Note 4 — Chapter XIV · THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (1879–1910)

A louis has been overlooked in a corner of a drawer. I can spend it without seriously jeopardising the domestic balance. The blacksmith makes me the framework of a cage out of a few iron rods. The joiner, who is also a glazier on occasion—for, in my village, you have to be a Jack-of-all trades if you would make both ends meet—sets the framework on a wooden base and supplies it with a movable board as a lid; he fixes thick panes of glass in the four sides. Behold the apparatus, complete, with a bottom of tarred sheet-iron and a tap to let the water out. Many an inquisitive caller has wondered what use I intend to make of my little glass trough. The thing creates a certain stir. Some insist that it is meant to hold my supplies of oil and to take the place of the receptacle in general use in our parts, the urn dug out of a block of stone. What would those utilitarians have thought of my crazy mind, had they known that my costly gear would merely serve to let me watch some wretched animals kicking about in the water?4