a turf fire under an
iron pot, and making broth. The broth was a kind of puchero, in which
fish took the place of meat, and into which the Provencal threw
chick peas, little bits of bacon cut in squares, and pods of red
pimento--concessions made by the eaters of _bouillabaisse_ to the
eaters of _olla podrida_. One of the bags of provisions was beside him
unpacked. He had lighted over his head an iron lantern, glazed with
talc, which swung on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, on another
hook, swung the weather-cock halcyon. There was a popular belief in
those days that a dead halcyon, hung by the beak, always turned its
breast to the quarter whence the wind was blowing. While he made the
broth, the Provencal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, and now and
then swallowed a draught of aguardiente. It was one of those gourds
covered with wicker, broad and flat, with handles, which used to be hung
to the side by a strap, and which were then called hip-gourds. Between
each gulp he mumbled one of those country songs of which the subject is
nothing at all: a hollow road, a hedge; you see in the meadow, through a
gap in the bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart, elongated in the
sunset, and from time to time, above the hedge, the end of a fork loaded
with hay appears and disappears--you want no more to make a song.

A departure, according to the bent of one's mind, is a relief or a
depression. All seemed lighter in spirits excepting the old man of the
band, the man with the hat that had no pipe.

This old man, who looked more German than anything else, although he had
one of those unfathomable faces in which nationality is lost, was bald,
and so grave that his baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he
passed before the Virgin on the prow, he raised his felt hat, so that
you could see the swollen and senile veins of his skull. A sort of full
gown, torn and threadbare, of brown Dorchester serge, but half hid his
closely fitting coat, tight, compact, and hooked up to the neck like a
cassock. His hands inclined to cross each other, and had the mechanical
junction of habitual prayer. He had what might be called a wan
countenance; for the countenance is above all things a reflection, and
it is an error to believe that idea is colourless. That countenance was
evidently the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a
composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in good,
others in evil, and to an obse