whom we were accredited that they had ended by making us
members of their own elect body: the Society of the Felibrige--wherein
are united the troubadours of these modern times. As Felibres,
therefore, it was not merely our right but our duty to attend the
festival of the Sainte-Estelle; and our official notification in regard
to this meeting--received in New York on a chill day in the early
spring-time--announced also that we were privileged to journey on the
special steamboat chartered by our brethren of Paris for the run from
Lyons to Avignon down the Rhone.

II

We were called at five o'clock in the morning. Even the little birds of
Lyons were drowsy at that untoward and melancholy hour. As I slowly
roused myself I heard their sleepy twitterings out in the trees on the
Cours du Midi--and my sympathies were with them. There are natures which
are quickened and strengthened by the early day. Mine is not such. I
know of nothing which so numbs what I am pleased to term my faculties as
to be _particeps criminis_ in the rising of the sun.

But life was several shades less cheerless by the time that we left the
Hotel Univers--which I ever shall remember gratefully because it
ministered so well, even in the very midst of the driving bustle of the
Lyons Exposition, to our somewhat exacting needs--and went down to the
river side. Already the mists of morning had risen, and in their place
was the radiant sunshine of the Midi: that penetrating, tingling
sunshine which sets the blood to dancing and thence gets into the brain
and breeds extravagant fancies there which straightway are uttered as
substantial truths--as M. Daudet so often has told us; and also, when
writing about this his own dearly-loved birth-land, so often has
demonstrated in his own text.

Yet had we come to the boat while still in the lowering mood begotten of
our intemperate palterings with the dawn we must have yielded quickly
to the infectious cheerfulness which obtained on board the _Gladiateur_.
Even a Grey Penitent would have been moved, coming unawares into that
gay company, to throw off his _cagoule_ and to dance a saraband. From
end to end the big _Gladiateur_ was bright with bunting--flags set in
clusters on the great paddle-boxes, on the bow, on the stern--and the
company thronging on board was living up to the brightness of the
sunshine and the flags.

For they were going home, home to their dear South, those poet exiles:
and their joy was so