“Leaving the coast, I reached the hamlet, which was hemmed in by great trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.
“She was an old, wrinkled and stern peasant woman, who seemed always to receive customers under protest, with a kind of defiance.
“It was the month of May. The spreading apple trees covered the court with a shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon people and upon the grass.
“I said: 'Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?'
“Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:
“'That depends; everything is let, but all the same I can find out.”
“In five minutes we had come to an agreement, and I deposited my bag upon the earthen floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a table and a washbowl. The room looked into the large, smoky kitchen, where the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm and the landlady, who was a widow.
“I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman was making a chicken fricassee for dinner in the large fireplace in which hung the iron pot, black with smoke.
“'You have travellers, then, at the present time?' said I to her.
“She answered in an offended tone of voice: