noon
The sweat that streamed from his face was brine upon his lips . For hours it was thus with Duchemin , and in all that time he met never a soul . Once he saw from a distance a lonely château overhanging another ravine ; but it was apparently only one more of the many ruins indigenous to that land , and he took no step toward closer acquaintance . Long after noon , sheer fool 's luck led him to a hamlet whose mean auberge served him bread and cheese with a wine singularly thin and acid . Here he enquired for a guide , but the one able-bodied man in evidence , a hulking , surly animal , on learning that Duchemin wished to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux , refused with a growl to have anything to do with him . Several times during the course of luncheon he caught the fellow eyeing him strangely , he thought , from a window of the auberge . In the end the peasant girl who waited on him grudgingly consented to put him on his way .