p here? This is the place!"

It was a wretched wayside public-house, with a reddish slate roof, that
looked as if it were suffering from leprosy, and before the door there
stood three wagons drawn by mules, and loaded with huge stems of trees,
and which took up nearly the whole of the road; the animals, which were
used to halting there, were dozing, and their heavy loads exhaled a
smell of a pillaged forest.

Inside, three wagoners, one of whom was an old man, while the other two
were young, were sitting in front of the fire, which cackled loudly,
with bottles and glasses on a large round-table by their side, and were
singing and laughing boisterously. A woman with large round hips, and
with a lace cap pinned onto her hair, in the Catalan fashion, who looked
strong and bold, and who had a certain amount of gracefulness about her,
and with a pretty, but untidy head, was urging them to undo the strings
of their great leather purses, and replied to their somewhat indelicate
jokes in a shrill voice, as she sat on the knee of the youngest, and
allowed him to kiss her and to fumble in her bodice, without any signs
of shame.

The coachman pushed open the door, like a man who knows that he is at
home.

"Good evening, Glaizette, and everybody; there is room for two more, I
suppose?"

The wagoners did not speak, but looked at us cunningly and angrily, like
dogs whose food had been taken from them, and who showed their teeth,
ready to bite, while the girl shrugged her shoulders and looked into
their eyes like some female wild beast tamer; and then she asked us with
a strange smile:

"What am I to get you?"

"Two glasses of cognac, and the best you have in the cupboard,"
Glaizette, the coachman replied, rolling a cigarette.

While she was uncorking the bottle I noticed how green her eyeballs
were; it was a fascinating, tempting green, like that of the great green
grasshopper; and also how small her hands were, which showed that she
did not use them much; how white her teeth were, and how her voice,
which was rather rough, though cooing, had a cruel, and at the same
time, a coaxing sound. I fancied I saw her, as in a mirage, reclining
triumphantly on a couch, indifferent to the fights which were going on
about her, always waiting--longing for him who would prove himself the
stronger, and who would prove victorious. She was, in short, the
hospitable dispenser of love, by the side of that difficult, stony road,
who opened h