At A Certain Point, As I Went Downward, Turning Many Acute Angles, The
Moon Disappeared Behind The Hill; And I Pursued My Way In Great Darkness,
Until Another Turning Shot Me Without Preparation Into St. Germain De
Calberte.
The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night.
Only from a single open door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to
show me that I was come among men's habitations.
The two last gossips of
the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The
landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and
had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I
must have gone supperless to roost.
THE LAST DAY
When I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great flourishing of
cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the
clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I looked forth on
a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still
early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows
encouraged me to be out and look round me.
St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. At
the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation, it was
inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine
were Catholic; and it took the cure seventeen September days to go from
house to house on horseback for a census.
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