of a figure lying in a bed in a small room adjoining, I asked the young
woman who waited upon me if anybody was ill there. 'Yes,' she replied
dolefully. Then I learnt from her that her father, struck with apoplexy,
was lying in a state that was hopeless. There is no escaping the
mournfulness of life. When our minds are least clouded the shadow of death
suddenly stands between us and the sunshine. I was in no mood to linger at
the table.

What a relief to be out again in the sunshine and the light air, to see
the Dordogne flashing through meadows where women were haymaking with bare
feet!

It was early in the afternoon when I entered the small but active town of
Bort. The burg is only interesting by its exceedingly picturesque situation
on the right bank of the Dordogne, under a very high hill, capped by a
basaltic table, which is flanked towards the town, or rather a little to
the south of it, by a long row of stupendous columns of basalt, known as
the _Orgues de Bort_, from their resemblance at a distance to organ-pipes.
The basalt here is of a reddish yellow. The table, with its igneous
crystallizations, lies upon the metamorphic rock.

I decided to climb to the summit of the prodigious organ-pipes, and to look
at the world from that remarkable point of view. For the greater part of
the distance the way lay up a tiresome winding road on the side of the
hill. A woman, who was tying buckwheat into sheaves, said the distance was
'three small quarters of an hour.' It would have been simpler arithmetic to
have said 'half an hour,' but the peasant thinks it safer not to be
more explicit than he or she can help. Experience has taught me that
'three-quarters of an hour,' whether they are called little or not, mean an
hour or more, and that 'five quarters of an hour' mean an hour and a half,