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This is called the Roche de la Peine, as from the top of it the Sieur de Beynac, who was also lord of Les Eyzies, precipitated malefactors. But under that designation he was disposed to reckon all such as in any way offended him.
Animated as Beynac became late in the afternoon, when the little society, composed of extraneous particles, met in costumes that were airy, fantastic, elementary, anything but ceremonious, to exchange civilities in the water, life on the whole was so mildly exciting that when one day a small caravan, drawn by a donkey and preceded by a young man half hidden by a great straw hat and wildly beating a drum, entered the place, there was a great and tumultuous movement of the population.
There was often no necessity to run into this extravagance, for the people at Beynac are good-natured, and they would frequently send a basket of their earliest grapes or other fruit. Although the present might have been made by a woman with bare feet, her feelings would have been hurt had money been offered in return.
I found the valley so hot in the steady blaze of summer that, having reached Beynac, I felt no inclination to go any farther. I thought I would stop there until cooler weather came, and live meanwhile principally in the Dordogne.
On he went, through water-meadows, at the bottom of gloomy little gorges, and by the fringe of the forest, until he had wandered miles away from Beynac. We very nearly met one night, both being out with the same object in view.
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.
In a country inn we invariably pass through the kitchen to reach the room set apart for guests, and it has often fallen to my lot to seek rest, shelter, and food in a poor auberge, where the kitchen is also the common room of the family and outsiders. A Beynac character that left on my memory a lasting impression was old Suzette. Suzette might have been any age between fifty and seventy.
At Beynac I made the acquaintance of a French-man who, after angling for riches a sport at which he lost much bait and caught nothing turned all his attention to the fish in the Dordogne.
The recollection of those burning hours in that shanty will be ever green. Nevertheless, the time spent at Beynac left some pleasant memories. The days were fiery, and, when the south wind blew, almost suffocating; but when the sun went down into the west there usually came a beneficent change.
These open-air kitchens are by no means uncommon in Southern France during the hot months. I have a pleasant recollection of dining one scented evening in May with my friend the Otter at Beynac in his garden terraced upon rocks above the Dordogne. The table was under a spreading chestnut-tree in full bloom. Not many yards away the swarthy Clodine had her kitchen beneath an acacia.
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