“What we’ll do,” said Mr. Dane, “is to look first at all the things the Turnours are sure to look at last.  By that plan we shall avoid them, and as I know my way about Avignon pretty well, you may set your mind at rest.”

I can think of nothing more delightful than a day in Avignon, with an agreeable brother and—­a mind at rest.  I had both, and made the most of them.

When her ladyship’s shoe-strings and stay-laces were off my mind and in my coat pocket, we wandered leisurely about the modern part of the wonderful town, which has been busier through the centuries in making history than almost any other in France.  Seen by daylight, I no longer resented the existence of a new—­comparatively new—­Avignon.  The pretty little theatre, with its dignified statues of Corneill and Moliere, seemed to invite me kindly to go in and listen to a play by the splendidly bewigged gentlemen sitting in stone chairs on either side of the door.  The clock tower with its “Jacquemart” who stiffly struck the quarter hours with an automatic arm, while his wife criticized the gesture, commanded me to stop and watch his next stroke; and the curiosity shops offered me the most alluring bargains.  People we met seemed to have plenty of time on their hands, and to be very good-natured, as if rich Provencal cooking agreed with their digestions.

Sure that the Turnours would be at the Palace of the Popes or in the Cathedral, we went to the Museum, and searched in vain among a riot of Roman remains for the tomb of Petrarch’s Laura, which guide-books promised.  In the end we had to be satisfied with a memorial cross made in the lovely lady’s honour by order of some romantic Englishmen.

“Yet you say we’re stolid and phlegmatic!” muttered Mr. Dane, as he read the inscription. (Evidently that remark had rankled.)

We had not a moment to waste, but the Turnours had to be avoided; so my brother proposed that we combine profit with prudence, and take a cab along the road leading out to Port St. Andre.  Where the ancient tower of Philippe le Bel crowns a lower slope I should have my first sight of that grim mountain of architecture, the Palace of the Popes.  It was the best place from which to see it, if its real grandeur were to be appreciated, he said—­or else to go to Villeneuve, across the Rhone, which we dared not steal time to do; but the Turnours were certain not to think of anything so esoteric in the way of sight-seeing.

The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of “Now!” from Mr. Dane.  It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous buttresses.

Of what romances, what tragedies, what triumphs, and what despairs could those huge walls and towers tell, if the echoes whispering through them could crystallize into words!