“Yes, yes!” said the man soothingly; but, all the same, as it was a feast day, it seemed we must come to the auberge.
The feast consisted of boiled beef and rabbit; the holiday-makers, of a few peasants eating at rough wooden tables in front of the inn, a father and his four small sons drinking wine together and solemnly clinking glasses, and one man shooting with a cross-bow at diminutive Aunt Sallies.—We made a fair lunch, though when we refused wine the landlady asked, with disgust——
“Then you do not mean to eat?”
We sat with the peasants, who fell into conversation with us. When they heard how we had come from Vienne, they thought we must have had commerce in the villages in the valley to take such a route. And though J—— again explained about that fool in Vienne, they would have it we were pedlers.
When we set out, our first friend was at hand to ask if we had had all we wanted. The next day we saw by a printed notice that Sunday had been the Feast of Apples—a day whereon the people were begged to show every kindness to travellers through their land; and then we understood his politeness.
Perhaps a kilometre or two from the auberge we turned into the Grenoble road, and from that time onward there were but few sign-posts and the cross-roads were many.—It promised to be a
day of misfortunes. The country was hilly; we were always working up, with only occasional short coasts down, now through villages on the hillside, and now between steep wooded banks.—Once, when, sore perplexed to know which way to go, we were pedalling slowly in indecision, the road made a sudden curve, the banks fell on either side, and there at last they were, the long blue ranges, and, away beyond, one snow-crowned peak shining in sunlight.—After that, they—the delectable mountains of our Sentimental Journey—were always hopefully before us.
—Just outside St. Jean Bournay we came upon the right road from Vienne, but twenty-two kilometres from that city, we saw on the kilometre-stone, and we had already ridden forty-four!