ABSTRACT
IF this were a Tuesday (which it is not) we would have a 2–1 chance of being less solitary on our green garden seat, where laziness and no work has tempted us to remain chatting or somnolent since breakfast-time. A couple, at least, of small round tin tables would be set in the shade of the acacia trees, and peasants in sable dress — black boots, black trousers, black blouses, black hats, black beards, black eyes—would be seated drinking coffee from long glasses, or beer—enlivened by a dose of carbonic acid gas in Potato's bottling establishment over the road—or red wine which is brought in casks from vineyards lying twenty miles to the south. The country reckons little of those strange apératifs of the French town-dweller, those drinks of daring hue and astonishing taste which are used either to appetize or to minimize the results of appetizing; like the device of an impecunious young man who used to calm his tailor's clamours for settlement by ordering more clothes. At one of the tables of funereally clad peasants a jaundice-faced townsman, dressed in straw hat, tail coat and trousers of black and white check, would be talking earnestly and with authority. The peasants are litigants, the townsman a barrister. They would be waiting, we would be waiting, for the juge de paix. Janac is a chef-lieu-de canton, we have our fortnightly courts.
