; and I--first of my
race--had flashed a signal to the nearer planets....

* * * * *

* * * * *

Those words: 'signal to the nearer planets' I wrote nearly fourteen
months ago, some days after the destruction of London, I being then on
board the old _Boreal_, making for the coast of France: for the night
was dark, though calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet
not sleepy, so I wrote to occupy my fingers, the ship lying still. The
book in which I wrote has been near me: but no impulse to write anything
has visited me, till now I continue; not, however, that I have very much
to put down.

I had no intention of wearing out my life in lighting fires every
morning to warm myself in the inhospitable island of Britain, and set
out to France with the view of seeking some palace in the Riviera,
Spain, or perhaps Algiers, there, for the present at least, to make my
home.

I started from Calais toward the end of April, taking my things along,
the first two days by train, and then determining that I was in no
hurry, and a petrol motor easier, took one, and maintained a generally
southern and somewhat eastern direction, ever-anew astonished at the
wildness of the forest vegetation which, within so short a space since
the disappearance of man, chokes this pleasant land, even before the
definite advent of summer.

After three weeks of very slow travelling--for though I know several
countries very well, France with her pavered villages, hilly character,
vines, forests, and primeval country-manner, is always new and charming
to me--after three weeks I came unexpectedly to a valley which had never
entered my head; and the moment that I saw it, I said: 'Here I will
live,' though I had no idea what it was, for the monastery which I saw
did not look at all like a monastery, according to my ideas: but when I
searched the map, I discovered that it must be La Chartreuse de
Vauclaire in Perigord.

It is my belief that this word 'Vauclaire' is nothing else than a
corruption of the Latin _Vallis Clara,_ or Bright Valley, for _l'_s and
_u'_s did interchange about in this way, I remember: _cheval_ becoming
_chevau(x)_ in the plural, like 'fool' and 'fou,' and the rest: which
proves the dear laziness of French people, for the 'l' was too much
trouble for them to sing, and when they came to _two_ 'l's' they quite
succumbed, shying that vault, or vo_u_te, and callin