ung maidens--though he would
accept a child as an _hors d'oeuvre_. In such a strange world as this,
after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than in hiding
countesses, fed and tended for months upon months by faithful servants,
while the red Revolution raged; yet the countess and her cave were
vouched for by history, which ignored the dragon and his.

Not only had each mountain at least one cavern, but every really
eligible crag had its ruined castle; and each ruin had its romance,
which clung like the perfume of roses to a shattered vase. There were
rocks shaped like processions of marching monks following uplifted
crucifixes; and farther on, one would have thought that half the animals
had scrambled out of the ark to a height where they had petrified before
the flood subsided. As we wound through the gorge the landscape became
so strange, hewn in such immensity of conception, that it seemed
prehistoric. We, in the blue car, were anachronisms, or so I felt until
I remembered how, in pre-motoring days, I used to think that owning an
automobile must be like having a half-tamed minotaur in the family. As
for the Aigle, she was a friendly, not a vicious, monster, and as if to
make up for her mistakes of yesterday, she was to-day more like a
demi-goddess serving an earthly apprenticeship in fulfilment of a vow
than a dragon of any sort. Swinging smoothly round curve after curve,
the noble car running free and cooing in sheer joy of fiery life, as she
swooped from height to depth, I, too, felt the joy of life as I had
hardly ever felt it before. The chauffeur and I did not speak often, but
I looked up at him sometimes because of the pleasure I had in seeing and
re-seeing the face in which I had come to have perfect confidence; and I
fancied from its expression that he felt as I felt.

So we came to Les Vignes, and lunched together at a table set out of
doors, close to the car, that she might not be left alone. We had for
food a strange and somewhat evil combination; wild hare and wild boar;
but they seemed to suit the landscape somehow, as did the mystical music
of the conch-shells, blown by passing boatmen. It was like being waked
from a dream of old-time romance, by a rude hand shaking one's shoulder,
to hear the voices of Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, he mildly arguing,
she disputing, as usual.

Poetry fled like a dryad of some classic wood, scared by a motor
omnibus; and, though the gorge as far as Le Rozier w