beginning to desert the narrow valley
of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in. This was not
easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was
unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I should have
slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head
in the river.

After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little
plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk
of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, I
goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to unload
her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go
nearly as high again before I found so much as standing-room for the ass.
It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly
not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having
given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves, of which I
found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment.

The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the
road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the
world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut
trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of
jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early
awake; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no
further gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped
branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped
against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants
use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal
in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and
I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's
band above upon the Lozere, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the old
times of psalm-singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the
Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into
my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons
and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the
country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and
his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with
box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in