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The sad-looking peasants, with pale dark faces, whom I saw reaping their meagre wheat on the outskirts of the village, seemed, like many more I had met since I left Riberac, to be in much greater need of blood than leeches. Women, wearing straw-bonnets of the coal-scuttle shape, were reaping with men in the noonday heat. Upon all the burden of life appeared to press very heavily.
When I left Riberac the blue above was without a spot, but now heavy masses of cloud were hovering in the sky. As yet there was not wind enough to rustle a leaf, and the dwarf oaks gave little shelter from the ardent sun. The air that rose from the heather and bracken was like the breath of a furnace.
On we went, turning and turning, gliding into nooks that seemed each more charming than the other, and having a constant succession of delightful surprises, interrupted only by the mill-dams, which were distressingly frequent. The hot hours stole away or passed into the mellowness of evening, and the marsh-mallows that fringed the stream were looking coolly white when we drew near to Riberac.
Having reached that part of the river which was nearest Riberac, I had to find a place where the boat could be left, and where it would be safe from the enterprise of boys a bad invention in all countries.
What a contrast to the deep shadow of the church was the brilliant white light that I met outside, and to the grave-like silence the sawing sound of the cicadas, drunk with sunshine, in the neighbouring tree-tops! I set out from Riberac to cross that tract of country between the Dronne and the Isle which is known as the Double.
Before I took leave of the good-natured man, he seemed to have fairly shaken off the bad impression I had made upon him by watching a thunderstorm with interest and pleasure. The sky having cleared, I continued my journey towards Riberac, and reached the Dronne when the stormy day was ending without a cloud.
You don't suppose M. de Riberac cares one straw about Valenciennes lace? It makes one feel Moorish all over. You need not be surprised if she is found smothered or strangled in the morning. I am 'not easily moved to jealousy, but being moved " "Don't be too murderous," laughed Cecil; "you are certain to regret it afterward. We will reproach her as she deserves on our way home.
There was hardly a breath of wind to shake the drops from the still dripping leaves, and the last groan of distant thunder having died away, there would have been deep silence but for the warbling of blackbirds and nightingales. I am now at Riberac the Ribeyrac of Dante's commentators, who generally prefer to abide by the old spelling.
Dante preferred the difficult and artificial style of Arnaut to the simple style of the opposition school; from Arnaut he borrowed the sestina form; and at the end of the canto he puts the well-known lines, "Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan," into the troubadour's mouth. We know little of Arnaut's life; he was a noble of Riberac in Périgord.
Dante having asked for the name on earth of this gifted soul, the troubadour replied in the tongue that he had learned from his mother's lips at Riberac: 'Jeu sui Arnaulz che plor e vai cantan.
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