After leaving Montbrun I saw nothing more of civilization until I came near a woman seated on a doorstep, and engaged in the exciting occupation of fleaing a cat.  She held the animal upon its back between her knees, and was so engrossed by the pleasures of the chase that she scarcely looked up to answer a question I put to her.  The word cafe painted upon a piece of board hung over another door enticed me inside, for it was now nearly midday, and I had been in search of the picturesque since seven o’clock, sustained by nothing more substantial than a bowl of black coffee and a piece of bread.  This is the only breakfast that one can expect in a rural auberge of Southern France.  If milk is wanted in the coffee it must be asked for over-night, and even then it is very doubtful if the cow will be found in time.  To ask for butter with the bread would be looked upon as a sign of eccentric gluttony, but to cap this request with a demand for bacon and eggs at seven in the morning, as a man fresh from England might do with complete unconsciousness of his depravity, would be to openly confess one’s self capable of any crime.  People who travel should never be slaves to any notions on eating and drinking, for such obstinacy brings its own punishment.

A stout woman with a coloured silk kerchief on her head met me with a good-tempered face, and, after considering what she could do for me in the way of lunch, said, as though a bright idea had suddenly struck her: 

’I have just killed some geese; would monsieur like me to cook him some of the blood?’.

‘Merci!’ I replied.  ‘Please think of something else.’

An Englishman may possibly become reconciled to snails and frogs as food, but never, I should say, to goose’s blood.  In about twenty minutes a meal was ready for me, composed of soup containing great pieces of bread, lumps of pumpkin and haricots; minced pork that had been boiled with the soup in a goose’s neck, then a veal cutlet, covered with a thick layer of chopped garlic.  Horace says that this herb is only fit for the stomachs of reapers, but every man who loves garlic in France is not a reaper.  Strangers to this region had better reconcile themselves both to its perfume and its flavour without loss of time, for of all the seasoning essences provided by nature for the delight of mankind garlic is most esteemed here.  Those who have a horror of it would fare very badly at a table-d’hote at Cahors, for its refined odour rises as soon as the soup is brought in, and does not leave until after the salad.  Even then the unconverted say that it is still present.  To cultivate a taste for garlic is, therefore, essential to happiness here.