d the soft laughter that I have
heard now and then of an evening I have inferred that these nominally
chance encounters are not confined wholly to the day.

By simple machinery (of which the motive-power is an aged patient horse,
who is started and left then to his own devices; and who works quite
honestly, save that now and then he stops in his round and indulges
himself in a little doze) the well-water is raised continuously into a
long stone trough. Thence the overflow is led away to irrigate the
garden of the Chateau: an old-fashioned garden, on a slope declining
southward and westward, abounding in balustraded terraces and stone
benches stiffly ornate, and having here and there stone nymphs and
goddesses over which in summer climbing roses kindly (and discreetly)
throw a blushing veil.

The dependent estate is a large one: lying partly on the flanks of the
Alpilles, and extending far outward from the base of the range over the
level region where the Rhone valley widens and merges into the valley of
the Durance. On its highest slopes are straggling rows of almond trees,
which in the early spring time belt the grey mountains with a broad
girdle of delicate pink blossoms; a little lower are terraced
olive-orchards, a pale shimmering green the year round--the olive
continuously casting and renewing its leaves; and the lowest level, the
wide fertile plain, is given over to vineyards and wheat-fields and
fields of vegetables (grown for the Paris market), broken by plantations
of fruit-trees and by the long lines of green-black cypress which run
due east and west across the landscape and shield the tender growing
things from the north wind, the mistral.

The Chateau stands, as I have said, well up on the mountain-side; and on
the very spot (I must observe that I am here quoting its owner) where
was the camp in which Marius lay with his legions until the time was
ripe for him to strike the blow that secured Southern Gaul to Rome. This
matter of Marius is a ticklish subject to touch on with the Vidame:
since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm
in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of
the Roman general was variously elsewhere--and all of them, I regret to
add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's
views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the
mere mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend--who in
matt