Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of the olive country thoroughly into my head, I had a good deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry--a fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed in the common blouse, but a perfectly different race from the quiet, mild, central and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so brimful of devilry--their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce vehemence of gesticulation--the loud, passionate tone of their habitual speech--all mark the fiery and hot-blooded South. Go into a cabaret, into the high, darkened room, set round with tables and benches, and you will think the whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all--it is simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes like demons, and the ready knife is but too often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will note the change in the style of construction of the farmhouses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a great scale, to give air, the grand object being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out. Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge has its huge _remise_--a vast, gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive, where the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often see the carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels, these _remises_, ponderously built of vast blocks of stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults; and the stamping and neighing of the horses, and the rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in thunder. Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South of France bourg, or agricultural village. Seen from a little distance, it had quite an imposing appearance--the white, commodious-looking mansions gleaming cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection, however, showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions became great clumsy barns--the lower stories occupied as living places, the windows above bursting with loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung. Dilapidated ploughs and harrows--their wooden teeth worn down to the stumps--lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied room were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in the sun, formed the only moving objects which gave life to the dreary picture.