Chapter 12

Now I will speak of my own hermitage, my ideal nook for writing, reading, and doing nothing, which, after much wandering and vain searching, I found at length here. Yes, I found it at last; and I much fear that I shall never find another like it. It lay at the back of the château, beyond the shaded nettles and the ancient quinces. My ordinary way to it was through a piece of waste, which, with unintentional sarcasm, was called the 'Little Park.' It was overgrown by burdocks, to which it had been abandoned for years--who could tell how many?--and was rambled over by turkeys, guinea-hens, and other poultry. Then I passed through a little gate, crossed another bit of waste that was neither lawn nor field, skirted a patch of buckwheat, and entered a small wood or shrubbery, where plum and filbert trees grew with oaks and beeches, until I came to water. This was the _vivier_ of the château--fishpond, long drawn out like a canal, and fed by a spring, but which had been left to itself until it was nearly shaded over by alders and other trees. At the end farthest from all habitations was a little structure built of stones, open on one side, and with small orifices in the three remaining walls. These could be closed, and yet they were not windows. Their purpose was much more like that of loopholes in a mediaeval barbican. They were to enable the man inside to watch the movements of migratory birds, and to send his shot into the thick of them when, unsuspecting danger, they chanced to come within range. The little building was an _affût_. Near to it was a sort of fixed cage, intended for decoy birds, but it had long been without tenants when I took possession of this refuge from all the human noises of the world. The other sounds did not worry me, although they often drew me from my work. The splash of a fish would take me to the water's edge, where I would watch the small pikes lying like straight roots that jut from the banks under water. The cooing of the little brown turtles in the trees overhead, the movements of a pair of kingfishers that would often settle close by upon an old stump, the magpies and jays, and especially the oriels, would make my thoughts wander amongst the leaves while the ink was drying in the pen. The oriels tantalized me, because I could always hear them in the crests of the trees, until, about the middle of August, they went away on their long journey to the South, but could very rarely catch sight of their gold and black plumage. Although they will draw near to gardens to steal fruit when they have eaten the wild cherries, they are among the most suspicious and wary of birds.

The oriel is a strange singer. It generally begins by screeching harshly; then follow three or four flute-like notes, which seem to indicate that the bird could be a musician if it would only persevere. But it will not take the trouble. It goes on repeating its 'Lor-e-oh!' just as its tree-top companions, the cicadas, keep up their monotonous creaking.

From my cabin I could see all the lights, colours, and shadows of the day change and pass, but the sweetest music of the summer hours was heard when the soft sunshine of evening fell in patches on the darkening water, and on the green grass on each side of the brown path strewn with last year's trodden leaves.

Sometimes a hedgehog would creep across the narrow path, shaded with nut-bushes, oaks, and alders towards the water, and at night--I was often there at night--the glow-worms gleamed all about upon the ground, and there were mysterious whisperings whose cause I could not trace. Yes, it was an ideal literary hermitage, but as perfection is not to be found anywhere on land or water, even this spot had its drawback. There were too many mosquitoes. My friend the owner of the château often said to me, '_La moustigue de l'Isle n'est pas mêchante;_' but on this point I could not agree with him. I bore upon me visible signs of its wickedness; but in course of time I and the '_mostique de I'Isle_' lived quite harmoniously together in the little shanty under the trees.

Where the weedy and shady avenue leading to the château made an angle with the highroad, there was often a caravan or tilt-cart stationed for days together. Sometimes it was the travelling house of a tinker and his family; in which case the man was generally to be seen working outside upon his pots and pans in the shade of a tree. Sometimes it belonged to a party of basket and rustic-chair makers, who gathered the reeds and hazel-sticks that they needed as they passed through the country. Some were gipsies, and some were not; but all were baked by the sun almost to the colour of Moors. Having a taste for nomadic life myself, I used to stay and talk to these people from time to time; but none of them interested me so much as the wandering cobbler and his dog, whose acquaintance I had made higher up the country amongst the rocks.

