It is a bad custom in rural France to kill fowls just when they are wanted for the spit. Not only is it unpleasant to think that a creature is not allowed time to cool before it begins to turn in front of the fire, but the art of cooking is placed at a disadvantage by the practice. It is of no use, however, trying to convince the people of their error, even when they kill poultry for themselves and can choose their time: they will never do things otherwise than in the way to which they have been accustomed. The French are stubbornly conservative in everything except politics.
As I felt the need of talking to-night, I fetched the farming innkeeper from his kitchen and persuaded him to drink some of his own cognac. This he did without wincing, but he soon returned the compliment by bringing out of a cupboard a bottle of clear greenish liquor, which he said was _eau de vie de figues_. It was something new to me. I had tasted alcohol distilled from a considerable variety of the earth's fruits, but never from figs before. It retained a strong flavour of its origin, and might have been correctly described as fire-water, for it was almost pure spirit.
I drew this man into conversation upon the peasant's life. All that he said was only confirmation of the opinion I had already formed from other testimony respecting the occupation of Adam when he had to struggle with nature outside of the terrestrial paradise. Let a man own as much soil as he can till with his hands, let him have an ox, too, to help him: he can only live at the price of almost incessant labour and rigorous frugality. This is the normal condition of the peasant-proprietor's existence.
'The peasant who works seriously,' said the farmer, 'does not sleep more than four hours a night during the summer months. He goes to bed at ten, and gets up at two. This would not hurt him if he were better fed, but he eats little besides his soup, and drinks bad _piquette_.'
The man went back to his kitchen, and then to his bed close by; the flame of the lamp became sick unto death, for it now wanted oil, and the house grew so quiet that the squeaking of the rats and the pattering of their feet could be heard from places that seemed far away. But for the rumbling of the thunder, the only sound from the mysterious world outside would have been the scream, now like the cry of a cat, now like a puppy's bark, of an owl flying with muffled wings up and down the valley. Very different, however, was this little owl's cry from the madman's shout of the great eagle owl, which I had often heard in the rocky vale of the Alzon. I threw open the window of my bedroom and looked out upon the night. It was illumined, not by moon nor by stars, but by lightning flashes, which followed one another with such rapidity that there was no darkness. The quivering flame threw an awful brightness into the great woods upon the tops of the hills.