Robert Louis Stevenson

“ But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. He would take but little.
‘I am an amateur [5] of such wine, do you see?’ he said, ‘and I am capable of leaving you not enough.’
In these hedge-inns [6] the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife ”

“ A second mowing; the grass which grows after the first crop of hay in the same season.↑ BEAST .. the Beast of Gévaudan↑ small for that .. Stevenson's description of the wolf being small goes against tradition.↑ sang Alexander Pope .. Alexander Pope, leading 18th c English poet who was of small stature. The quote is not from Pope, but resembles a famous quote by Isaac Watts (1674-1748) from the religious hymn False Greatness: Were I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul: The mind ’s the standard of the man.↑ Little Corporal .. ”

“ A pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. ”

“ However by Stevensons time such practices would have seemed rustic.↑ whang of bread .. a thick slice or chunk of bread.↑ iron fork .. considered inferior/rustic as iron affects the taste of food. Silverware was non-reactive and thus preferred but more costly.↑ it had cost me twenty [francs] .. by comparison Modestine cost Stevenson 65 francs, and he sold her for 35 francs. Averaging the difference, a donkey might cost 50 francs in 1878; Stevenson's knife was about half the cost of a modest donkey.↑ dur comme un âne .. "tough as a donkey".↑ St. Etienne in search of work .. ”