Two men are still working in a field of
tobacco, and they go on until lights flash forth from all the houses in the
valley. Then they slowly move off into the dusk with their ox and waggon.
All about the fields, where the night crickets are now chirruping and the
flying beetles are droning, there is a general movement of life towards the
village--of men carrying their mattocks on their shoulder or walking in
front of the ox that has done his long day's ploughing, of women and
children, geese, turkeys, and sheep.
[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.]
I wonder if the wooden cross beside the tobacco-field was put there to
mark the spot where somebody died, in accordance with an old and beautiful
custom still much practised in these rural districts of France; but the
thought of the laid table at the auberge changes the train of ideas, so,
following in the wake of the last goose, I, too, take refuge from the night
in the now animated village.
Sitting alone at a great table in a room large enough for a marriage feast,
ill-lighted by an oil-lamp, whose flame appears to be afflicted with St.
Vitus's dance--a room quite free from ornament, with furniture responding
exclusively to the purposes of resting, eating, and drinking, with
curtainless windows looking out upon the moonless night that is beginning
to sigh and moan at the approach of a storm--my dinner is not a very
cheerful one.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120