He was accompanied by a hard-baked man of about sixty--a peasant,
apparently, but one who had put on his best clothes in view of an important
bargain that was to be made. He had cunning little eyes, and a mouth that
seemed to have acquired from many ancestors, and from the habits of a
lifetime, a concentrated expression of rustic chicanery which told me that
no business was to be done with him without a fight.
He led the way to his house, which was on the road just above the river. I
came to terms with him for a month, after the expected fight; but it
was not until he had gone away that I began to realize that I had not
distinguished myself by my wisdom in this transaction. Even the villagers,
who are not dainty in the matter of lodging, described the house as a
_baraque_. It gave me the same impression when I saw the inside of it; but
I closed my eyes to its drawbacks, because I had taken a fancy to Beynac,
and this was the only furnished dwelling to be obtained there. I thought
all the little drawbacks belonging to it, such as the rustic hearth to cook
upon, pots with holes in them, rusty frying-pans, deficiency of crockery,
and more than a sufficiency of fleas, would be overcome somehow, as they
had been elsewhere during my peregrinations in out-of-the-way districts,
where the traveller who nurses his dignity, and has a proper regard for the
comforts of life, never thinks of stopping.
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