The freshness of the morning was gone, and even in the shade of the cafe I felt the hot breath of the day. When I was again upon the powdered road between interminable rows of vines, the glare was dazzling; but I was not alone. Groups of people were trudging under the same fiery sky, and upon the same dusty road, and all were moving in the same direction. When I learnt that they were pilgrims on their way to Verdelais, I thought that I might do worse than be a pilgrim, too. I therefore went with the stream, which soon turned up the flanks of the vine-clad hills.
Thus I found myself about noon in a small village, seemingly composed of one wide street lined on both sides with cafés and restaurants. There was also a very conspicuous modern church in a fantastic and debased, but showy, style of architecture. It was densely crowded, and the shine of innumerable candles was seen through the open doors. The whole street was likewise crowded with people, who had come from various parts of the Bordelais, and who seemed determined to spend a happy day in a sense no less material than spiritual. There was a great rush to the restaurants, and there was flagrant overcharging on the part of those who kept them--all speculators on piety.
Perhaps the grandeur of the solitude of Roc-Amadour, the antiquity of the buildings, and the simplicity of the pilgrims had made me a wrong-headed judge of the newer places of pilgrimage. However this may be, after the first glance at Verdelais I wished I had not come. There was no quiet corner here where a wayfarer could sit and refresh himself; in this hurly-burly of eager hunger, and with this infernal clatter of tongues, repose was impossible.
After lunching in the midst of a noisy and vulgar throng, I regained the open country, with the conviction that, should I ever decide to start off upon a serious pilgrimage, the road to Verdelais would not be the one that I would take.
I now turned down towards the valley through the vines, the inevitable vines, and was soon on the banks of the Garonne. Almost facing me upon the opposite hillsides were the famous vineyards of Sauterne, and I knew that the vintagers were busy there, every woman--women are chiefly employed--with her pair of scissors snipping off the grapes one by one from the gathered bunches, and rejecting all that were not sound. It is a costly method, but the wine pays for it.