were five of us on top, plus
the driver of course.

There was a thick-set, hairy, and earthy-smelling Camargue Ranger, with
big, blood-shot eyes, and sporting silver earrings. There were two men
from Beaucaire, a baker and his dough mixer, ruddy and wheezy, as
befits their trade, but with the magnificent profiles of a roman
Emperor. Lastly there was this fellow; no, not a person, really, just a
cap. You were only aware of the cap ... an enormous rabbit-skin cap. He
said little, gazing miserably at the passing road.

These characters, well known to each other, were speaking very loudly,
and even more freely, about their personal business. The Ranger
announced that he was making for Nimes in response to a Magistrate's
summons for pitch-forking a shepherd. They're hot-blooded, these
Camargue folk. As for the men from Beaucaire; they were at each others
throats about the Virgin Mary. It appears that the baker was from a
parish dedicated to the Madonna, known in Provence as the Holy Mother,
and always pictured carrying the baby Jesus in her arms. His
dough-mixer, on the other hand, was a lay-reader at a new church
dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, whose icon showed her with open
arms and illuminated hands. The way they treated each other and their
respective Madonnas, had to be seen to be believed:

--She's no more than a pretty girl, your "immaculate" lady!

--Well, you know what you can do with your Holy Mother!

--She was no better around Palestine than she should have been, yours!

--What about yours, the little minx! Who knows what she got up to. Only
St. Joseph can answer that.

You'd have thought we were on the docks in Naples. In truth, it only
needed the glint of a knife blade, I'm sure, to settle this fine
theological point once and for all; that is if the driver hadn't
intervened.

--Give us some peace. You and your Madonnas! he said laughingly, trying
to make light of the Beaucairian dispute: it's women's stuff, this, men
shouldn't get involved.

He cracked his whip, from his high perch, as if to emphasise to his
lack of religious conviction and to bring the others into line.

* * * * *

End of discussion. But the baker, having been stopped in full flow,
wanted to continue in the same vein, and turned his attention towards
the miserable cap, still morosely huddled in its corner, and quietly
sneered:

--You there, grinder, what about your wife? What side of the parish
bo