cessions made by the eaters of bouillabaisse to the eaters of olla podrida. One of the bags of provisions lay beside him unpacked. Over his head he had lighted an iron lantern, glazed with talc, which swung on a hook from the ceiling; near it from another hook swung the weather-cock halcyon.[1] While he made the broth, the Provençal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, and now and then swallowed a draught of aguardiente. It was one of those gourds covered with wicker, broad and flat, with handles, which used to be hung at the side by a strap, and which were then called hip-gourds. Between each gulp he mumbled one of those country songs about nothing in particular. One needs, to make such a song, no more than to see (even in imagination) a hollow road, a hedge; in a meadow, through a gap in the bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart, elongated in the sunset, and from time to time, above the hedge, the end of a fork loaded with hay appearing and disappearing.
According to the state of one's mind, a departure is either a relief or the reverse. All seemed lighter in spirits except the old man of the party. This old man, who looked more German than anything else, although he had one of those unfathomable faces in which nationality is lost, was bald; and he was so grave that his baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he passed the Virgin on the prow he raised his felt hat, so that you could see the swollen and senile veins of his skull. A sort of full gown, torn and threadbare, of brown Dorchester serge, half hid his closely fitting coat, tight, compact, and hooked up to the neck like a cassock. His hands seemed inclined to cross each other, as
- ↑ There was a popular belief in those days that a dead halcyon hung by the beak always turned its breast to the quarter whence the wind was blowing.
