hence--as blithe a boat-load of poets as ever went light-heartedly
afloat--on southward to Avignon on the galloping current of the Rhone.

V

Avignon was crowded with dignitaries and personages: M. Leygues, who was
to preside over the festival; the ministers of justice and of public
works, who were to increase its official dignity; artistic and literary
people without end. Of these last--who also, in a way, were first, since
to them the whole was due--our special boat from Lyons had brought a gay
contingent three hundred strong. With it all, the City of the Popes
fairly buzzed like a hive of poetic bees got astray from Hymettus Hill.

From Avignon to Orange the distance is less than eighteen miles, not at
all too far for driving; and the intervening country is so rich and so
beautiful as to conform in all essentials--save in its commendable
freedom from serpents--to the biblical description of Paradise.
Therefore, following our own wishes and the advice of several
poets--they all are poets down there--we decided to drive to the play
rather than to expose ourselves to the rigours of the local railway
service: the abject collapse of which, under the strain of handling
twelve or fifteen hundred people, the poets truthfully prophesied.

It was five in the afternoon when we got away from Avignon. A
mistral--the north wind that is the winter bane and summer blessing of
Provence--was blowing briskly; the sun was shining; the crowded Cours de
la Republique was gay with flags and banners and streamers, and with
festoons of coloured lanterns which later would be festoons of coloured
fire. We passed between the towers of the gateway, left the ramparts
behind us, and went onward over the perfect road. Plane-trees arched
above us; on each side of the road were little villas deep-set in
gardens and bearing upon their stone gate-posts the names of saints. As
we increased our distance from the city we came to market-gardens, and
then to vineyards, olive-orchards, farms. Rows of bright-green poplars
and of dark-green cypress--set up as shields against the mistral--made
formal lines across the landscape from east to west. The hedges on the
lee-side of the road were white with dust--a lace-like effect, curious
and beautiful. Above them, and between the trees, we caught glimpses of
Mont Ventour--already beginning to glow like a great opal in the nearly
level sun-rays. Old women and children stood in the gateways staring
wonderingly at