This moor was an absolute desert.
Long I walked without seeing another human being. At length I met a woman
carrying a distaff, and tried to get into conversation with her, but it was
impossible; she could not speak a word of French, and I knew nothing of her
Limousin patois.
By steadfastly following the road, I came to the village of St. Pantaleon,
on the brow of a hill overlooking the Luxege, and stopped at a wayside inn.
It was a poor auberge; but there was an air of reaching toward some ideal
of superior life and softened manners that made itself felt in small
ways not to be described with any certainty, but none the less real. The
innkeeper, who was also a peasant-farmer, possessed the doubtful blessing
of a mind that rose above what the logic of his existence, sternly bound
to a plot of grudging soil and the petty needs of still poorer neighbours,
demanded of it. He was blessed or afflicted with that hunger of knowledge
and refinement which lifts and casts down, rejoices and saddens. He knew
that such ambition with regard to himself was vain, that it was his destiny
to live out his days on the edge of a moor in the Correze, and that it was
his duty to thank Heaven that he was sheltered and had sufficient food,
fuel, and clothing for himself and his family: all this he knew, and he
accepted his lot bravely.
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