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Updated: May 7, 2025
They had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one.
For Monastier, like Maybole in Ayrshire, was a sort of country capital, where the local aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter; and there is a certain baron still alive and, I am told, extremely penitent, who found means to ruin himself by high living in this village on the hills. He certainly has claims to be considered the most remarkable spendthrift on record.
The women bravely squandered their gains, kept the men in idleness, and gave themselves up, as I was told, to sweethearting and a merry life. From week's end to week's end it was one continuous gala in Monastier; people spent the day in the wine-shops, and the drum or the bagpipes led on the bourrees up to ten at night. Now these dancing days are over.
They had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one.
'This comes from America, he cried, 'six thousand leagues away! And the wine-shop audience looked upon it with a certain thrill. I soon became a popular figure, and was known for miles in the country. Ou'st que vous allez? was changed for me into Quoi, vous rentrez au Monastier and in the town itself every urchin seemed to know my name, although no living creature could pronounce it.
As far as the eye can reach, one swelling line of hill-top rises and falls behind another; and if you climb an eminence, it is only to see new and farther ranges behind these. Many little rivers run from all sides in cliffy valleys; and one of them, a few miles from Monastier, bears the great name of Loire.
In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. "Your donkey," says he, "is very old?" I told him, I believed not. Then, he supposed, we had come far. I told him we had but newly left Monastier.
This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes.
What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey. There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam.
Monsieur Duchemin made it his as well; and on the fourth morning of his hegira from England set out from Le Monastier afoot, a volume of Montaigne in his pocket, a stout stick in his fist the fat rucksack strapped to his shoulders enabling this latter-day traveller to dispense with the society of another donkey.
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