The river is now running—or, rather, creeping, for it has lost its current—under densely-wooded hills, and the water is deeply dyed with interflowing tints of green and gold. These fade, and in the gathering darkness without a moon the silent Dronne grows very sombre. The boat must have received an exceptionally hard knock at the last weir, for we feel the water rising about our feet. The wonder is that our frail craft has taken its five days' bumping over stumps and stones so well. It would be very annoying if it were to sink with us now that we are so near the end of our voyage. But is the end so near? We scan the distance in front of us in search of twinkling lights, but the only twinkle comes from a brightening star. We see the long wan line of water, marked with awful shadows near the banks, from which, too, half-submerged trees, long since dead, lift strange arms or stretch out long necks and goblin heads that seem to mock and jibe at us in this fashion: 'Ha! ha! you are going down! We'll drag you under!' And the interminable black forest stretches away, away, always in front, until it is lost in the dusky sky.
Ah, there is a sound at length to break the monotonous dip, dip of the paddles, and it is a sweet sound too. It is the angelus; there is no mistaking it. It is very faint, but it puts fresh strength into our arms, and revives the hope that this river will lead us somewhere.
It led us to Coutras. There at about nine o'clock we beached the half water-logged canoe not far above the spot to which the tide rises from the broad Atlantic. We felt that we had had quite enough waterfaring to satisfy us for the present. We had voyaged about eighty miles, and passed about forty weirs.
BY THE LOWER DORDOGNE
[Illustration: A STREET AT ST. ÉMILION.]
The nooks and corners where great men of the past spent their lives quietly and thoughtfully often lie far enough from the beaten ways to provide the romantic tramp with a motive that he may need to excuse his singularity in faring on foot over a tract of country which lacks the kind of picturesqueness that would mark it out as a territory to be annexed by the tourist sooner or later. Having found myself, almost unexpectedly, in the district of Michel de Montaigne, after crossing the Double, I reckoned that less than a day's quiet walking would bring me to the village of St. Michel-Bonnefare—better known in the region as St. Michel-Montaigne (pronounced there Montagne, as the name was originally spelt), close to the castle or manor-house where the contemplative Périgourdin gentleman was born, and where he wrote his 'Essays' in a tower, of which he has left a detailed description. Then there was another lure: the battle-field of Castillon, a few miles farther south, where the heroic Talbot was slain, and where the cannon that fired the fatal stone announced the end of the feudal ages. We may travel over the whole world of literature without going beyond our house and garden. Even the blind may read, and thus bring back to themselves the life of the past; but how the indolent mind is helped when spurred by the eye's impressions! The eye awakens ideas that might otherwise sleep on for ever, by looking at scenes filled with the living interest of a Montaigne or a Talbot.
I might have got to within four miles or thereabouts of the Castle of Montaigne, by using the railroad that runs up the valley of the Lower Dordogne, but I preferred to start on foot from Montpont. This manner of travelling is very old-fashioned, but it will always possess a certain charm for two classes of people: habitual vagabonds who beg and are freely accused of stealing, and the literary, artistic, antiquarian, or scientific vagabonds who take to tramping by fits and starts. The latter class, being quite incomprehensible to the rustic mind in Guyenne, are regarded by it with almost as much suspicion as the other.
I started at the hour of seven in the morning, which the French—earlier risers than the English—think a late one for beginning the work of a summer day in the provinces. I will not say that the plain on which I now tramped for some miles was uninteresting, because all nature is interesting if we are only in the right mood to observe and be instructed; but to me it was dull, for I had been spoilt by much rambling in up and down country full of strong contrasts. Here I saw on each side of me wide expanses of field, with scarcely a hedge or tree, all dotted with grazing cattle. Not a few of the animals were in the charge of muscular, aggressive dogs, that interpreted their duty too largely, and made themselves a nuisance. At intervals were patches of maize or pumpkins, or a bit of vineyard with a house hard by facing the road—a low ground-floor house solidly built, but its plainness unrelieved by the grace of a vine-trellis or a climbing flower. By-and-by the land became somewhat hilly, and the pasturage changed gradually to open wood and heath, where the gorse was already gilding its summer green, and the bracken stood palm-like in purple deserts of heather. Then the ideas began to warm in the sunny silence, and I fear that I rejoiced in the sterility of the soil which had preserved the charm of free and untormented nature.
When I reached the village-like town of Villefranche, I perceived a movement of men and women like that of bees around a hive. I chanced to arrive on the day of the local fair, when everybody expects to make some money, from the peasant proprietor or the métayer who brings in his corn or cattle, to the small shopkeeper who lives upon the agriculturist. I felt disposed to lunch at the grandest hotel in Villefranche, and a good woman whom I consulted on the subject led me through throngs of bartering peasants and cattle-dealers, forests of horns, and by the upturned jaws of braying asses, until she stopped before an inn. There all was bustle and commotion. A swarm of women had been called in to help in anticipation of the crush, and they got in one another's way, walked upon the cats' tails, and raised the tumult of a boxing-booth with the rattle of their tongues. All this was in the kitchen; but there was a side-room in which a long table had been laid for the guests. I took a place at this rustic table-d'hôte, and I had on each side of me and in front of me men in blouses who talked in patois or in French, as the mood suited them. I had already perceived that, as I drew nearer to Bordeaux, the Southern dialect became more and more a jargon, in which there were not only many French words, but French phrases. These men in blouses were rough sons of the soil, but I soon gathered that some of them were very well off. In provincial France dress counts for very little as a sign of fortune's favour. There were men at the table whose burly forms and full-coloured faces were just what one would expect to see at a market dinner in an English country town; but their epicurean style of dealing lightly with each dish, so that the charm of variety might not be spoilt by a too hasty satisfaction of hunger, and the unanimity with which they asked for coffee at the close, marked a strong difference in habits and manners. Their politeness to me was almost excessive. As soon as the most jovial member of the company—who had undertaken the carving had cut up a piece of meat or a fowl, the dish was invariably passed from his end of the table to mine, where I sat alone.
Before leaving Villefranche, a low, square tower enticed me to the parish church. The building was originally Romanesque, but the pointed style must have been grafted upon the other so long ago as the English period. Outside the walls, some steps led me into a little chapel half underground. It was a barrel-vaulted crypt, sternly simple, and lighted only by one very narrow Romanesque window in the apse, just above a rough stone altar of ancient pattern, with a statue of the dead Christ on the ground beneath the slab. In the semi-darkness, the flame of a solitary candle shone without smoke or motion, as if it had been there for centuries, and like all the rest had grown very old.