I Kept My Eyes To Myself, And Know Nothing Of The
Woman Except That She Had Beautiful Arms, And Seemed No Whit Embarrassed
By My Appearance.
As a matter of fact, the situation was more trying to
me than to the pair.
A pair keep each other in countenance; it is the
single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help attributing my
sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a
cup of brandy from my flask. He told me that he was a cooper of Alais
travelling to St. Etienne in search of work, and that in his spare
moments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me he
readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant.
I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my
toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's
wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood
of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty
clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and the
only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern hills,
where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn.
It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I
had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to
the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to
stare upon the stranger.
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