ass. Right over the bow came the bouquet,
and fairly into the eager hands stretched out for it--while a great
cheer went up from the grateful poets in the boat that was echoed by the
generous poets in the air. And the prettiest touch of all was the
garland of verses that came to us with the flowers: to bid us welcome
and to wish us God-speed on our way. Truly, 'twas a delicately fine bit
of poetic courtesy. No troubadour in the days of Vienne the Holy (the
holiness was not of an austere variety) could have cast a more graceful
tribute upon the passing galley of the debonaire Queen Jeanne.

V

Before Vienne the river cuts its way narrowly through the rock, and on
each side the banks lift high above the stream. Far above us was the
town, rising in terraces to where was the citadel in the days of Vienne
the Strong. We had a flying glimpse of it all as we flashed past, sped
by the current and our great wheels; and then the valley widened again,
and soft meadows bordered by poplars and gay with yellow flowers lay
between us and the mountain ranges rising to right and left against the
sky. Here and there along the banks, where an outcrop of rock gave good
holding-ground, were anchored floating grist-mills carrying huge
water-wheels driven by the current--the wooden walls so browned with age
that they seemed to have held over from the times when the archbishops,
lording it in Vienne, took tithes of millers' toll.

We were come into a country of corn and wine. The mills certified to the
corn; and as we swung around the curves of the river or shot down its
reaches we met long lean steamboats fighting against the current under
heavy ladings of big-bellied wine-casks--on their genial way northward
to moisten thirsty Paris throats. Off on the right bank was the ancient
manor of Mont-Lys, where begins the growth of the Cotes-Roties: the
famous red and white wines, called the _brune_ and the _blonde_, which
have been dear to bottle-lovers for nearly two thousand years: from the
time when the best of them (such as now go northward to Paris) went
southward to the Greek merchants of Marseille and so onward to Rome to
be sold for, literally, their weight in gold. And as to the melons and
apricots which grow hereabouts, 'tis enough to say that Lyons bereft of
them would pine and die.

The softly-swelling banks, capped by the long lines of yellow-green
poplars, slipped by us at a gallop; while the mountains in the
background, seen th