The same notes tell me of nests built against the pile of account-books in a distillery; in a fur cap relegated to the wall until the return of winter; in the hollow of a brick, back to back with the downy structure of a Cotton-bee; on the sides of a bag of oats; in a piece of lead tubing broken off from an old water-pipe. I saw something more remarkable still in the kitchen at Roberty, one of the biggest farms near Avignon. It was a large room with a very wide fireplace, in which the soup for the farm-hands and the food for the cattle were simmering in a row of pots and pans. The labourers used to come in from the fields so many at a time, take their seats on benches round the table and devour the portions served to them, with the silent haste that denotes a keen appetite. To enjoy this half-hour of comfort, they would take off their hats and smocks and hang them on pegs on the wall. Short though the meal was, it lasted long enough to allow the Pelopæi to inspect the garments and take possession of them. The inside of a straw hat was recognized as a most useful retreat; the folds of a smock were looked upon as a shelter which could be turned to excellent account; and the work of building started forthwith. On rising from table, one of the men would shake his smock, another his hat, to rid it of a heap of mud that was already the size of an acorn. When the labourers had gone, I had a talk with the cook. She told me of her tribulations: those impudent Bugs were all over the place, dirtying everything with their filth. She was chiefly concerned about the window-curtains. Dabs of mud on the ceiling, on the walls, on the chimneypiece you could put up with; but it was a very different matter when you found them on the linen and the curtains. To keep the curtains clean and dislodge the wretched things who persisted in bringing in their bits of mud, she had to shake them every day, to beat them with a bamboo. And it was all no use: next morning, work was resumed with equal vigour on the buildings destroyed the day before.