A short distance from Libourne, that joyous town reflected in the swift waters of the Dordogne, between Fronsac and Saint-Michel-la-Rivière, there was in former times a pretty village of white walls and red roofs, half buried in fronds of sycamore, lime and beech. The road from Libourne to Saint-André-de-Cubzac ran through the midst of its symmetrical rows of houses and offered the only view that they had. Behind one of these rows of houses, and roughly a hundred paces from it, wound the river, its width and powerful current starting at this point to announce the nearness of the sea.

Then the civil war came here. First of all, it uprooted the trees, then it depopulated the houses, which, being exposed to all its furious whims and not able, like their inhabitants, to run away, protesting in their own way against the barbarism of internecine strife, and bit by bit the earth, which seems to have been created as a tomb for all that ever was, spread over the corpses of these once so merry and pleasant dwellings. Finally, grass grew over this artificial ground, and today the traveller who follows the solitary road would never imagine, as he looks at one of those great flocks that you find everywhere in the south of France grazing on these uneven hillocks, that the shepherd and his sheep tread on the graveyard where a village lies.

But at the time of which we speak, namely around the month of May in the year 1650, this same village extended on both sides of the road, which nourished it like a great artery with the most delightful wealth of life and vegetation. The stranger who passed through it in those days would have been gladdened by the sight of the peasants harnessing or unharnessing the teams from their ploughs, the boatmen drawing their nets to the bank shimmering with the white and pink fish of the Dordogne and the blacksmiths smiting hard on their anvils, their hammers throwing off in all directions a spray of sparks that lit up the forge with every blow.

However, what would have charmed him most, especially if his journey had given him the proverbial appetite attributed to travellers on the highway, would have been a long, low house some five hundred yards beyond the village, consisting only of a ground floors and first floor, from the chimneys of which emerged exhalations and from the windows certain agreeable odours that indicated more clearly even than the gilded calf's head painted on a sheet of red metal, creaking where it hung from an iron rod fastened into the entablature on the first floor, that he had reached at last one of those hospitable establishments whose owners, at a prince, undertake to refresh the hungry visitor.

Why, you ask, was this hostelry of the Golden Calf situated five hundred yards outside the village, instead of occupying its natural place amid the charming houses ranged on either side of the main road?

The first reason is that the innkeeper, despite being buried in this obscure hamlet, was a master of his art when it came to cooking. And, had he chosen at the start a spot in the middle or at the far end of one of the two long rows of houses that made up the village, he risked being mistaken for one of those cheap eating houses that he was obliged to accept as his fellows in the restaurant trade, but which he could not bring himself to consider as his equals; while on the contrary, by setting himself apart, he attracted the attention of connoisseurs, who, when they had tasted his cooking just once, would tell each other: 'When you go from Libourne to Saint-André-de-Cubzac — or from Saint-André-de-Cubzac to Libourne — do not fail to stop and lunch, dine or sup at the inn of the Golden Calf, five hundred yards beyond the little village of Matifou.'

So these connoisseurs would stop, leave well pleased and send along other connoisseurs, with the result that the clever innkeeper gradually made a fortune for himself, though this, remarkably, did not prevent him from maintaining the same high gastronomic standards at his table — which only goes to prove, as we said earlier, that Master Biscarros was a true artist.

On one of those lovely May evenings when Nature already reawakened in the south, starts to wake in the north, thicker tufts of smoke and delicious scents than usual were wafting from the chimneys and through the windows of the inn of the Golden Calf, while on the threshold of his premises, Biscarros himself, dressed in white according to the universal and timeless custom to sacrificial priests, was plucking with his own noble hands some partridge and quail intended for one of those fine dinners that he knew so well how to compose, and which he was in the habit of supervising down to the last detail, purely out of love for his art.

Daylight was fading, and the waters of the Dordogne were starting to whiten beneath the blackness of the foliage on its banks. The river at this point, in one of those meanders that bestrew its course, turned away from the road to lie about one quarter of a league away^[1] and passed beneath the little fort of Vayres. Something calm and melancholy spread across the countryside with the evening breeze. The ploughmen were returning with their horses unharnessed, and the fishermen with their streaming nets. The sounds of the villages were hushed, and when the last hammer blow had sounded, marking the end of the day's labour, the first song of the nightingale was heard from some bushes nearby.

With the first notes that emerged from the throat of the feathered musician, Master Biscarros also began to sing, no doubt to accompany it. Thanks to this harmonic competition and the attention he was paying to his work, the innkeeper did not observe a little troop of horsemen appearing at the far end of the village of Matifou and proceeding towards his inn. But an exclamation from a first-floor window and the brusque, noisy closing of the same made the worthy innkeeper look up, and it was then that he saw the rider at the head of the troop coming directly towards him.

'Directly' is not quite the word, and we hasten to correct ourselves: the man stopped every twenty paces, cast an enquiring glance to right and left, scanning the paths, trees and bushes with his eyes and holding a carbine on his knee to be ready for either attack or defense, while now and then signalling to his companions, who were copying his every movement, to start walking. At which he would once more risk advancing a few steps, and the whole manoeuvre beagn again.

Biscarros was watching this rider, whose unusual behaviour so utterly absorbed him that all this time he forgot to remove the bunch of feathers that he was holding between thumb and index finger from the body of the bird.

'It's a nobleman looking for my house,' said Biscarros. 'This worthy gentleman is doubtless short-sighted — and yet my Golden Calf has been freshly repainted and the sign projects out a long way. Come now, let's show ourselves.'

He went and stood in the middle of the road, where he continued to pluck his partridge with expansive, majestic gestures.

This movement produced the result that he had been waiting for: no sooner did the horsemen notice him than he rode directly towards him, greeting him courteously.

'Excuse me, Master Biscarros,' he said. 'I don't suppose you have seen a troop of men-at-arms hereabouts, who are friends of mine and must be looking for me? Men-at-arms? I may exaggerate. Swordsmen is more like it, in brief, armed men, what? Yes, that's it! You haven't seen a troop of armed men?'

Biscarros, greatly flattered at being greeted with his own name, returned the greeting affably. He had not noticed that a single glance at his inn allowed the stranger to read Biscarros's name and title, just as he had identified the owner from his bearing.

1. ↑ one quarter of a league away: A league is about four kilometers (2.5 miles); so the river was about a kilometer away.