slightly stern, aquiline type which you find alike on Roman coins and in modern drawing-rooms.  He would have done very well for one of St. Louis’s crusaders, waiting here at Aigues Mortes to sail for Palestine with his king, from the sole harbour the monarch could claim as his on all the Mediterranean coast.  I decided to let him remain in the dream picture, therefore, and told him so, which seemed to please him, for his eyes lighted up.  He always understands exactly what I mean when I say odd things.  I should never have felt quite the same to him again, I think, if he had stared and asked “What dream picture?”

I had been brought on this expedition strictly for use, not for ornament.  We were going from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles and from St. Gilles to Nimes, therefore Arles was already a landmark in our past.  I could walk about and amuse myself if I liked, but I must be at the inn before the return of my master and mistress to arrange a light repast collected at Arles, as we should have to lunch later at Nimes, and the resources of Aigues Mortes were not supposed to be worthy of millionaires in search of the picturesque.  There were several neat packages, the contents of which would aid and abet such humble refreshment as the City of Dead Waters could produce; but I had more than an hour to play with; and much can be done in an hour by an enthusiast with a good circulation.

I had not quite realized, however, how largely my brother’s companionship contributed to my pleasure on these excursions.  We had seen almost everything together, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was taking his presence too much for granted.  He would not go with me now, because in so small a round we were certain to run up against the Turnours, and her ladyship might be pleased to give me another lecture like that of evil memory at Avignon.  I would have risked future punishment for the sake of present pleasure, and it was on my tongue to say so; but I swallowed the words with difficulty, like an over-large pill.

So it fell out that I wandered off alone, sustaining myself on high thoughts of Crusaders as I gazed up at the statue of St. Louis, and paced the sentinels’ pathway round the gigantic ramparts, unchanged since Boccanegra built them.  Looking down from the ramparts the town, enclosed in the fortress walls, was like a faded chessboard cast ashore from the wreck of some ancient ship; and round the dark walls and towers waves of yellow sand and wastes of dead blue waters stretched as far as my gaze could reach, toward the tideless sea.

Louis bought this tangled desert of sand and water in the middle of the thirteenth century from an Abbot of Psalmodi, so the guide told me, and I liked the name of that abbot so much that I kept saying it over and over, to myself.  Abbot of Psalmodi!  It was to the ear what an old, illuminated missal is to the eye, rich with crimson lake, and gold, and ultramarine.  It was as if I heard an echo from King Arthur’s day, that dim, mysterious day when history was flushed with dawn; the Abbot of Psalmodi!