A keen sun darkened his face and hands,
brushed up in his cheeks a warmer glow than they had shown in many a
year, and faded out the heavier lines with which Time had marked his
countenance. Moreover, because this was France, where one may affect a
whisker without losing face, he neglected his razors; and though this
was not his first thought, a fair disguise it proved. For when, toward
the end of the second week, he submitted that wanton luxuriance to be
tamed by a barber of Florac, he hardly knew the trimly bearded mask of
bronze that looked back at him from a mirror.
Not that it mattered to Monsieur Duchemin. From the first he met few of
any sort and none at all whom a lively and exacting distrust reckoned a
likely factor in his affairs. It was a wild, bold land he traversed,
and thinly peopled; at pains to avoid the larger towns, he sought by
choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed
the time of day with him were few and for the most part peasants, a
dull, dour lot, taciturn to a degree that pleased him well. So that he
soon forgot to be forever alert for the crack of an ambushed pistol or
the pattering footfalls of an assassin with a knife.
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