerely religious, and not hypocritical.  His opinion of the Aveyronnais was somewhat different, but perhaps unjust, for as yet he could not have had much experience of them.  Having taken the precaution to tell me that he was anything but a strict Catholic himself, he declared that he was a believer in miracles.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because,’ said he, ’my father saw Bernadette go up a rock on her knees—­one that no man could climb—­and I myself have been a witness of miracles at Lourdes.  I have seen at least twenty people cured at the fountain.  One was a captain, who was so paralyzed that he had to be carried to the water, and when he came away he walked as if nothing had been the matter with him.’

Thus talking we reached Entraygues.  I allowed the gendarme to take me to the inn of his fancy, which he praised with true Southern warmth for its comfort and good cheer.  The large kitchen as we entered was only lighted by the flame of the wood-fire on the hearth, in front of which a fowl and a piece of veal were turning on the same spit, moved by clockwork that said ‘click-clack, click-clack;’ which was as genial an invitation to dinner as any I had ever heard.  Presently the lamp was lighted, the table was laid, and I sat down to dinner with the innkeeper and the gendarme from the Basses Pyrenees.  The meal was of the substantial kind, such as gives complete satisfaction to the wayfarer at the end of his day’s wandering, after putting up with frugal fare on the road.  The aubergiste brought out his best wine, and his best cheeses made from goat’s milk, and which had been kept carefully wrapped up in vine leaves.  These little cheeses, when they have been allowed to mature in a wrapping of vine or plane leaf, are among the best made.  The landlord had studied all matters relating to the stomach within the range of his experience.  He said that hares were not fit to eat unless they had fed chiefly on thyme, and that a starling had no value in the kitchen until it had been feeding on juniper berries.

This night when I went to bed I had not the frantic crowing of cocks to keep me awake, but the soft murmuring of the flowing river to lull me asleep.  The weather being now fair and calm after the troubled evening, I threw the window open, so that I could feel the wafting of the great invisible wings of the summer night, and listen to the soothing song of the water repeating the tales that were told to it by the rocks and the woods on its way down from the Lozere mountains.