The heart of Aigues Mortes for me was the great tower of Constance, but a very wicked heart, full of clever and murderous devices, which was at its wickedest, not in the dark ages, but in the glittering times of Louis XIV. and of other Louis after him.  That tower is the bad part of the dream where horrors accumulate and you struggle to cry out, while a spell holds you silent.  In the days when Aigues Mortes was not a dream, but a terrible reality to the prisoners of that cruel tower, how many anguished cries must have broken the spell; cries from hideous little dungeons like rat-holes, cries from the far heights of the tower where women and children starved and were forgotten!

I was almost glad to get away; yet now that I am away I shall often go back—­in my dream.

Alexander Dumas the elder went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles, driving along the Beaucaire Canal, on that famous tour of his which took him also to Les Baux; and we too went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles, though I’m sure the Turnours had no idea that it was a pilgrimage in famous footprints.  Only the humble maid and chauffeur had the joy of knowing that.  We had both read Dumas’ account of his journey, and we laughed over the story of the little saint he stole at Les Baux.

It was a pleasant run to St. Gilles, though there was a shrewish nip in the wind which made me hope that Lady Turnour’s mind was not running ahead to the mountains and gorges in front of her, not far away by days or miles now.  I wanted her to get tangled up in them before she had time to think of the cold, and then it would be too late to turn tail.

I had just begun to call the little town of St. Gilles an “ugly hole,” and wonder what St. Louis saw to love in it, when, coming out of a squalid, hilly street through which I had tried to pick my way on foot, alone, suddenly the facade of the wonderful old church burst upon my sight, a vision of beauty.

No self-respecting motor-car would have condescended to trust itself in such a street, and as a rabble of small male St. Gillesites swarmed round the Aigle when she stopped at the beginning of the ascent, Mr. Dane had to play guardian angel.  “I’ve been here before,” he said, as usual, for this whole tour seems to be a twice-told tale for him.  A few days ago I should have pitied him aloud for not being able to blow the dust off his old impressions; but now, when he speaks of past experiences, I think:  “Oh, I wonder if this is another place associated in his mind with that horrid woman?” For on mature deliberation I have definitely niched her among the Horrors in my mental museum.  In front of me walked Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, whose very backs cried out their loathing of St. Gilles; but abruptly the expression of their shoulders changed; they had seen the facade, and even they could not help feeling vaguely that it must be unique in the world, that of its kind nothing could be more beautiful.