ABSTRACT
WE should be lucky if we got out of court before 11.30, by which time the litigants are dining, burying satisfaction or disappointment under spoonfuls of soupe and sopped bread-crusts. Three occasions bring the countryman into Janac: court days, market days, and Sundays. On market days he lunches, and on court days also; on Sundays he generally goes home for the weekly dinner after Mass. In this part of France the peasantry lunches early, as early as eleven o'clock on most of the farms, and by 11.30 the Hôtel Sestrol is already filled with black-clad figures almost invisible in the dark interior, but audible at their soupe.
