chef_, and well served by a dainty Arlesienne maiden of
fifteen summers, who looks as though she might be twenty-two.

"_C'est un chose a voir_" every one tells you in the Bouches-du-Rhone
when you mention Aigues-Mortes; and truly it is. As before suggested,
you will not want to sleep within its dreary walls, but "it's a thing
to see" without question, and to get away from as soon as possible,
before a peculiarly vicious breed of mosquito inoculates you with the
toxic poison of the marshes.

Now we are approaching the land of the poet Mistral, the most
romantic region in all modern France, where the inhabitant in his
repose and his pleasure still lives in mediaeval times and chants and
dances himself (and herself) into a sort of semi-indifference to the
march of time.

The Crau and the Camargue, lying south of Arles between Aigues-Mortes
and the Etang de Berre, is the greatest fete-making _pays_, one might
think, in all the world.

How many times, from January to January, the Provencal "makes the
fete" it would be difficult to state--on every occasion possible, at
any rate.

The great fete of Provence is the day of the _ferrande_, a sort of a
cattle round-up held on the Camargue plain, something like what goes
on in "_le Far West,_" as the French call it, only on not so grand a
scale.

Mistral describes it of course:

"On a great branding-day came this throng,
A help for the mighty herd-mustering,
Li Santo, Aigo Marto, Albaron,
And from Faraman, a hundred horses strong
Came out into the desert."

Here we were in the midst of the land of fetes, and if we could not
see a _ferrande_ in all its savage, unspoiled glory, we would see
what we could.

We were in luck, as we learned when we put into St. Gilles for the
night, and comfortably enough housed our auto in the _remise_ of the
company, or individual, which has the concession for the stage line
across the Camargue, which links up the two loose ends of a toy
railway, one of which ends at Aigues-Mortes, and the other at Stes.
Maries-de-la-Mer.

Our particular piece of luck was the opportunity to be present at the
pilgrimage to the shrine of the three Marys of Judea, which took
place on the morrow.

The poet Mistral sets it all out in romantic verse in his epic
"Mireio," and one and all were indeed glad to embrace so fortunate an
opportunity of participating in one of the most nearly unique
pilgrimages and festivals in all the world.

We entere