Note 3 — Chapter II · THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL

My grandparents3 were people 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 amidst 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 upon fair-days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with plentiful pasture. In summer, on the short sward 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 collars, were answerable for tranquillity if the thieving wolf appeared in the night from out the neighbouring woods.