surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an

olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him
hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with

one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him; but,
leaving Modestine once more, retraced my steps.

Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had
forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this

neglect.
I told him sternly, 'Nothing.'

'Nothing?' cried he.
I repeated 'Nothing,' and made off.

It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to
the old man as he had been to me.

The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two
below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers,

it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began
early underneath the trees. But I heard the voice of a woman

singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be
about love and a BEL AMOUREUX, her handsome sweetheart; and I

wished I could have taken up the strain and answered her, as I went
on upon my invisiblewoodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem,

my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little
enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and

takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again
into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet

which makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,'
outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand

beyond the grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's
mercy, both easy and grateful to believe!

We struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with
noiseless dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining for

a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner
my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out

my brandy at Florac, for I could bear the stuff no longer, and
replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay; and now I drank

to the moon's sacredmajesty upon the road. It was but a couple of
mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my

blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this
purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a

livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among
masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away.

Our two shadows - mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically
bestridden by the pack - now lay before us clearly outlined on the

road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly
distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to

time a warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts
dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled

with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next
moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved

except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous
ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the

moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one
lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad

nocturnal colouring.
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. But the
place itself, although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a

hamlet. It lies terraced across a steep slope in the midst of
mighty chestnuts. The Protestant chapel stands below upon a

shoulder; in the midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic
church.

It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his
library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his

tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had
redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they

brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to be
interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in

the church. The CURE, taking his text from Second Samuel,
twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his

blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his
brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and

illustrious superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a
breeze that Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the

assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the
CURE himself as far as Alais.

Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On

the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas;
on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of

Roland at Mialet. The CURE, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic
at the arch-priest's funeral, and so hurriedly" target="_blank" title="ad.仓促地，忙乱地">hurriedly decamped to Alais,

stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations
against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the

village for an hour and a half, but was beaten back. The
militiamen, on guard before the CURE'S door, could be heard, in the

black hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly talk
with the insurgents. And in the morning, although not a shot had

been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks.
Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a

consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest!
That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de

Calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so
quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this

hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a
timid sort of lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a

second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My passage
was the first event, you would have fancied, since the Camisards.

There was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a
pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human

infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the
street.

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes

of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and
again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me,

with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a
thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful

human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in
their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through

the husk, which was already gaping; and between the stems the eye
embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves.

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an
atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But

perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit.
Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country; or perhaps