“ La maison a une âme”, said one of t he lad ies – neither of whom spoke a word of English. “ A what?” “ A ghost” , the lawyer replied. We raised our eyebrows, having just spent the last hour listening to the legal proceedings relating to the house we decided to buy . We’d understood about 20 percent of it, and were still somewhat unsure about which of the two ladies was actually the one selling the house. But at the end, they seemed happy and gave us the keys, which we took to be a good sign. “ It’s a good thing”, the lawyer insisted. So now, for better or worse, we own a small cottage about a kilometer above sea level in th e Pyrenees. As is becoming something of theme, we decided to do this quite impulsively last November as a weekend escape from the flatlands of Toulouse and slightly as bribery to encourage people to visit us . Buying a house in the Ariege, however, is not a fast process. The mayor of the village (populati...