s would be sure to say that there was nothing to see, the
chauffeur thought it wiser not to turn out of our road. We might find
the poet at Arles, perhaps, in his museum there, or lunching at the
Hotel du Forum, a favourite haunt of his on museum days.

Starting for Les Baux, we turned our faces straight toward the wild
little mountains loved by Mistral, his dear Alpilles. They soon
surrounded us in tumbling gray waves, piled up on either side of the
road as the Red Sea must have tumultuously fenced in the path of the
Israelites. Strange, hummocky mountains were everywhere, as far as we
could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great
ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved,
some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock
that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a
python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber
fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last
night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii
of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient town the whole
world over--a place of tangled histories; yet I tried vainly to picture
what it would be like. Then, suddenly, we reached a turn in that strange
road which, if it had led downhill instead of up, would have seemed like
the way Orpheus took to reach Hades.

We had come face to face with a huge chasm in the rock, a gap with
sheer walls sliced clean down, like a cut in a great cheese; and I felt
instinctively that this must be the dark doorway through which we should
see Les Baux.

Through the cut in the stone cheese our road carried us; and the busts
on the rocky ledges were so near now we could almost have put out our
hands and touched them--but curiously enough, in this place of all
others, they were the likenesses of modern men. Mr. Dane and I picked
out an unmistakable Gladstone on the right, a characteristic
Beaconsfield on the left; and farther on Mr. Chamberlain's head was
fantastically grafted on to the body of a prehistoric animal. We were
just tracing Pierpont Morgan's profile, near a few of Hannibal's
elephants, when the car sprang clear of the chasm, out upon the other
side of the doorway; and there rose before us Les Baux, a hundred times
more wonderful, more tragic, than I had hoped to find it.

Far, far below our mountain road lay a valley so flat that it might have
been