s jacket and his whip, or putting the
collars on his horses. Near by, at the door of the post-house, a worthy
woman is fuming even more than the traveller, in order to prevent the
latter from complaining loudly. This is sure to be the wife of the
post-master, whose husband is away in the fields.

The bishop's secretary left his carriage before a post-house of this
kind, the walls of which resembled a geographical map, while the
thatched roof, blooming like a flower-garden, seemed to be giving way
beneath the weight of stone-crop. After begging the post-mistress to
have everything in readiness for his departure in an hour's time, the
abbe asked the way to the parsonage. The good woman showed him a lane
which led to the church, telling him the rectory was close beside it.

While the young abbe followed this lane, which was full of stones
and closed on either side by hedges, the post-mistress questioned the
postilion. Since starting from Limoges each postilion had informed his
successor of the conjectures of the Limoges postilion as to the mission
of the bishop's messenger. While the inhabitants of the town were
getting out of bed and talking of the coming execution, a rumor spread
among the country people that the bishop had obtained the pardon of
the innocent man; and much was said about the mistakes to which human
justice was liable. If Jean-Francois was executed later, it was certain
that he was regarded in the country regions as a martyr.

After taking a few steps along the lane, reddened by the autumn leaves,
and black with mulberries and damsons, the Abbe Gabriel turned round
with the instinctive impulse which leads us all to make acquaintance
with a region which we see for the first time,--a sort of instinctive
physical curiosity shared by dogs and horses.

The position of Montegnac was explained to him as his eyes rested on
various little streams flowing down the hillsides and on a little river,
along the bank of which runs the country road which connects the chief
town of the arrondissement with the prefecture. Like all the villages
of this upland plain, Montegnac is built of earth baked in the sun and
moulded into square blocks. After a fire a house looks as if it had been
built of brick. The roofs are of thatch. Poverty is everywhere visible.

Before the village lay several fields of potatoes, radishes, and rye,
redeemed from the barren plain. On the slope of the hill were irrigated
meadows where the inhabi