I can still see them both in the shade of the old gateway; the man seated in the entrance of the little tower, where, at the top of the spiral staircase, is the village prison; the dog lying with his nose upon his paws just within the line drawn by the gateway's shadow across the dazzling road. They both came one evening and took up their position here with as much assurance as if it had been theirs by right of inheritance. They soon set to work, the man mending boots and shoes, and the dog making himself disagreeable to all the male members of the canine population for a couple of miles or so around. Until the cobbler's companion settled down comfortably, he had several exhilarating fights with local dogs that looked upon him as an intruder and an impostor. He really was both. He had no great courage, but he had grown impudent and daring from the day that he had first worn a collar armed with spikes. When his enemies had taken a few bites at this, they came to the conclusion that there was something very wrong in his anatomy. After the first encounter they were not only willing to leave him alone, but were exceedingly anxious to 'cut' him when they met him unexpectedly. They approached the gateway as little as possible; but when they were obliged to pass it, they drew their tails under them, showed the whites of their eyes, and having crept very stealthily to within ten yards or so of the archway where the interloper appeared to be dozing, they made a valiant rush towards the opening. Notwithstanding these precautions, the cobbler's dog, which had been watching them all the while out of the corner of one eye, was often too quick for them.

Man and dog were ludicrously alike both in appearance and character. The beast was one of the ugliest of mongrels, and the man might well have been the final expression of the admixture of all races, whose types had been taken by destiny from the lowest grades of society. They were both grizzly, thick-set, and surly. They both seemed to have reached the decline of life with the same unconquerable loathing of water, except as a means of quenching thirst. The dog, although some remote bull-dog ancestor had bequeathed him short hair, had bristles all over his face just like his master. They were a couple of cynics, but they believed in one another, and loved one another with an affection that was quite edifying. The dog wished for nothing better than to lie hour after hour near his master, hoping always, however, for an occasional fight to keep him in health and spirits. The cobbler did nothing to make himself liked by the inhabitants, but he could afford to work more cheaply than others who were 'established,' and who had a wife and children to keep; consequently the pile of old boots and shoes that looked quite unmendable rose in front of him, and for three or four weeks he remained in the same place stitching and tapping. Having locked up his things at night in the tower--he had obtained permission to make this use of it--he disappeared with his dog, and what became of them until next day was a mystery.

I admired the blunt independence and practical philosophy of this homeless man. Although he was disagreeable to others, he was on good terms with himself, and seemed quite satisfied with his lot. If, when he had named his price for mending a pair of shoes, anybody tried to beat him down, he would say, 'Take them and mend them yourself!' His incivility obtained for him a reputation for honesty, and his prices were soon accepted without a murmur. He talked to nobody unless he was obliged to do so, and by his moroseness he came to be respected. I managed to draw him into conversation once by feigning to be much impressed by the comeliness and amiable nature of his dog, and he then told me that he had been wandering ever since he was a boy in Languedoc and Guyenne, stopping in a village as long as there was work to do and then moving on to another. Wherever people wore boots or shoes--if it were only on Sundays--there was always something to be done by working cheaply.

The silent cobbler might have kept his open-air shop longer than he did in the shadow of the mediaeval gateway, if his dog had not quarrelled with the sole representative of police authority for having put on his gala uniform, which included a cocked-hat and a sword. For this want of respect the animal was imprisoned in the room of the tower, to the great joy of all the other dogs, but to the intense grief of his master, who found it impossible to turn a deaf ear to the plaintive moans that reached him from above. And thus it came to pass that they went away together rather suddenly in search of a gateway somewhere else, the dog earnestly praying, after his fashion, that it might not be one with a tower.

One June morning, soon after sunrise, twenty-seven mowers came to the château to cut the grass in the great meadow lying between the river under the cliffs and my moat--I called it mine because it was almost made over to me for the time being, together with the bit of wood and the cabin. Each mower brought with him his scythe, an implement of husbandry which in France is in no danger of being classed with agricultural curiosities of the past. Here the reaping and the mowing machine make very little progress in the competition between manual and mechanical labour. In the southern provinces, few owners of the soil have ever seen such contrivances. People who cling to the poetic associations of the scythe and the sickle--and who does not that has been awakened by their music in his childhood?--must not cry out against the laws which have caused the land of France to be divided up into such a multitude of small properties, for it is just this that preserves the old simplicity of agriculture as effectually as if some idyllic poet with a fierce hatred of all machines were the autocratic ruler of the country. Whether the nation gains or loses by such a state of things is a question for political economists to wrangle over; but that the artist, the seeker of the picturesque, the romantic roamer, and the sentimental lover of old custom gain by it can hardly be denied.

Some of the mowers were men of sixty, others were youths of seventeen or eighteen: all were contented at the prospect of earning nothing, but of being treated with high good cheer. Now, victuals and drink are a great deal in this life, but not everything, and these men would not have come on such terms had they not been moved by a neighbourly spirit. They were themselves all landowners, or sons of landowners. Had wages been given, two francs for the day would have been considered high pay, and the food would have been very rough. No turkeys would have had their throats cut; no coffee and rum would have been served round. In short, this haymaking day was treated as an annual festival.

