ger wouldn't realize that there could be anything of more importance
in the world than the statue of Ste. Martha and the Tarasque."

"Nothing is, really," said Mr. Dane, glancing up from some
dentist-looking work he was doing in the Aigle's mouth under her lifted
bonnet. "But you _are_ a little late--"

"Oh!" I gasped, pink with horror. "You don't mean to say the Turnours
have been out, and waiting?"

"I do, but don't be so despairing. I told them I thought I'd better
look the car over, and wasn't quite ready. That's always true, you know.
A motor's like a pretty woman; never objects to being looked at. So they
said 'damn,' and strolled off to buy chocolates."

"It's getting beyond count how many times you've saved me, and this is
only our second day out," I exclaimed. "Here they come now, as they
always do, when we exchange a word."

I trembled guiltily, but there was no more than a vague general
disapproval in Lady Turnour's eyes, the kind of expression which she
thinks useful for keeping servants in their place.

I got into mine, on the front seat; the car's bonnet got into its, the
chauffeur into his, and at just three o'clock we turned our backs upon
good King Rene.

The morning had drunk up all the sunshine of the day, leaving none for
afternoon, which was troubled with a hint of coming mistral. The
landscape began to look like a hastily sketched water-colour, with its
hills and terraces of vine; and above was a pale sky, blurred like
greasy silver. The wind roamed moaning among the tops of the tall
cypresses, set close together to protect the meadows from one of "the
three plagues of Provence." And even as the mistral tweaked our noses
with a chilly thumb and finger, our eyes caught sight of the second and
more dreaded plague: the deceitfully gentle-seeming Durance, which in
its rage can come tearing down from the Alps with the roar of a famished
lion.

Far above the wide river, the Aigle glided across a high-hung suspension
bridge, the song of the water floating up to our ears mingling with the
purr of the motor--two giant forces, one set loose by nature, the other
by man, duetting harmoniously together, while the wind wailed over our
heads. But for the third and last plague of Provence we would have had
to search in vain, for the land is no longer tormented by Parliament.

Always the road had stretched before us, up hill after hill, as straight
drawn between its scantily grass-covered banks as the par