Between Modestine's Laggard Humour And The Beauty Of The Scene, We Made
Little Progress All That Afternoon; And At Last Finding The Sun, Although
Still Far From Setting, Was Already Beginning To Desert The Narrow Valley
Of The Tarn, I Began To Cast About For A Place To Camp In.
This was not
easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was
unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon.
I should have
slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head
in the river.
After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little
plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk
of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, I
goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to unload
her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go
nearly as high again before I found so much as standing-room for the ass.
It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly
not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having
given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves, of which I
found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment.
The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the
road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the
world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut
trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of
jocular persons in the night.
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