I soon took my last look at Ambialet, its rocks and ruins on which the wild pinks nodded, and its stone-covered roofs overgrown with white sedum.  I was struck by the number of prickly plants on the sandy banks of the Tarn.  Those which now made the best show of bloom were the star-thistle centaurea and ononis repens.  The appearance of this last was very curious, for in addition to its pink pea-blossoms it seemed to be sprinkled over with little flowers the colour of forget-me-nots.  These, however, were not flowers at all, but small flying beetles painted the brilliant blue of myosotis.  Another plant that showed a strong liking for these banks was the horned poppy (glaucium luteum), which I had only found elsewhere near the sea-coast.  Brown stalks of broomrape were still standing, and I lighted upon a lingering bee-ophrys, a plant which by its amazing mimicry makes one look at it with awe as if it were something supernatural.

It was an invitation to lunch at a presbytery that was the reason for my companion taking a walk of about eight miles.  Passing through a small village on the way he called for the cure there, who was also an expected guest.  This priest had obtained a reputation throughout the district for his humour, his eccentricity, and contempt for appearances.  He had passed most of his life alone, cooking his food, making his bed, and probably mending his clothes, without the help of any woman.  Being now over eighty years of age, he had realized the necessity of changing his ways, and a woman not much younger than himself had succeeded in obtaining a firm footing in his paved kitchen, which was also the dining-room and salon.  His presbytery in the steep and rocky village street was no better built or more luxuriously furnished than the dwellings of his peasant parishioners.  Here we found the old white-haired man, gay and hospitable, anxious to offer everything he had in the house to the visitor, but only able to think of two things which might be acceptable—­snuff and sausage. ’Un peu de saucisson?’ he said to me, with a winning smile after handing me his snuff-box.  I assured him I could eat nothing then. ’Te! and so you are really English, monsieur?—­Un peu de saucisson?’

The cure had been shut up in this village so many years, speaking nothing but Languedocian to his parishioners, even when preaching to them, that his French had become rather difficult to understand.  I was keenly alive to the exceptional study of human nature presented by this fine specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted soutane with frayed edges.  He was not a bit ascetic, and although he had lived so many years by himself, his good-humour and gaiety continually overflowed.  It may be that a housekeeper tends to sour a priest’s temper more than anything