“Oh!” I gasped, pink with horror.  “You don’t mean to say the Turnours have been out, and waiting?”

“I do, but don’t be so despairing.  I told them I thought I’d better look the car over, and wasn’t quite ready.  That’s always true, you know.  A motor’s like a pretty woman; never objects to being looked at.  So they said ‘damn,’ and strolled off to buy chocolates.”

“It’s getting beyond count how many times you’ve saved me, and this is only our second day out,” I exclaimed.  “Here they come now, as they always do, when we exchange a word.”

I trembled guiltily, but there was no more than a vague general disapproval in Lady Turnour’s eyes, the kind of expression which she thinks useful for keeping servants in their place.

I got into mine, on the front seat; the car’s bonnet got into its, the chauffeur into his, and at just three o’clock we turned our backs upon good King Rene.

The morning had drunk up all the sunshine of the day, leaving none for afternoon, which was troubled with a hint of coming mistral.  The landscape began to look like a hastily sketched water-colour, with its hills and terraces of vine; and above was a pale sky, blurred like greasy silver.  The wind roamed moaning among the tops of the tall cypresses, set close together to protect the meadows from one of “the three plagues of Provence.”  And even as the mistral tweaked our noses with a chilly thumb and finger, our eyes caught sight of the second and more dreaded plague:  the deceitfully gentle-seeming Durance, which in its rage can come tearing down from the Alps with the roar of a famished lion.

Far above the wide river, the Aigle glided across a high-hung suspension bridge, the song of the water floating up to our ears mingling with the purr of the motor—­two giant forces, one set loose by nature, the other by man, duetting harmoniously together, while the wind wailed over our heads.  But for the third and last plague of Provence we would have had to search in vain, for the land is no longer tormented by Parliament.

Always the road had stretched before us, up hill after hill, as straight drawn between its scantily grass-covered banks as the parting in an old man’s hair; and always, far ahead, wave following wave of hill and mountain had seemed to roll toward us like the sea as we advanced to meet them.  After the vineyards had come wild rocks, set with crumbling forts, and towers, and chateaux; then the mild interest of fruit blossom spraying pink and white among primly pollarded olives; then grape country again, with squat, low-growing vines like gnomes kicking up gnarled legs as they turned somersaults; then a break into wonderful mountain country, with Orgon’s ruins towering skyward, dark as despair, a wild romance in stone.  But before we reached the great suspension bridge, the Pont de Bonpas, the landscape appeared exhausted after its sublime efforts, and inclined to quiet down for a rest.  It was only near Avignon that it sprung up refreshed, ready for more strange surprises; and the grim grandeur of the scenery as we approached the ancient town seemed to prophesy the mediaeval towers and ramparts of the historic city.