where they had been to church and market.  I asked one of the children where I was.  At Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me.  Thither, about a mile south of my destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me.  My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberge.

I HAVE A GOAD

The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey.  Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands.  Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture of the plainest, earthern floors, a single bedchamber for travellers, and that without any convenience but beds.  In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night.  Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table.  The food is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner.

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate.  As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth.  At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me.  He would take but little.

‘I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?’ he said, ‘and I am capable of leaving you not enough