rom the open
exhaust-pipe as though the car were a Tophet on wheels. But all was
music in the ears of Aristide. The car was going (it did not always go),
the road scudded under him, and the morning air dashed stingingly into
his face. For the moment he desired nothing more of life.

This road between Arles and Salon runs through one of the most desolate
parts of France: a long, endless plain, about five miles broad, lying
between two long low ranges of hills. It is strewn like a monstrous
Golgotha, not with skulls, but with huge smooth pebbles, as massed
together as the shingle on a beach. Rank grass shoots up in what
interstices it finds; but beyond this nothing grows. Nothing can grow.
On a sunless day under a lowering sky it is a land accursed. Mile after
mile for nearly twenty miles stretches this stony and barren waste. No
human habitation cheers the sight, for from such a soil no human hand
could wrest a sustenance. Only the rare traffic going from Arles to
Salon and from Salon to Arles passes along the road. The cheery passing
show of the live highway is wanting; there are no children, no dogs,
no ducks and hens, no men and women lounging to their work; no
red-trousered soldiers on bicycles, no blue-bloused, weather-beaten
farmers jogging along in their little carts. As far as the eye can reach
nothing suggestive of man meets the view. Nothing but the infinite
barrenness of the plain, the ridges on either side, the long, straight,
endless road cleaving through this abomination of desolation.

To walk through it would be a task as depressing as mortal could
execute. But to the speed-drunken motorist it is a realization of dim
and tremulous visions of Paradise. What need to look to right or left
when you are swallowing up free mile after mile of dizzying road?
Aristide looked neither to right nor left, and knew this was heaven at
last.

[Illustration: BETWEEN THE FOLDS OF THE BLANKET PEEPED THE FACE OF A
SLEEPING CHILD]

Suddenly, however, he became aware of a small black spot far ahead in
the very middle of the unencumbered track. As he drew near it looked
like a great stone. He swerved as he passed it, and, looking, saw that
it was a bundle wrapped in a striped blanket. It seemed so odd that it
should be lying there that, his curiosity being aroused, he pulled up
and walked back a few yards to examine it. The nearer he approached the
less did it resemble an ordinary bundle. He bent down, and