travels with a donkey in the cévennes pdf

‘My man knows nothing,’ she said, with an angry nod ‘he is like the beasts.’Īnd the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. She had a share of brains and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although I do not suppose she ever did so. He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly ignorant. When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. ‘I would bet,’ he added, weighing it in his hand, ‘that this cost you not less than five francs.’ ‘I should never have guessed that,’ he said. My knife was cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled him with wonder. In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. ‘I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?’ he said, ‘and I am capable of leaving you not enough.’ At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. 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. 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.īut the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table.

In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. 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.

Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands.

Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited but I saw many more of the like upon my journey.

Travels with a donkey in the cévennes pdf