A goodly sight was the long line of mowers as their scythes swept round and the flowery swathes fell on the broad mead in the tender sunshine, while the edges of the belt of trees were still softened by the morning mist. After the mowers, all the workers employed on the home-farm, men, women, and boys, entered the field to turn the swathes, which in a few hours were dried by the burning sun. On the morrow a couple of oxen drew a creaking waggon into the field, and when the angelus sounded from the church-tower in the evening the haymaking was over. But I have not yet described the mowers' feast.

At about ten o'clock the big bell that hangs outside the château is rung, and the mowers, dropping their scythes, leave the field and troop into the great kitchen, which has changed so little for centuries. The pots and pans hanging against the walls, and the pieces of bacon from the beams, have been renewed, but not much else. There is the same floor paved with stones, now much cracked and worn into hollows, the same hearth and broad chimney with hanging chain; and the long table and benches stretching from end to end, although their age is uncertain, were certainly fashioned upon the exact model of others that preceded them. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, when campaigning in Guyenne, may have sat down many a time to such a table as this, and to just such a meal as the one that is about to be served to the mowers, with the exception of the coffee and rum.

Let us take a look into the great caldrons, which appear to have come out of Gargantua's kitchen. One contains two full-sized turkeys and several fowls, another a leg of pork, and a third a considerable portion of a calf. Then there is a caldron of soup, made very 'thick and slab.' Home-baked loaves, round like trenchers, and weighing 10lb. each, are on the side table, together with an immense bowl of salad and a regiment of bottles filled with wine newly drawn from the cask.

In the evening, when all the grass has been cut, there is another and a greater feast. The work being done, the men linger long at the table. Then all the household is assembled in the great kitchen, including the _châtelain_ and _châtelaine_, and the young men who are known to have voices are called upon to sing. They do not need much pressing, for what with the heat of the sun during the day, then the wine, the coffee and rum, their blood is rushing rather hotly through the veins. One after another they stand up on the benches and give out their voices from their sturdy chests, which are burnt to the colour of terra-cotta. They make so much noise that the old warming-pan trembles against the wall. Although they all speak patois among themselves, they are reluctant to sing the songs of Périgord in the presence of strangers. The young men are proud of their French, bad as it is, and a song in the café-concert style of music and poetry fires their ambition to excel on a festive occasion like this, whilst their patois ditties seem then only fit to be sung at home or in the fields. At length, however, they allow themselves to be persuaded, and they sing in chorus a 'Reapers' Song,' composed long ago by some unknown Périgourdin poet, who was perhaps a jongleur or a troubadour. The notes are so arranged as to imitate the rhythmic movements of the reaper: first the drawing back of the right arm, then the stroke of the sickle, and lastly, the laying down of the cut corn. There is something of sadness as well as of joy in the repeated cadences of the simple song, and it moves the heart, for now the old men join in, and the sound gathers such strength that the little martins under the eaves must be pressing troubled breasts against their young.

This château had remained in the same family for centuries, and the actual owner, although by no means indifferent to the noble exploits of his ancestors, had long ago settled down to the life of an agricultural gentleman, and devoted what energy may have come down to him from the Crusaders to the cultivation of tobacco, the improvement of stock, the rearing of pigeons and poultry, the planting of trees, and a great deal more belonging to the same order of interest. He was a strongly marked type of the _gentilhomme campagnard_, in whom blue blood combines perfectly with rustic tastes and simplicity of manners. Like most men who live greatly to themselves, he had his hobbies, and they were all of a very respectable kind. One was to surround himself with trees; another was to have all kinds of captive birds about him. I was never able to know exactly how many aviaries he possessed, for I was always finding a fresh one curiously hidden in some neglected corner. He liked to mix up all sorts of birds together, such as pigeons, doves--tame and wild--blackbirds, linnets, canaries, chaffinches, sparrows, tomtits--no, the tomtits had been turned out. I asked why.

'Because,' said M. de V., 'there is no bird so wicked for its size as the titmouse. It pecks other birds with which it is shut up so often in the same part of the head that at length it makes a hole and picks out the brains.'

