The word for a frog particularly pleased her fancy; and it
would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in her
works. The peasants, who knew nothing of betters and had never so
much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering
with this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady
and far from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age
appealed so little to Velaisian swine-herds!
On my first engineering excursion, which lay up by Crouzials
towards Mount Mezenc and the borders of Ardeche, I began an
improving acquaintance with the foreman road-mender. He was in
great glee at having me with him, passed me off among his
subalterns as the supervising engineer, and insisted on what he
called 'the gallantry' of paying for my breakfast in a roadside
wine-shop. On the whole, he was a man of great weather-wisdom,
some spirits, and a social temper. But I am afraid he was
superstitious. When he was nine years old, he had seen one night a
company of bourgeois et dames qui faisaient la manege avec des
chaises, and concluded that he was in the presence of a witches'
Sabbath. I suppose, but venture with timidity on the suggestion,
that this may have been a romantic and nocturnal picnic party.
Again, coming from Pradelles with his brother, they saw a great
empty cart drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road.
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