. On
the woodwork and curtains, already stripped, they crawled, fell,
fluttered, and climbed up the white wall, casting huge shadows making
them look even uglier. And there was just no getting away from the
awful stench.

Later, we had to do without water with our meal as the tanks, basins,
wells, and fish ponds were all covered over with dead locusts. In the
evening, in my room, where many had been killed, I heard a buzzing
under the furniture, and the cracking of wing cases, which sounded like
plant pods bursting in the sweltering heat. Naturally, I couldn't sleep
again. Besides, everybody else was still noisily busy all over the
farm. Flames were spreading over the ground from one end of the plain
to the other; the Turks were still in their killing fields.

The next day, opening my window, I could see that the locusts were
gone. But what total devastation they left behind. There wasn't a
single flower, or a blade of grass; everything was black, charred, and
eaten away. Only the banana, apricot, peach, and mandarin trees could
be recognised by the outline of their stripped branches, but lacking
the charm and flourish of the leaves which only yesterday had been
their living essence. The rooms and the water tanks were being washed
out. Everywhere, labourers were digging into the ground destroying the
locusts' eggs. Each sod of soil was carefully examined and turned over.
But it broke their hearts to see the thousands of white, sap-filled
roots in the crumbling, still-fertile soil....

FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR

--Drink this, friend,; and tell me what you think of it.

At this, the priest of Graveson, with all the care of a jeweller
counting pearls, poured me two fingers of what proved to be a fresh,
golden, cordial, sparklingly exquisite liqueur.... It warmed the
cockles of my heart.

--It's Father Gaucher's elixir, the pleasure and toast of Provence,
crowed the kind man, it's made at the White Canons' Monastery, a few
kilometres from your windmill.... Now, isn't that worth all the
Chartreuses in the world?... And if you'd like to know the amusing
story of this delightful elixir, listen to this....

The presbytery's dining room was genuine, and calm, with little
pictures of the Stations of the Cross, and attractive, clear curtains
starched like a surplice. It was in there that the priest began this
short, and lightly sceptical and irreverent story, in the manner of
Erasmus, but completely without art, or