He used to catch his birds by means of a long net, and his favourite place for spreading it was along the side of the patch of buckwheat which was sown to feed the captives. He was a true lover of birds, and by observing them had stored up in his mind a fund of curious knowledge respecting their characters and habits. He only worked a portion of his land with the aid of the servants of the château; the rest was farmed on the system of _métayage_, for which he had a very strong liking. He said it was far preferable from the landlord's point of view to leasing, because the owner of the soil remained absolute master of his property. He could take care that nothing was done which did not please him, for the _métayer_ or _colon_ was on no firmer footing than that of an upper servant. If the landlord was not satisfied with the manner in which his land was treated, or if he suspected his _métayer_ of trying to take an unfair advantage of him in the division of proceeds, all he had to do was to change him for another. But it was the interest of both to work well together, and it was the duty of the landlord to assist the _métayer_ as much as possible, especially when times were hard.

On this estate the _colons_ were housed free, but they paid one-third of the taxes. At the time of sowing, the seed was found by the landlord, but the colon returned half of the amount when the crop was gathered.

_Métayage_, or the system of sharing results between the landowner and the labouring peasant, still flourishes in France, notwithstanding the severe denunciations passed upon it by various writers. If it were a very bad system, it would have fallen into disuse long before now, for although the French have a tendency to keep their wheels in old ruts, they are as keen as any other people in protecting their own interests. It is a system that would soon become impossible without trustfulness and honesty. On both sides there must be fair dealing. The _colon_ must feel that the landlord will help him in time of trial and need, and the landlord must feel that the _colon_ is not trying to cheat him. In the great majority of cases, the man who does the ploughing, the sowing and the harvesting quite realizes that honesty with him is the best policy, and the owner of the soil knows that it is to his interest to support his _métayer_, and encourage him with judicious aid when the times are bad. The _métayer_, who has hope of making a little money over and above what is barely sufficient to support himself and his family, and knows that results will depend largely upon his own sagacity and industry, works with a steady zeal that it would be unreasonable to expect of the hired labourer, who, having his measured wage always in his mind's eye, has no incentive to do more than what is rigorously expected of him.

It may happen that the _métayer_, with all his labour--carried sometimes to an extreme that degrades the man physically and mentally--and all his frugality, which so often entails constitutional enfeeblement and degeneration, because the nutrition is not sufficient to correct the exhaustion of toil, obtains really less value for his work than an English farm labourer, and is not so well housed; but, on the other hand, he enjoys a large amount of liberty and independence, and has the hope, if he is young, of being able to save money, buy some land, and become his own master. A _métairie_ is seldom so large as to be beyond the working capabilities of a man and his family. In Guyenne an estate of a few hundred acres, if the land is productive, is often divided up into several _métairies_.

Farm labourers are not an overfed or overpaid class in Périgord. Food that is almost bread and vegetables, and a wage of one franc a day, are the ordinary conditions on which men work from sunrise to darkness. Lodging is not always included. I have known men in the full vigour of life earning only the equivalent of ninepence halfpenny a day, paying rent out of it, and presumably supporting a wife and children.

The daily life at the château was quite old fashioned in its simplicity. Everybody rose with the sun, or very soon afterwards. At nine o'clock the bell in the court rang for the principal meal, which was called dinner. Kings dined at about the same hour in the times of the Crusaders. Early in the afternoon the bell rang again. This was for _collation_, a very light repast, which was often nothing more than salad or fruit and a _frotte_--a piece of crusty bread rubbed with garlic. At about seven o'clock the bell rang for supper.

The small châteaux with which the whole country hereabouts is strewn, notwithstanding that most of them have been partially rebuilt or grossly and wantonly mangled without a purpose such as the rational desire of increasing homely comfort may excuse, even when combined with no respect for the past, nevertheless contain numerous details that call up in the mind pictures of the life of old France. In the rat-haunted lofts and lumber-rooms may still be seen, worm-eaten and covered with dust, the _cacolet_--a wooden structure shaped like the gable roof of a house, and which, when set upon a horse's back, afforded sitting accommodation for two or three persons on each side. There are people who can still remember, on the roads of Périgord, the _cacolets_ carrying merry parties to marriage feasts and other gatherings. In a few of the great dining-rooms the visitor will still notice the _alcôve volante_--a bedstead, that is a little house in itself, put into a cosy quiet nook where a person can get into bed without being observed by others in the room. A pretty sentiment caused it to be especially reserved for the grandmothers, who, stretched upon the warm feathers on the winter evenings, could rest their weary limbs while listening to the talk of their descendants and friends, until drowsiness began to make confusion of the present and the past, and then they would pull the cords which closed the curtains and go to sleep. Poor old ladies, now in their graves under the paving-stones of little churches or beneath the grass of rural cemeteries, how happy for them that they did not dream of the future in their snug alcôves near the fire--of a revolution that would kill or scatter their descendants, and of the strangers to their blood who would lie in their beds!