Should your inexplicable doings not puzzle the passer-by, they will be sure to puzzle the village keeper, that uncompromising representative of the law in the ploughed acres. He has long had his eye on you. He has so often seen you wandering about, like a lost soul, for no appreciable reason; he has so often caught you rooting in the ground, or, with infinite precautions, knocking down some strip of wall in a sunken road, that in the end he has come to look upon you with dark suspicion. You are nothing to him but a gipsy, a tramp, a poultry-thief, a shady person or, at the best, a madman. Should you be carrying your botanizing-case, it will represent to him the poacher’s ferret-cage; and you would never get it out of his head that, regardless of the game-laws and the rights of landlords, you are clearing all the neighbouring warrens of their rabbits. Take care. However thirsty you may be, do not lay a finger on the nearest bunch of grapes: the man with the municipal badge will be there, delighted to have a case at last and so to receive an explanation of your highly perplexing behaviour. I have never, I can safely say, committed any such misdemeanour; and yet, one day, lying on the sand, absorbed in the details of a Bembex’ household, I suddenly heard beside me: ‘In the name of the law, I arrest you! You come along with me!’ It was the keeper of Les Angles, who, after vainly waiting for an opportunity to catch me at fault and being daily more anxious for an answer to the riddle that was worrying him, at last resolved upon the brutal expedient of a summons. I had to explain things. The poor man seemed anything but convinced: ‘Pooh!’ he said. ‘Pooh! You will never make me believe that you come here and roast in the sun just to watch Flies. I shall keep an eye on you, mark you! And, the first time I...! However, that’ll do for the present.’ And he went off. I have always believed that my red ribbon had a good deal to do with his departure. And I also put down to that red ribbon certain other little services by which I benefited during my entomological and botanical excursions. It seemed to me—or was I dreaming?—it seemed to me that, on my botanizing expeditions up Mont Ventoux, the guide was more tractable and the donkey less obstinate.