They had left the highroad and were climbing a zigzag path up the side of Cordova Mountain, narrow and slippery with the lavender whose fragrance filled the air with a smell of burnt incense as the carriage wheels passed. On a plateau half way up, at the foot of a black, dilapidated tower, the roofs of the farmstead could be seen. Here it was that for years and years the Valmajours had lived, from father to son, on the site of the old château whose name abided with them. And who knows? perhaps these peasants really were the descendants of the princes of Valmajour, related to the counts of Provence and to the house of Baux. This idea, imprudently expressed by Roumestan, was eagerly taken up by Hortense, who thus accounted to herself for the really high-bred manners of the taborist.
As they conversed in the carriage on the subject Ménicle listened to their talk in amazement from his box. The name of Valmajour was common enough in the province; there were mountain Valmajours and Valmajours of the valley, according as they dwelt on upland or on plain. “So they are all noblemen!” he wondered. But the astute Provençal kept his thoughts on the subject to himself.
As they advanced further into this desolate but beautiful landscape the imagination of the young girl, excited by Numa’s animated conversation, gave free vent to its romantic impressions, stimulated by the brightly-colored fantasies of the past; and looking upward and seeing a peasant woman sitting on a buttress of the ruined tower, watching the approach of the strangers, her face in profile, her hand shading her eyes from the sun, she imagined she saw some princess wearing the mediæval wimple gazing down upon them from her feudal tower—like an illustration in an old book.
The illusion was hardly dispelled when, on leaving the carriage, they saw before them the sister of the taborist, who was making willow screens for silk worms. She did not rise, although Ménicle had shouted to her from a distance: “Vé! Audiberte, here are visitors for your brother!” Her face with its delicate, regular features, long and green as an unripe olive, expressed neither pleasure nor surprise, but kept the concentrated look that brought the heavy black eyebrows together in front and seemed to tie a knot below her obstinate brows, as if with a hard, fixed line. Numa, somewhat taken aback by this frigid reception, said hastily: “I am Numa Roumestan, the deputy—”
“Oh, I know who you are well enough,” she answered gravely, and throwing down her work in a heap by her side: “Come in a moment, my brother will be here presently.”
When she stood up their hostess lost her imposing appearance; short of stature, with a large bust, she walked with an ungraceful waddle that spoiled the effect of her pretty head charmingly set off by the little Arles head-dress and the picturesque fichu of white muslin with its bluish shadow in every fold which she wore over her shoulders. She led her guests into the house. This peasant’s cottage, leaning up against its ruined tower, seemed to have imbibed a distinguished air, with its coat-of-arms in stone over a door shaded by an awning of reeds cracked by the heat of the sun and its big curtain of checked muslin stretched across the door to keep out the mosquitoes. The old guard-room, with its ceiling riddled by cracks, its tall, ancient chimneypiece and its white walls, was lighted only by small green-glass windows and the curtain stretched across the door.
In the dim light could be seen the black wooden kneading-trough, shaped like a sarcophagus, carved with designs of wheat and flowers; over it hung the open-work wicker bread-basket, ornamented with little Moorish bells, in which the bread is kept fresh in Provençal farm-houses. Two or three sacred images, the Virgin, Saint Martha and the tarasque, a small red copper lamp of antique form hanging from the beak of a mocking-bird carved in white wood by one of the shepherds, and on each side of the fireplace the salt and the flour boxes, completed the furniture of the big room, not forgetting a large sea-shell, with which they called the cattle home, glittering on the mantelpiece above the hearth.
A long table ran lengthwise through the hall, on each side of which were benches and stools. From the ceiling hung strings of onions black with flies, that buzzed loudly whenever the door curtain was raised.
“Take a seat, sir—a seat, madame; you must share the grand boire with us.”
The grand boire or “big drink” is the lunch partaken of wherever the peasants are working—out in the fields, under the trees, in the shade of a mill, or in a roadside ditch. But the Valmajours took theirs in the house, as they were at work near by. The table was already laid with little yellow earthen dishes in which were pickled olives and romaine salad shining with oil. In the willow stand where the bottles and glasses are kept Numa thought he saw some wine.