a widely-spread political and religious organisation of
some influence.

Vaucluse, most charming of places, in its narrow leafy valley,
surrounded by towering cliffs, is celebrated as having been the home of
Petrarch for sixteen years during the thirteen hundreds. We may hope
that his worshipped Laura sometimes brightened his home there with her
presence. The famous Fountain of Vaucluse rushes out from its cave a
full-grown river. It wastes no time in infant frivolities, but settles
down to work at once, turning a mill within two hundred yards of its
birthplace.

Avignon is another somnolent spot. The gigantic and gloomy Palace of
the Popes dominates the place, though it is far more like a fortress
than a palace. Here the Popes lived from 1309 to 1377 during their
enforced abandonment of Rome, and Avignon remained part of the Papal
dominions until the French Revolution. The President took less interest
in the Palace of the Popes than he did in a famous cook at one of the
Avignon hotels. He could hardly recall some of the plats of this noted
artist without displaying signs of deep emotion. These ancient towns on
the banks of the swift-rushing green Rhone seemed to me to be
perpetually dozing in the warm sun, like old men, dreaming of their
historic and varied past since the days of the Romans.

My French legal friends were much exercised by a recent decision of the
High Court. M. Thiers had been President of the Republic from 1870 to
1873. A distant cousin of his living in Marseilles, being in pecuniary
difficulties, had applied ineffectually to M. Thiers for assistance.
Whereupon the resourceful lady had opened a restaurant in Marseilles,
and had had painted over the house-front in gigantic letters,
"Restaurant tenu par la cousine de Monsieur Thiers." She was proceeded
against for bringing the Head of the State into contempt, was fined
heavily, and made to remove the offending inscription. My French
friends hotly contested the legality of this decision. They declared
that it was straining the sense of the particular Article of the Code
to make it applicable in such a case, and that it was illogical to
apply the law of Lese-majeste to the Head of a Republican State. The
President pertinently added that no evidence as to the quality of food
supplied in the restaurant had been taken. If bad, it might
unquestionably reflect injuriously on the Head of the State; if good,
on the other hand, in view of the admitted relatio