In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green tailcoat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance.

“Your donkey,” says he, “is very old?”

I told him, I believed not.

Then, he supposed, we had come far.

I told him, we had but newly left Monastier.