then the young man took me
into a dim old drawing-room, which had no less than four chimney-pieces,
all unlighted, and gave me a refection of fruit and sweet wine. When I
praised the wine and asked him what it was, he said simply "C'est du vin
de ma mere!" Throughout my little journey I had never yet felt myself so
far from Paris; and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host,
who was an involuntary exile, consoling himself with laying out a
_manege_ which he showed me as I walked away. His civility was great,
and I was greatly touched by it. On my way back to the little inn where
I had left my vehicle I passed the Pont du Gard and took another look at
it. Its great arches made windows for the evening sky, and the rocky
ravine, with its dusky cedars and shining river, was lonelier than
before. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a glass of horrible
wine with my coachman; after which, with my reconstructed team, I drove
back to Nimes in the moonlight. It only added a more solitary whiteness
to the constant sheen of the Provencal landscape.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxvii

[Aigues-Mortes]

The weather the next day was equally fair, so that it seemed an
imprudence not to make sure of Aigues-Mortes. Nimes itself could wait;
at a pinch I could attend to Nimes in the rain. It was my belief that
Aigues-Mortes was a little gem, and it is natural to desire that gems
should have an opportunity to sparkle. This is an excursion of but a few
hours, and there is a little friendly, familiar, dawdling train that
will convey you, in time for a noonday breakfast, to the small dead town
where the blessed Saint Louis twice embarked for the Crusades. You may
get back to Nimes for dinner; the run--or rather the walk, for the train
doesn't run--is of about an hour. I found the little journey charming
and looked out of the carriage window, on my right, at the distant
Cevennes, covered with tones of amber and blue, and, all around, at
vineyards red with the touch of October. The grapes were gone, but the
plants had a colour of their own.

Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide
salt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train
rumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, though you
know you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of
anything but the horizon. Suddenly it appears, the towered and embattled
mass, lying so low that th