Cocheforêt lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnut--a land of deep, leafy bottoms, and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow mountains that here limit France. It swarms with game--with wolves and bears, deer and boars. To the end of his life I have heard that the great King loved this district, and would sigh, when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech-groves and box-covered hills of South Béarn. From the terraced steps of Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale and upland, to the base of the snow-peaks; and, though I come from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen few sights that outdo this.
It was the second week in October when I came to Cocheforêt, and, dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into the place at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a glory of ruddy beech-leaves, through the silence of forest roads, across clear brooks and glades still green. I had seen more of the quiet and peace of the country than had been my share since boyhood, and I felt a little melancholy; it might be for that reason, or because I had no great taste for the task before me--the task now so imminent. In good faith, it was not a gentleman's work, look at it how you might.
But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would pass away. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I should lose the feeling. When a man is young, he seeks solitude: when he is middle-aged he flies it and his thoughts. I made without ado for the Green Pillar, a little inn in the village street, to which I had been directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my riding-switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.
Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean, poor place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at me suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host came. He was a fair-haired man, half Basque, half Frenchman, and had scanned me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for, when he came out, he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a well-dressed stranger--a portent in that out-of-the-way village--but eyed me with a kind of sullen reserve.
"I can lie here to-night, I suppose?" I said, dropping the reins on the sorrel's neck. The horse hung its head.
"I don't know," he answered stupidly.
I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite the door.
"This is an inn, is it not?" I said.
"Yes," he answered slowly; "it is an inn. But--"
"But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or something else is amiss," I answered peevishly. "All the same, I am going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife, too--if you have one."