ers not antiquarian has a sweetness of nature rarely equalled--into
a veritable fuming rage.

But even the antiquaries are agreed that, long before the coming of the
Romans, many earlier races successively made on this mountain
promontory overlooking the Rhone delta their fortified home: for here,
as on scores of other defensible heights throughout Provence, the merest
scratching of the soil brings to light flints and potshards which tell
of varied human occupancy in very far back times. And the antiquaries
still farther are agreed that precisely as these material relics (only a
little hidden beneath the present surface of the soil) tell of diverse
ancient dwellers here, so do the surviving fragments of creeds and
customs (only a little hidden beneath the surface of Provencal daily
life) tell in a more sublimate fashion of those same vanished races
which marched on into Eternity in the shadowy morning of Time.

For this is an old land, where many peoples have lived their spans out
and gone onward--yet have not passed utterly away. Far down in the
popular heart remnants of the beliefs and of the habits of those
ancients survive, entranced: yet not so numbed but that, on occasion,
they may be aroused into a life that still in part is real. Even now,
when the touch-stone is applied--when the thrilling of some nerve of
memory or of instinct brings the present into close association with
the past--there will flash into view still quick particles of seemingly
long-dead creeds or customs rooted in a deep antiquity: the faiths and
usages which of old were cherished by the Kelto-Ligurians, Phoenicians,
Grecians, Romans, Goths, Saracens, whose blood and whose beliefs are
blended in the Christian race which inhabits Provence to-day.

II

In the dominion of Vielmur there is an inner empire. Nominally, the
Vidame is the reigning sovereign; but the power behind his throne is
Mise Fougueiroun. The term "Mise" is an old-fashioned Provencal title of
respect for women of the little bourgeoisie--tradesmen's and
shopkeepers' wives and the like--that has become obsolescent since the
Revolution and very generally has given place to the fine-ladyish
"Madamo." With a little stretching, it may be rendered by our English
old-fashioned title of "mistress"; and Mise Fougueiroun, who is the
Vidame's housekeeper, is mistress over his household in a truly
masterful way.

This personage is a little round woman, still plumply pleasing although