A few minutes! thought I, eagerly, looking at the sun, which was hurrying westward.  I knew what “a few minutes” at such an inn would mean—­half an hour at least; and apparently I was no longer needed as an interpreter.  Without a thought of me, now that I had ceased to be useful, Lady Turnour slipped her arm into her husband’s for support (her high-heeled shoes and the rough, steep streets had not been made for each other), and began trotting down the hill, in advance of the guide.  They had finished with him, too, and were already deep in a discussion as to whether rum punch, or hot whisky-and-water with sugar and lemon were better, for warding off a chill.  I didn’t see why I shouldn’t linger a little on the wide plateau, with the Dead City looming above me like a skeleton seated on a ruined throne, and half southern France spread out in a vast plain, a thousand feet below.

It was wonderful there, and strangely, almost terribly still.  Once the sea had washed the feet of the cliff, dim ages ago.  Now my eyes had to travel far to the Mediterranean, where Marseilles gloomed dark against the burnished glimmer of the water.  I could see the Etang de Berre, too, and imagine I saw the Aurelian Way, and gloomy old Aigues-Mortes, which we were to visit later.  At lunch we had talked of a poem of Mistral’s, which a friend of Mr. Dane’s had put into French—­a poem all about a legendary duel.  And it was down there, in that far-stretching field, that the duel was fought.

As I looked I realized that the clouds boiling up from some vast cauldron behind the world were choking the horizon with their purple folds.  They were beautiful as the banners of a royal army advancing over the horizon, but—­they would hide the sun as he went down to bathe in the sea.  He was embroidering their edges with gold now.  I was seeing the best at this moment.  If I started to go back, I should have time to pause here and there, gazing at things the Turnours had hurried past.

I went down slowly, reluctantly, the melancholy charm of the place catching at my dress as I walked, like the supplicating fingers of a ghost condemned to dumbness.  There was one rock-hewn house I had wanted to see, coming up, which Lady Turnour had scorned, saying “when you’ve been in one, you’ve been in all.”  And she had not understood the guide’s story of a legend that was attached to this particular house.  Perhaps if she had she would not have cared; but now I was free I couldn’t resist the temptation of going in, to poke about a little.  You could go several floors down, the guide had said; that was certain, but the tale was, that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house, continuing—­if one could only find it—­to the enchanted cavern far below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved by Mireio.

I didn’t know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d’Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the “Fairy Grotto,” or the “Gorge of Hell,” near by.