It happened that I had once taken up my abode for a few days in one of the small cottages near the ford of Lubie, in the very heart of the Landes, where a few poor huts are huddled together, as if they sought protection, in their near companionship, against the encroaching enmity of the solitary desert. The occasion of my being there matters not to my present object--suffice it, that by a little kindness I had gained the good-will of the shrivelled old Parens and his wife, who owned the tenement, and that the said good-will had been mightily increased by a small donation of money, which, though a trifle to me, was more than they could have gained in many a month by their unprofitable occupation of gathering the resin or _goudron_ from the pines in the forest round about. From their youth to their age they had dwelt in the desolation, and withered in the solitude, of the bleak wastes that surrounded them; nor did they seem to have ever entertained a wish beyond the confines of that cheerless place, which, however solitary, however desert, had seen the birth and extinction of all their hopes and passions; had been the scene of all their cares and happiness, and was the spot where all their treasure of memory lay, now that Hope had spread her wings and fled to a world beyond. Seldom had either of them visited Bordeaux, which they seemed to consider as the _ultima Thule_. Yet the old man was looked upon as a kind of oracle by the few Landois in the neighbourhood, many of whom were indeed the offspring of his own loins; and others, a second race beyond. But kindred was not his only right to reverence; he was learned in all the ancient superstitions of the Landes, and the depository of all the old customs and habits of his race--customs and habits always most sacred to people who live thus separate from their fellow-men.