le with great
care and to keep in a temperature never higher than thirty-seven
degrees Fahrenheit, as they were notoriously sensitive, and I
particularly wished to receive them intact. I added that the
pantechnicon would be consigned to me under another name. A fair
knowledge of the French temperament suggests to me that the next two or
three furniture vans which arrive at Toulon will be very stickily
welcomed._"

I threw away my cigarette and stared at the mountains.

"'Though every prospect pleases,'" I murmured, "'and only fags are
vile.'"

"The only thing to do," said Adele, "is to have a little sent out from
England from time to time, and ration yourselves accordingly."

Berry shook his head.

"Easier to stop altogether," he said. "Tobacco's not like food. (I'm
not speaking of the stuff you get here. Some of that is extremely like
food--of a sort. I should think it would, as they say, 'eat lovely.')
Neither is it like liquor. You don't carry a flask or a bottle of beer
in your hip-pocket--more's the pity. But nobody's equipment is
complete without a case or a pouch. Why? So that the moment this
particular appetite asserts itself, it can be gratified. No.
Smoking's a vice; and as soon as you clap a vice in a strait-jacket, it
loses its charm. A cigar three times a day after meals doesn't cut any
ice with me." He tilted his hat over his eyes and sank his chin upon
his chest. "And now don't talk for a bit. I want to concentrate."

Adele laid a hand upon his arm.

"One moment," she said. "If the car arrives before you've finished,
are we to interrupt you?"

"Certainly not, darling. Signal to the driver to stop in the middle
distance. Oh, and ask approaching pedestrians to keep on the grass.
Should any children draw near, advise their nurse that I have the
mumps."

We were sitting upon a seat in the Parc Beaumont, revelling in the
temper of the sunshine and the perfection of the air. A furlong away,
Daphne, Jill, and Jonah were playing tennis, with Piers, Duke of Padua,
to make a fourth. Nobby and a fox-terrier were gambolling upon an
adjacent lawn.

Pau has many virtues, all but one of which may, I suppose, be severally
encountered elsewhere upon the earth. The one, however, is her
peculiar. The place is airy, yet windless. High though she stands,
and clear by thirty miles of such shelter as the mountains can give, by
some queer trick of Nature's, upon the map of AEolus Pau and her