montories. The fresh wind
from the waves shakes the little harness bells; while on the right, on
the side of the mountain, the rows of pine-trees, the green oaks with
roots capriciously leaving the arid soil, and olive-trees growing on
their terraces, up to a wide and white pebbly ravine, bordered with
grass, marking the passage of the waters. This is really a dried-up
water-course, which the loaded mules ascend with firm foot among the
shingle, and a washer-woman stoops near a microscopic pond--the few
drops that remained of the great inundation of winter. From time to time
one crosses the street of some village, or little town rather, grown
rusty through too much sun, of historic age, the houses closely packed
and joined by dark arcades--a network of vaulted courts which clamber
the hillside with glimpses of the upper daylight, here and there letting
one see crowds of children with aureoles of hair, baskets of brilliant
fruit, a woman coming down the road, her water-pot on her head and her
distaff on her arm. Then at a corner of the street, the blue sparkle of
the waves and the immensity of nature.

But as the day advanced, the sun rising in the heavens spread over
the sea--now escaped from its mists, still with the transparence
of quartz--thousands of rays striking the water like arrow-heads, a
dazzling sight made doubly so by the whiteness of the rocks and of
the soil, by a veritable African sirocco which raised the dust in
a whirlwind on the road. They were coming to the hottest and most
sheltered places of the Corniche--a true exotic temperature, scattering
dates, cactus, and aloes. Seeing these thin trunks, this fantastic
vegetation in the white hot air, feeling the blinding dust crackle under
the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes half closed, dreaming in this
leaden noon, thought he was once more on that fatiguing road from Tunis
to the Bardo, in a singular medley of Levantine carriages with brilliant
liveries, of long-necked camels, of caparisoned mules, of young donkeys,
of Arabs in rags, of half-naked negroes, of officials in full-dress with
their guard of honour. Should he find there, where the road ran through
the gardens of palm-trees, the strange and colossal architecture of the
Bey's palace, its barred windows with closed lattices, its marble gates,
its balconies in carved wood painted in bright colours?--It was not the
Bardo, but the lovely country of Bordighera, divided, like all those
on the coast,