Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

by Edward Harrison Barker

Aubeterre was still some miles off by water, and there were weirs to overcome. Tired out, with legs and feet scraped and scratched by stones and stumps, and smarting still more from sun-scorch, we were glad enough to find a sufficient reason for getting out of the boat here.

One of the brothers carried politeness so far—I saw from the importance of the mill that remuneration was not to be thought of—as to walk about a mile uphill in order to show the inn and to see us settled in it. Then he left, for I could not prevail upon him to sit down and chink glasses. It was but a cottage-inn on the open hillside, and I doubt if the simple-minded people who kept it would have accepted us for the night but for the introduction. Husband and wife gave up their room to us, and where they went themselves I could not guess, unless it was to the loft or fowl-house. They were surprised, almost overcome, by the invasion, the like of which had never happened to them before; but they showed plenty of goodwill.

All that could be produced in the way of dinner was an omelet, some fried ham, very fat and salt, and some grillons-a name given to the residue that is left by pork-fat when it has been slowly boiled down to make lard. The people of Guyenne think much of their grillons or fritons. I remember a jovial-faced innkeeper of the South telling me that he and several members of his family went to Paris in a party to see the Exhibition of 1889, and that they took with them grillons enough to keep them going for a week, with the help of bread and wine, which they were compelled to buy of the Parisians, Had they done all that their provincial ideas of prudence dictated, they would have taken with them everything that was necessary to the sustenance of the body during their absence from home.

The best part of our meal must not be forgotten; it was salad, fresh-plucked from the little garden enclosed by a paling, well mixed with nut-oil, wine-vinegar, and salt. Then for dessert there was abundance of grapes and peaches.

The little room in which we slept, or, to speak more correctly, where I tried to sleep, had no ornament except the Sunday clothes of the innkeeper and his wife hanging against the walls. Next to it was the pigsty, as the inmates took care to let me know by their grunting. Had I wished to escape in the night without paying the bill, nothing would have been easier, for the window looked upon a field that was about two feet below the sill.

I opened this window wide to feel the cool air, and long after Hugh went to sleep, with the willingness of his sixteen years, I sat listening to the crickets and watching the quiet fields and sky, which were lit up every few seconds by the lightning flash of an approaching storm—still too far away, however, to blur even with a cloudy line the tranquil brilliancy of the stars.

Leaving the window open, I lay down upon the outer edge of the bed, but to no purpose. In the first place, I am never happy on the edge of a narrow bed, and then sleep and I were on bad terms that night. The lightning, growing stronger, showed my host's best trousers hanging against the whitewashed wall, and from the pigsty came indignant snorts in answer to the deepening moan of the thunder; but the crickets of the house sang after their fashion of the hearth and home, and those outside of the great joy of idleness in the summer fields. From a bit of hedge or old wall came now and then the clear note of a fairy-bell rung by a goblin toad.

I lit the candle again, and elfish moths, with specks of burning charcoal for eyes, dashed at me or whirled and spun about the flame. One was a most delicately-beautiful small creature, with long white wings stained with pink. Thus I spent the night, looking at the sights and listening to the sounds of nature; which is better than to lie with closed eyes quarrelling with one's own brain.

We left with a boy carrying a basket of grapes and peaches, also wine to refill the empty bottles in the boat. On my way down the hill, I stopped at the ruin of a mediaeval castle that belonged to Poltrot de Méré, the assassin of the Due de Guise. All this country of the Angoumois, even more than Périgord, is full of the history of the religious wars of the sixteenth century. The whole of the southwestern region of France might be termed the classic ground of atrocities committed in the name of religion. Simon de Montfort's Crusaders and the Albigenses, after them the Huguenots and the Leaguers, have so thickly sown this land with the seed of blood, to bear witness through all time to their merciless savagery, that the unprejudiced mind, looking here for traces of a grand struggle of ideals, will find little or nothing but the records of revolting brutality.

There is nothing left of Poltrot de Méré's stronghold but a few fragments of wall much overgrown with ivy and brambles. In order to get a close view of these I had to ask permission of the owner of the land—an elderly man, who looked at me with a troubled eye, and while he wished to be polite, considered it his duty to question me concerning my 'quality' and motives. I knew what was in his mind: a foreigner, a spy perchance, was going about the country, taking notes of fortified places.