au is inhabited all through the year. In its
dismal dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, and
heard there were two horses on the premises besides our own. It then
occurred to us that we might accomplish the rest of the journey with
such sledges as they bring the wood on from the hills in winter, if
coal-boxes or boxes of any sort could be provided. These should be
lashed to the sledges and filled with hay. We were only four persons;
my wife and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in
the other. No sooner thought of than put into practice. These original
conveyances were improvised, and after two hours' halt on the Meadow
of Hope, we all set forth again at half-past eight.

I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim cold of that
journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts.
The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum
stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little
girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white
covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen
masses to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it
was difficult to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with
neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with
frost. Nothing could be seen but millions of white specks, whirled
at us in eddying concentric circles. Not far from the entrance to the
village we met our house-folk out with lanterns to look for us. It was
past eleven at night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed
ourselves for the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper. Horses,
carriage, and drunken driver reached home next morning.

* * * * *

OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE

Travellers journeying southward from Paris first meet with olive-trees
near Montdragon or Monselimart--little towns, with old historic names,
upon the road to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves
within the land of Provence, where the Romans found a second Italy,
and where the autumn of their antique civilisation was followed,
almost without an intermediate winter of barbarism, by the light and
delicate springtime of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed,
the ghost of the dead empire seems there to be more real and living
than the actual flesh and blood of modern time, as represented by
narrow dirty streets and mean church