k's 'Old Provence,' than go downstairs. Anyway, it will be better for
you."

I was half angry, half flattered that he should arrange my life for me
in this off-hand way, whether I liked it or not; but the French half of
me will do almost anything rather than be ungracious; and it would have
been ungracious to say I was tired of dining in my room, and could take
care of myself, when he had given himself the trouble of carrying up my
dinner. So I swallowed all less obvious emotions than meek gratitude for
food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the
delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with
it--the book, not the pudding--after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost
literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and when
morning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. Remy and Les
Baux.

Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as
a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l'Europe
following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady
Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.

Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, "because the thing
is to see the sunset there," I heard her telling an extremely
rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned
the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.

The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had
a misleading air, as if it didn't want you to think it was taking you to
a place of any importance. And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land;
not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great
enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the
glory of it to future generations. At any moment we might meet a
Fellore. I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back
at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman's eyes are almost as
mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or
zenana gratings.

St. Remy itself--birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and
prophecies--was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of
trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast
palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up a
steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I
found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid