white road curved under the
trees and I rode straight into the heart of Paradise, my horse's hoofs
awaking echoes in the silent, stone-paved square.

Never had I so suddenly entered a place so peaceful, so quiet in the
afternoon sun--yet the silence was not absolute, it was thrilling with
exquisite sound, lost echoes of the river running along its quay of
stone, half-heard harmonies of the ocean where white surf seethed over
the sands beyond the headland.

There was a fountain, too, dripping melodiously under the trees; I
heard the breathless humming of a spinning-wheel from one of the low
houses of gray stone which enclosed the square, and a young girl
singing, and the drone of bees in a bed of resida.

So this was Paradise! Truly the name did not seem amiss here, under
the still vault of blue above; Paradise means peace to so many of
us--surcease of care and sound and the brazen trample of nations--not
the quiet of palace corridors or the tremendous silence of a
cathedral, but the noiselessness of pleasant sounds, moving shadows of
trees, wordless quietude, simplicity.

A young girl with a face like the Madonna stole across the square in
her felt shoes.

"Can you tell me where the mayor lives?" I asked, looking down at her
from my horse.

She raised her white-coiffed head with an innocent smile: "Eman' barz
ar sal o leina."

"Don't you speak French?" I asked, appalled.

"Ho! ia; oui, monsieur, s'il faut bien. The mayor is at breakfast in
his kitchen yonder."

"Thank you, my child."

I turned my horse across the shady square to a stone house banked up
with bed on bed of scarlet geraniums. The windows were open; a fat man
with very small eyes sat inside eating an omelet.

He watched me dismount without apparent curiosity, and when I had tied
my horse and walked in at the open door he looked at me over the rim
of a glass of cider, and slowly finished his draught without blinking.
Then he said, "Bonjour."

I told him that I wanted a license for the circus to camp for one
night; that I also desired permission to pitch camp somewhere in the
vicinity. He made out the license, stamped it, handed it to me, and I
paid him the usual fee.

"I've heard of circuses," he said; "they're like those shows at
country fairs, I suppose."

"Yes--in a way. We have animals."

"What kind?"

"Lions, tigers--"

"I've seen them."

"--a camel, an elephant--"

"Alive?"

"Certainly."

"Ma doue!" he said, with slow e