that they tell in bartering, because they maintain that every man who buys ought to understand his business.  I much wondered why, at a Figeac fair, when there was a question of buying a bullock, the animal’s tail was pulled as though all his virtue were concentrated in this appendage.  I learnt that the reason of the tugging was this:  Cattle are liable to a disease that causes the tail to drop off, but the people here have discovered a very artful trick of fastening it on again, and it needs a vigorous pull to expose the fraud.  Among other tricks of the country is that of drenching an ill-tempered and unmanageable horse with two litres of wine before taking him to the fair.  He then becomes as quiet as a lamb.  I heard the story of a cure, who was thus imposed upon by one of his own parishioners.  He wanted a very quiet horse, and he found one at the fair; but the next day, when he went near the animal, it appeared to be possessed of the devil.  All this is bad; but there is satisfaction to the student of old manners in knowing that everything takes place as it did centuries ago.  The cattle-dealers and peasants here actually transact their business in pistoles and ecus.  A pistole now represents 10 francs, and an ecu 3 francs.

The summer is glorious here, and as the climate is influenced by that of Auvergne, it is less enervating by the Cele than in the neighbouring valley of the Lot.  There, some twenty miles farther south, the grapes ripen two or three weeks sooner than they do upon these hillsides.  But the vent d’autan—­the wind from the south-east—­is now blowing, and, although there is too much air, one gasps for breath.  The brilliant blue fades out of the sky, and the sun just glimmers through layers of dun-coloured vapour.  It is a sky that makes one ill-tempered and restless by its sameness and indecision.  But the wind is a worse trial.  It blows hot, as if it issued from the infernal cavern.  It sets the nerves altogether wrong, and disposes one to commit evil deeds from mere wantonness and the feeling that some violent reaction from this influence is what nature insists upon.  It is a wind that does not blow a steady honest gale, but goes to work in a treacherously intermittent fashion—­now lulled to a complete calm, now springing at you like a tiger from the jungle.  Then your eyes are filled with dust, unless you close them quickly, or turn your back to the enemy in the nick of time.  The night comes, and brings other trouble.  You try to sleep with closed windows, so that you may hear less of the racket that the wind makes outside, but it is impossible:  you stifle.  You get up and open a window—­perhaps two windows.  The wind rushes in, but it is like the hot breath of a panting dog.  The noise of swinging persiennes that have got loose, and are banged now against the wall, now against the window-frame, mingles with a woful confusion of sounds within, as though a most unruly troop of ghosts were dancing