d priest paused, horrified:

--Mercy me! If my parishioners could only hear me!

IN THE CAMARGUE

I

DEPARTURE

There is a huge buzzing at the chateau. The messenger has just brought
word from the keeper, half in French and half in Provencal, announcing
that there had already been two or three fine flights of herons, and
water-fowl, and that the season's first birds weren't in short supply.

"You're coming hunting with us", my friendly neighbours wrote to me;
and this morning, at the unearthly hour of five o'clock, their large
wagon, loaded with rifles, dogs, and provisions, came to pick me up at
the bottom of the hill. Off we go on the road to Arles, which is a bit
dry and the trees have mostly lost their leaves by this time in
December. The pale green shoots of the olive trees are hardly visible,
and the garish green of the oaks is a bit too wintry and artificial.
The stables are beginning to stir into life, while very early risers
light up the windows in the farms before day break. In the gaps in the
stones amongst the ruins of Mont-Majeur abbey, the sea eagles, still
drowsy, stretch their wings. Despite the hour, the old peasant women
are coming from the Ville-de-Beaux, trotting along in their donkey
carts. We pass them alongside the ditches. They have to go six country
kilometres to sit on the steps of St. Trophyme to sell their small
packets of medicinal herbs collected on the mountain....

The low, crenellated ramparts of Arles appear, just as you see them on
old engravings, which show warriors with lances larger than the talus
they are standing on. We gallop through this marvellous, small town,
surely one of the most picturesque in France, with its rounded
sculptured, moucharaby-like balconies, jutting out into the middle of
the narrow streets. There are old black houses with tiny doors, in the
Moorish style, gothic and low-roofed, which take you back to the time
of William the Short-Nose and the Saracens. At this hour there's nobody
about yet, except the quay on the River Rhone. The Camargue boat is
steaming up at the bottom of the steps and is ready to sail. The tenant
farmers are there in their red serge jackets. So are some young women
of La Roquette, out looking for farm work, and standing on the deck
amongst us, chatting and laughing, with their long brown mantles turned
down because of the sharp morning air. The tall Arles' headdresses
makes their heads look small and elegant with an att