ring the peasants whom we met conversing in a tone which
we had mistaken for quarrelling. The French generally, indeed, are fond
of noise and action and emphasis about what does not concern their own
interests a jot, while a London mob indulges an equal degree of
curiosity by silent gaping; but these good folks certainly outdid
anything I ever witnessed in France before. An action for defamation
brought in Languedoc[40] might, with propriety, be worded, "that the
defendant did, with four-and-twenty mouths, four-and-twenty tongues, and
four-and-twenty pair of lungs, vilify and damnify his neighbour's
reputation;" for it is probable that a scolding match could not take
place in the open air of that country, without enlisting volunteer
seconds to that amount on both sides, all equally bawling and violent.
At Nismes, a fellow bellows across the street to offer himself as
cicerone, in a tone which seems intended to warn you of a mad dog at
your heels; and, in general, the lungs of Languedoc appear constructed
on a larger and more discordant scale than is usual, and their
volubility is rather a contradiction to the yea and nay appellation of
the country. A respectable Frenchman informed us, that the peasants of
Languedoc were considered to possess much wit and ingenuity by those who
could understand their patois, which he frankly owned was unintelligible
to himself. Their liveliness and animal exuberance are as strong a
contrast to the immoveable form into which they are swathed when
infants, as the flutter of a butterfly is to its torpidity as a
chrysalis; indeed a fanciful person might be apt to suppose, that on
emerging from their bandages, they indemnify themselves for the previous
constraint by a life of perpetual fidget, and that the same re-action
takes place as in the case of Munchausen's horn, which played for half
an hour of its own accord when unfrozen. To speak seriously, nothing can
be more piteously ridiculous than the state of a poor Languedoc child,
swathed and bandaged into all the rigidity of a mummy, and totally
motionless. Our friend H. declares, that his attention was once drawn
behind a door by a faint cry, and that he there discovered and took down
one of these little teraphims from the hook by which it hung suspended
by a loop, like a young American savage. "C'est la mode du pays," is the
only account of the practice which you get either here or at Nice; and
it is fortunate that they have not still impro