Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l’Europe following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.

Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, “because the thing is to see the sunset there,” I heard her telling an extremely rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.

The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had a misleading air, as if it didn’t want you to think it was taking you to a place of any importance.  And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land; not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the glory of it to future generations.  At any moment we might meet a Fellore.  I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman’s eyes are almost as mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or zenana gratings.

St. Remy itself—­birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and prophecies—­was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast palace; but we swept on toward the “Plateau des Antiquities,” up a steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.

Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen helped to build them for Julius Caesar, when he determined that posterity should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do justice to the memory of Marius.

When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the dreadful difficulty of pronouncing his name; but when we had got out of the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had kept his head through all the centuries, while Caesar (with a hand on the prisoner’s shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the first time.

I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for somebody else.  But Mr. Dane assured me with the obstinate air people have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was really the more interesting of the two—­the first Triumphal Archway set up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the three Julii, and then away