There was also bread, which arrived when we were
sitting down to our meal: it had been baked in a huge ring, for
convenience of carriage, and was brought up from the low-lands on a
stick across a boy's shoulder. When the old woman thought it safe to
expose a greater dainty to our attacks, at a later period of the meal,
she brought out a pot of _caille_, a delightful luxury which prevails
in the form of nuggets of various size floating in sour whey. Owing to
a general want of table apparatus, we placed the pot of caille on a
broken wall, and speared the nuggets with our pocket-knives.
After the meal, the two Frenchmen found themselves wet and exceedingly
cold; for Frenchmen have not yet learned the blessing of flannel shirts
under a broiling sun. They set to work to dry themselves after an
original fashion. The fire was little more than a collection of
smouldering embers, confined within three stone walls about a foot high;
so they took each a one-legged stool--_chaises des vaches_, or _chaise
des montagnes_--and attached themselves to the stools by the usual
leathern bands round the hips; then they cautiously planted the prods of
the stools in the middle of the embers, maintaining an unstable
equilibrium by resting their own legs on the top of the walls.
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