just a road, with queer little gnome
dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness,
with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks?
My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they clustered thicker and
brighter about Pieverde, where I insisted to Mr. Dane that Laura had
been born.

He was inclined to dispute this at first, and bring up the horrid theory
that the pure white star of Petrarch's life had been a mere Madame de
Sade, with a drove of uninteresting children. But eagerly I quoted
Petrarch himself, using all the arguments on which Pamela and I prided
ourselves at the Convent; and by the time we had got as far as that
sweet "little Venice full of water wheels," L'Isle, I'd persuaded him to
agree with me. In the midst of all that lovely, liquid music of running,
trickling, fluting water, who could go on callously insisting that Laura
resisted Petrarch merely because she was a fat married woman with a
large family?

All was green and pastoral here, and we seemed to have come into eternal
spring after the bleak, windy plains encircling Avignon. It was
beautiful to remember Petrarch's description of his golden-haired,
dark-eyed love, fair and tall as a lily, sitting in the grass among the
violets, where her bare feet gleamed whiter than the daisies when she
took off her sandals. Even Nicolete, flower of Provencal song, had no
whiter feet than Laura, I am sure!

We were slipping past the banks of a little river, clear as sapphires
and emeralds melted and mingled together. The sound of its singing
drowned the sound of the motor, so that we seemed to glide toward
Vaucluse noiselessly and reverently.

At the Inn of Petrarch and Laura the car had to stop; and looking up, we
could see on the height above the castle home of Petrarch's dearest
friend, Philippe de Cabassole, guardian of Queen Jeanne of Naples. Up
there on the cliff Petrarch's eyes must often have turned toward
Pieverde with longing thoughts of Laura, that "white dove" who was
always for him sixteen, as when he met her first.

No farther than the inn could any wheeled thing go; and having
justified my presence by buttoning Lady Turnour up in her coat, and
finding her muff under several rugs, I stood by the car, gazing after
the couple as they trudged off along the path to the hidden fairy
fountain of Vaucluse. When they should have got well ahead I meant to go
too, for if a cat may look at a king, a lady's maid