The Life of the Ply 



their green old age allowed me to know them 

 both. They were people of the soil, whose 

 quarrel with the alphabet was so great that 

 they had never opened a book In their lives; 

 and they kept a lean farm on the cold granite 

 ridge of the Rouergue table-land. The house, 

 standing alone among the heath and broom, 

 with no neighbour for many a mile around 

 and visited at Intervals by the wolves, was to 

 them the hub of the universe. But for a few 

 surrounding villages, whither the calves were 

 driven on fair-days, the rest was only very 

 vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild soli- 

 tude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires 

 oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the 

 cows, the principal source of wealth, with rich, 

 wet grass. In summer, on the short swards of 

 the slopes, the sheep were penned day and 

 night, protected from beasts of prey by a 

 fence of hurdles propped up with pitchforks. 

 When the grass was cropped close at one spot, 

 the fold was shifted elsewhither. In the centre 

 was the shepherd's rolling hut, a straw cabin. 

 Two watch-dogs, equipped with spiked col- 

 lars, were answerable for tranquillity if the 

 thieving wolf appeared In the night from out 

 the neighbouring woods. 



Padded with a perpetual layer of cow-dung, 



