st of
them.

When her ladyship's shoe-strings and stay-laces were off my mind and in
my coat pocket, we wandered leisurely about the modern part of the
wonderful town, which has been busier through the centuries in making
history than almost any other in France. Seen by daylight, I no longer
resented the existence of a new--comparatively new--Avignon. The pretty
little theatre, with its dignified statues of Corneill and Moliere,
seemed to invite me kindly to go in and listen to a play by the
splendidly bewigged gentlemen sitting in stone chairs on either side of
the door. The clock tower with its "Jacquemart" who stiffly struck the
quarter hours with an automatic arm, while his wife criticized the
gesture, commanded me to stop and watch his next stroke; and the
curiosity shops offered me the most alluring bargains. People we met
seemed to have plenty of time on their hands, and to be very
good-natured, as if rich Provencal cooking agreed with their digestions.

Sure that the Turnours would be at the Palace of the Popes or in the
Cathedral, we went to the Museum, and searched in vain among a riot of
Roman remains for the tomb of Petrarch's Laura, which guide-books
promised. In the end we had to be satisfied with a memorial cross made
in the lovely lady's honour by order of some romantic Englishmen.

"Yet you say we're stolid and phlegmatic!" muttered Mr. Dane, as he read
the inscription. (Evidently that remark had rankled.)

We had not a moment to waste, but the Turnours had to be avoided; so my
brother proposed that we combine profit with prudence, and take a cab
along the road leading out to Port St. Andre. Where the ancient tower of
Philippe le Bel crowns a lower slope I should have my first sight of
that grim mountain of architecture, the Palace of the Popes. It was the
best place from which to see it, if its real grandeur were to be
appreciated, he said--or else to go to Villeneuve, across the Rhone,
which we dared not steal time to do; but the Turnours were certain not
to think of anything so esoteric in the way of sight-seeing.

The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath
away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of
"Now!" from Mr. Dane. It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old
Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous
buttresses.

Of what romances, what tragedies, what triumphs, and what despairs could
those huge walls an