263

XV. THE LAST FAREWELL 284

XVI. IN THE CHEVREUSE VALLEY 304

WHICH?

BY ERNEST DAUDET.

CHAPTER I.

THE BOHEMIANS.

Early one morning in the month of March, 1770, a woman bearing in her
arms a new-born infant, was hastening along the left bank of the Garden,
a small river that rises in the Cevennes, traverses the department of
the Gard, and empties into the Rhone, not far from Beaucaire. It would
be difficult to find more varied and picturesque scenery than that which
borders this stream whose praises have been chanted by Florian, and
which certainly should not be unknown to fame since it was here the
Romans constructed the Pont du Gard, that gigantic aqueduct which
conveyed the waters of Eure to Nimes.

The woman of whom we speak was at that moment very near the famous Pont
du Gard--which is only a short distance from the spot on which the
little village of Lafous now stands, and directly opposite Remoulins, a
town of considerable size situated on the right bank of the river--and
at a point where the highway from Nimes to Avignon intersects the road
leading up from the villages that dot the river banks. The woman paused
on reaching the place where these roads meet, not to take breath, but to
decide which course she should pursue. But she did not hesitate long.
After casting an anxious glance behind her, she hastened on again,
directing her steps toward the Pont du Gard, which was distant not more
than half a mile.

The air was very cold; the wind had been blowing furiously all night,
and at day-break it was still raging, ruffling the water, bending the
trees, snatching up great clouds of dust, and moaning and shrieking
through the clumps of willows that bordered the stream, while immense
masses of gray and white clouds scudding rapidly across the sky,
imparted to it the appearance of a tempest-tossed ocean. Some of these
clouds were so low that they seemed almost to touch the earth as they
rushed wildly on, pursued by the fury of the gale, and assuming strange
and fantastic forms in their erratic course. Undeterred by the violence
of the tempest, the stranger advanced steadily, apparently with but one
aim in view: to reach her journey's end with all possible expedition in
order to protect her sleeping infant from the inclemency of the weather.

She was a young woman, not yet twenty years of age. Her luxurian