“And how do you know the difference?”
The farmer hesitated an instant, and then, with an indescribable look of roguish respect, he answered the nun—
“By the horns, madam!”
I give the little dialogue in patois, in case my book should stray into the hands of a philologist.
“Oquel es un biòu o uno baco, Bouriaïré?”
“Co’s (oco es), uno baco.”
“Cossì lou counessès?”
“Ò los couornos, Modomo!”
Another farmer of our acquaintance answered an amateur agriculturist (it was not I!), who advised him to irrigate a particularly arid hayfield, “I’ll put the water-course, if you’ll find the water!” (Ièu forai lou truel se me fosès benì l’aigo.)
These genial and kindly peasants live in farms roomy and solid, built of blocks of grey volcanic stone; the steep roof has several tiers of windows; one would suppose it from outside a comfortable home. But in name and in fact the attics are granaries, and all the household crowd together in one or two rooms on the ground-floor. A huge chimney, with a hospitable mantle, shelters a couple of comfortable salt-box settles, reserved for the old; one stands on either side the cavernous hearth, where, winter or summer, smoulders the half-trunk of a tree; a tall grandfather’s clock by the dresser, is bright with painted earthenware dishes and pewter tankards; the best bed, high as a catafalque, stands, warmly curtained, in the corner under the stairs; a linen cupboard of walnut or cherry-wood, a huge massive table of unstained oak, flanked by two benches, a straw-bottomed chair or so, a few rough stools: such is the furniture of a kitchen in our parts, seldom clean. Here all the cooking is done, and the eating; here the other day I saw, in a box-bed, like a ship’s berth, built into the wall, a young mother and her baby one day old, perfectly happy, while the farm-hands lunched at the table, and the fowls strolled in and out; here the masters sleep, in sickness and health; here visitors are received and farm-hands paid—it is, as they say in Yorkshire, the house-place. With its one window, its floor of dark unsmoothed volcanic stone (swept every day, but rarely washed), with its ceiling hung with herbs and sausages and huge sides of bacon, it is a warm and homely refuge, but not, as a rule, a bright or a pleasant place.