brings other
trouble. You try to sleep with closed windows, so that you may hear
less of the racket that the wind makes outside, but it is impossible:
you stifle. You get up and open a window--perhaps two windows. The
wind rushes in, but it is like the hot breath of a panting dog. The
noise of swinging _persiennes_ that have got loose, and are banged now
against the wall, now against the window-frame, mingles with a woful
confusion of sounds within, as though a most unruly troop of ghosts
were dancing the _farandole_ all through the house. If any door has
been left open, it worries you more by its banging at intervals of a
minute than if it went on without stopping to consider. Therefore you
are compelled to rise again, and go and look for it--anything but a
cheerful expedition if you cannot find the matches. When this south
wind falls, the rain generally comes, bringing great refreshment to
the parched earth, and all the animals that live upon it.

As I have referred to the house in which I live, I may as well say
something more with regard to it and the things which it contains. It
is not one of the ancient houses of Figeac, but it is old-fashioned
and provincial. The rooms are rather large, the floors are venerably
black, and the boarded ceilings supported by rafters have never had
their structural secrets or the grain of the timber concealed by a
layer of plaster. What you see over-head is simply the floor of the
room or the loft above. And yet this is not considered a poor-kind of
house; it is as good as most good people hereabouts live in. The
furniture is simple, but solid; it was made to last, and most of it
has long outlasted the first owners. In every room, the kitchen
excepted, there is a bed, according to the very general custom of the
country. The character of the people is distinctly utilitarian,
notwithstanding the blood of the troubadours. There is even a bed in
the _salle a manger_. A piece of furniture, however, from which my eye
takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the
ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of
pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and
self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old
clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger
than is needed, and it is the habit to scream in ordinary
conversation. A clock, therefore, could not make itself heard by such
people as the