Roman
Empire two thousand years ago. Wherever the traveller around Europe now
reaches a place that makes instant appeal; where harsh winds are
screened away and blazing sunshine filters through feathery foliage;
where all Nature beckons one to halt and rest awhile--there he is
practically certain to find Roman remains. The wealthy Romans wintered
at Nice and Cannes and St Raphael; took the waters at Baden-Baden and
Aix in Savoy; made sporting centres of Treves on the Moselle and Ronda
in Andalusia; dallied by the marble baths of Nimes.

Nimes had captured Riviere at sight. His first day in that leisured,
peaceful, fragrant town, nestling amongst the hills against the keen
_mistral_, had decided him to settle there for some weeks. He had taken
a couple of furnished rooms in a villa with a delightful old-world
garden. For a lengthy stay he much preferred his own rooms to the
transiency and restlessness of a hotel, and at the Villa Clementine he
had found exactly what he required. The living-room opened wide to the
sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a
little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf
oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a
home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun.
Here there was an arbour wreathed in gentle wisteria, where Riviere took
breakfast and the mid-day meal. At nightfall a chill snapped down with
the suddenness of the impetuousness Midi, and his evening meal was
accordingly taken indoors.

Besides this little private preserve of his own, there was the beautiful
public garden of Nimes--called the Jardin de la Fontaine--draping a
hillside that looks down upon the marble baths of the Romans, almost as
freshly new to-day as two thousand years ago. A thick battalion of trees
at the summit of the hillside makes stubborn insistence to the northern
_mistral_, so that even when the wind tears over the plains of Provence
like a wild fury, scourging and freezing, the Jardin de la Fontaine is
serene and windless. The _mistral_ goes always with a cloudless sky, as
though the clouds were fleeing from its icy keenness, and the sun pours
full upon the semi-circle of the Jardin de la Fontaine, turning it to a
hothouse where the most delicate plants and shrubs can find a home.

Here men and women in toga and flowing draperies have whiled away
leisure hours, spun day-dreams, made love, or schemed affairs of