The children only, however, showed any joy in the work, for the bunches hung at such a distance from each other that a vine was very quickly stripped.  The vigneron, with his mind dwelling upon the bygone fruitful years, when these arid steeps poured forth torrents of wine as surely as October came round, wore an expression on his face that was not one of thankfulness to Providence.  They are a rather surly people, moreover, the inhabitants of this district, and I do not think at any time their hearts could have been very expansive.  As I approached a woman who had a great basket of grapes in front of her, she hastily threw a bundle of leaves over them, casting a keenly suspicious glance at me the while.  If she meant me to understand that the times were too bad for grapes to be given away, the movement was unnecessary.  Where now are the generous sentiments and the poetry traditionally associated with the vintage?  Not here, certainly.  Men go out into their vineyards by night armed with guns, and the depredators whom they fear most are not dogs that have acquired a taste for grapes.  The stony path was bordered by brambles, overclimbed by clematis, whose glistening awns were mingled with blackberries, which not even a child troubled to pick.  There was much fleabane—­a plant that deserves to be cherished in these parts, if it be really what its name indicates, but it would have to be extensively cultivated to be a match for the fleas.  After the vineyards came the dry rock, that held, however, sufficient moisture for the wild fig-tree, wherever it could find a deep, crevice.

Passing underneath the perpendicular wall of rock, and the vine-clad ramparts above it, built on the very edge of the precipice, the winding path led me gradually up to the town.  A little in front of an arched gateway was a ruined barbican, the inner surface of the walls being green with ferns and moss.  Four loopholes were still intact.  Had it been night I might have seen ghostly men with crossbows issuing from the gateway, but it being broad daylight, I was met by a troop of young pigs followed by a little hump-backed woman who addressed her youthful swine in the language of the troubadours.

In the narrow street beyond the arch a company of gigantic geese drew themselves up in order of battle, and challenged me in chorus to come on; but their courage was like that of Ancient Pistol.  No other living creature did I see until I had walked nearly half through the ancient burg, between houses several centuries old, their stories projecting over the rough pitching and the stunted fig-trees which grew there unmolested.  Some of these dwellings were in absolute ruin, with long dry grasses waving on the roofless walls.  Nobody seemed to think it worth while to rebuild or repair anything.  The town appeared to have been left to itself and to time for at least two hundred years.  And yet there really were some inhabitants left.  I found another gateway