There was but one inn at Marsal that undertook to lodge the stranger, and very seldom was any claim of the sort made upon it.  The peasant family who lived in it looked to their bit of land and their two or three cows to keep them, not to the auberge.  The bottles of liquor on the shelf were rarely taken down, except on Sundays, when villagers might saunter in, to gossip and smoke over coffee and eau de vie, or the glass of absinthe, which, since the failure of the vines in the South of France, has become there the most convivial of all drinks, although it makes men more quarrelsome than any other.  In these poor riverside villages, however, where a mere ribbon of land is capable of cultivation—­which, although exceedingly fertile, is constantly liable to be flooded by the uncertain Tarn—­men have so little money in their pockets that water is their habitual drink, and when they depart from this rule they make a little dissipation go a very long way.

I found this single auberge closed, and all the family in an adjoining field around a waggon already piled with hay, to which a couple of cows were harnessed.  My appearance there brought the pitchforks suddenly to a rest.  If I had been shot up from below like a stage-devil, these people could not have stared at me with greater amazement and a more frank expression of distrust.  First in patois, and then, seeing that I was at a loss, in scarcely intelligible French, they asked me what my trade was, and what object I had in coming to Marsal.  I tried to explain that I was not a mischievous person, that I was travelling merely to look at their beautiful rocks and gorges, but I failed completely to bring a hospitable expression into their faces.  An old man of the party was the worst to deal with.  He put the greatest number of questions and understood the least French, and all the while there was a most provokingly keen, suspicious glitter in his little gray eyes.  Presently he beckoned me, and led the way, as I thought, to the inn; but such was not his intention.  He stopped at the door of the communal school, where the schoolmaster was already waiting for me, for he had evidently been warned of the presence of a doubtful-looking stranger, who had come to the village on foot with a pack on his back, and who, being dressed a trifle better than the ordinary tramp, was probably the more dangerous for this reason.  Like most of the village schoolmasters in France, this gentleman was also secretary at the mairie, a function highly stimulating to the sense of self-importance, and no wonder, considering that the person who fills it frequently supplies the mayor, who may scarcely be able to sign his name to official documents, with such intelligence as he may need for his public duties.

This schoolmaster was affable and pleasant, but as a crowd quickly collected to see what would happen, he was not going to let a good opportunity slip of showing how indispensable he was to the safety of the village.  He said that personally he was quite satisfied with my explanations, but that in his official capacity he was compelled to ask me for my papers.  These were forthcoming, and the serious official air with which he pretended to read the English passport from beginning to end was very pretty comedy, considering that he did not understand a word of the language.