It was only natural to expect a night of horrors; but in this I was most agreeably disappointed, and the few hours passed quietly enough till it was time to get up.  By morning light, the salle-a-manger did so bristle with squalor that the kitchen was made the breakfast-room; though as that meal only lasted two minutes, and meant nothing beyond an attempt to eat some of the bread I had been unable to eat the night before, one place was much the same as another.  It is generally believed that coffee is to be obtained in perfection in France; but that belief is not founded on experience of the provinces, and had long ceased to be a part of my creed:  nevertheless, with the idea that there is always some redeeming-point in the darkest situation, I had hopes of the coffee of Die, in spite of the appearance of the pan; and if these hopes had been realised, the place might still have been tolerable.  But they were not realised.  When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes.  When served—­in the same dusty pitcher—­it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of the preceding night.

The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very thankful when our route branched off from the high road.  Liotir was strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms, and a wine-merchant.  Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[94] An epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and refused to spin—­a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of medicine.[95] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation.  Silkworms’ eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs’ worth of cocoons.  A man who ‘makes’ an ounce of seed requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this are the princes of the trade.  As we passed a farmhouse surrounded by mulberry trees and vineyards, my companion informed me that the farmer was his partner in worms and wine both, and that the wine promised to be the better speculation this year, for the fruit was in immense abundance.  I saw afterwards that, at the time of vintage, grapes sold for pressing at from 6 to 10 francs the hundred kilos, while 12 and 13 francs was the price in 1863, and that in some districts of the Drome the owners of the presses had not barrels enough for even the first pressing.