With great dignity, with benevolence, even, he would receive these visitors--if it were winter, by the hearth in the kitchen, which is the countryman's parlour; if warm weather, by the house door, a few feet from the black drain into which the sink emptied the odoriferous extract of culinary operations. Comfortably seated in a quaint semicircular armchair, the wool-stuffed cushion of which was covered with ticking, he would listen to the men who had come to consult him and who remained standing, cap in hand, while they told their interminable and tangled stories. When they stopped for lack of breath, Master Baptist would ask questions, which usually called forth prolix replies. Finally he would speak:
"Peter, it is you who are the blockhead." And Peter would have no choice but to submit to John. Both would then pull their blue caps over their ears and sit down for a glass of white wine, which by a reversal of ancient custom constituted the fee of judge to litigants. Often they came from a great distance to find out which was the blockhead, and having found out, departed content, glad to have ended the quarrel without assistance from the omniscient bench.
It was something of an undertaking at that time to reach the out-of-the-way hamlet where Master Baptist uttered his oracles. Now, country roads connect "The Pines" with the rest of the world. I used to reach it in those days by way of the rocky ridge stretching for two miles between Mouilleron-en-Pareds and La Chataignerie. "The Rocks," as the ridge is locally called, form the last buttress of the Woodland hills. From the top a vast wooded stretch is visible, every field being enclosed by a belt of tall trees. The rocks themselves are covered with gorse and furze, and giant chestnut trees, twisted and gnarled by old storms. Suddenly the rocks part, and in the hollow they reveal lie meadows enlivened by the song of running water. There humble huts group themselves in hamlets, concealed by the high trees. "The Pines," Master Baptist's domain, was doubtless distinguished in former days by the presence of a pine tree. The tree disappeared under the axe of time. But a cluster of houses remains, sheltered from the world by the high rampart of "The Rocks."