The one thing he warms up about is the new village pump, or the hideous crucifix in cast iron which the municipality has just erected on some ancient stone pedestal where for centuries the discarded, moss-stained, prayer-assailed image used to stand, in all its pathetic significance.
My friend seemed to know little or nothing about his own surroundings, or perhaps he knew them so well and so exclusively that he could not see that there was anything to tell about them. Besides, he could not tell it; that was the way _le bon Dieu_ had made him.
Whenever we came to a very stony bit of land--and there was plenty of it--he at once pointed it out. He took it that my hobby was stones, and very insatiable in that respect he must have thought me, for nothing would satisfy my cravings in that direction short of the unnumbered millions of the Crau!
He seemed a kind-hearted man, and fond of his dogs. The illness of one poor beast through apparently incurable eczema much concerned him. He had often been urged to destroy the dog, but he never could bring himself to put an end to "un aimi fidèle." The animal looked up and wagged his tail, as if understanding he was being talked about.
My offer to write down the name of a remedy (Jeye's fluid) that had effected a cure in a similar case I knew called forth something approaching animation in my conductor for the first time.
Almost the only man-made object in the whole journey was a dynamite factory with white glass retorts full of the explosive, actually ranged in long rows by the public roadside. It seemed a fitting industry for this forlorn district.
Last winter snow had fallen on the retorts and broken them in, and the dynamite had exploded. But still they rested by the roadside!
Suppose there came along a shying horse or an unmanageable motor? The farmer shrugged his shoulders.
In this much-managed Republic that was how they managed things!
As we drew near our journey's end, the vegetation grew sparser till there were only shrubs of diminishing size, growing in harder and harder soil. Then the cart left the road--this strange "morose route"--and we began to drive over grass: a rough sort of waste land with many pebbles; and before us was a great light such as greets the traveller coming in sight of the sea. It was the Crau!