information which I require to make clear to me some
curious phase of Provencal manners or ways.

The Chateau de Vielmur has remained so intimately a part of the Middle
Ages that the subtle essence of that romantic period still pervades it,
and gives to all that goes on there a quaintly archaic tone. The donjon,
a prodigiously strong square tower dating from the twelfth century,
partly is surrounded by a dwelling in the florid style of two hundred
years back--the architectural flippancies of which have been so tousled
by time and weather as to give it the look of an old beau caught
unawares by age and grizzled in the midst of his affected youth.

In the rear of these oddly coupled structures is a farm-house with a
dependent rambling collection of farm-buildings; the whole enclosing a
large open court to which access is had by a vaulted passage-way, that
on occasion may be closed by a double set of ancient iron-clamped doors.
As the few exterior windows of the farm-house are grated heavily, and as
from each of the rear corners of the square there projects a crusty
tourelle from which a raking fire could be kept up along the walls, the
place has quite the air of a testy little fortress--and a fortress it
was meant to be when it was built three hundred years and more ago (the
date, 1561, is carved on the keystone of the arched entrance) in the
time of the religious wars.

But now the iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the
court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the
varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and
ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a
melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic
thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back
and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above
the farm-house and the farm well.

[Illustration: AT THE WELL]

This well--enclosed in a stone well-house surmounted by a very ancient
crucifix--is in the centre of the court-yard, and it also is the centre
of a little domestic world. To its kerb come the farm animals three
times daily; while as frequently, though less regularly, most of the
members of the two households come there too; and there do the
humans--notably, I have observed, if they be of different sexes--find it
convenient to rest for a while together and take a dish of friendly
talk. From the low-toned chattering an