quitting Plassans by the Rome Gate, on the southern side of the town,
you will find, on the right side of the road to Nice, and a little way
past the first suburban houses, a plot of land locally known as the Aire
Saint-Mittre.

This Aire Saint-Mittre is of oblong shape and on a level with the
footpath of the adjacent road, from which it is separated by a strip of
trodden grass. A narrow blind alley fringed with a row of hovels borders
it on the right; while on the left, and at the further end, it is closed
in by bits of wall overgrown with moss, above which can be seen the
top branches of the mulberry-trees of the Jas-Meiffren--an extensive
property with an entrance lower down the road. Enclosed upon three
sides, the Aire Saint-Mittre leads nowhere, and is only crossed by
people out for a stroll.

In former times it was a cemetery under the patronage of Saint-Mittre, a
greatly honoured Provencal saint; and in 1851 the old people of Plassans
could still remember having seen the wall of the cemetery standing,
although the place itself had been closed for years. The soil had been
so glutted with corpses that it had been found necessary to open a new
burial-ground at the other end of town. Then the old abandoned cemetery
had been gradually purified by the dark thick-set vegetation which had
sprouted over it every spring. The rich soil, in which the gravediggers
could no longer delve without turning up some human remains, was
possessed of wondrous fertility. The tall weeds overtopped the walls
after the May rains and the June sunshine so as to be visible from the
high road; while inside, the place presented the appearance of a deep,
dark green sea studded with large blossoms of singular brilliancy.
Beneath one's feet amidst the close-set stalks one could feel that the
damp soil reeked and bubbled with sap.

Among the curiosities of the place at that time were some large
pear-trees, with twisted and knotty boughs; but none of the housewives
of Plassans cared to pluck the large fruit which grew upon them. Indeed,
the townspeople spoke of this fruit with grimaces of disgust. No such
delicacy, however, restrained the suburban urchins, who assembled in
bands at twilight and climbed the walls to steal the pears, even before
they were ripe.

The trees and the weeds with their vigorous growth had rapidly
assimilated all the decomposing matter in the old cemetery of
Saint-Mittre; the malaria rising from the human remains interr