Although I did not think this association of ideas very complimentary to myself, I thanked her for her good advice.  I nevertheless took away as a souvenir a flower and one of the thorny apples, seeing which the peasant trudged on her way, saying no doubt that it was wasting time and words to give advice to lunatics.  Again the cliffs drew very close together, and the valley was nothing more than a deep crack in the earth’s crust.  On one side was unbroken forest; on the other vines were terraced up the rocky steep to the height of seven or eight hundred feet.  Even amidst the jutting crags the adventurous vine lifted its sunny leaves; but, alas! here, too, the phylloxera had begun its work of desolation, and I had little doubt that these hills laden with fruit were destined in a few years to become a waste of stones like so many others that I had seen nearer the plains which had once streamed with wine.  The cultivated land by the river was only a narrow strip, and the crops were chiefly maize and buckwheat.  At length the vine cultivation was only carried on at intervals.  Then the long blue line of water lay between high rocky hills covered with box and broom, bracken and heather.  A stream came tumbling down a deep ravine over blocks of gneiss to join the Lot, and a little beyond this was a hamlet.

The morning was now far advanced; so, as I was passing a cottage inn, I wavered a minute, and the result of the wavering was that I crossed the threshold.  I said to myself:  ’Perhaps I may walk on for miles, and not find another chance so good as this.’  It was one of the poorest of inns, but it was able to give me a meal of bread and cheese and eggs, which was as much as I could expect hereabouts.  There was also a light wine of local growth—­sparkling, fragrant, and deliciously cool.  What more could I want?  Two motherless girls looked after this waterside inn, and also the ferry belonging to it.  The boat lay a few feet from the door.  When I was ready to leave, the younger of the two girls ferried me to the other side of the river, and a very pretty figure she made for an artist to sketch—­the simplicity of childhood in her face, and the strength of a woman in her bare sunburnt arms.  As is the case with so many of the peasants in this district, where the old Gaulish stock (the Ruteni and the Cadurci) has been much less influenced than in the towns by the tumultuous passage of races from the south, the east, and the north, she was fair-haired, and naturally fair-skinned; but exposure to the sun had darkened her by many shades.

I had been walking for some time in the department of the Cantal, but the ferry landed me on the Aveyron side of the river.  I had now seriously to consider the shortest way to Conques, separated from me by very rough hill country and an uncertain number of miles.  I was on a narrow path skirting the forest and the water, when I met a peasant family dressed in their best clothes, and on their way, as I learnt,