acticable an excursion which I cared
nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on
former occasions. I had a prejudice against Vaucluse, against Petrarch,
even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was
cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take an
interest in the poet and the lady. I was sure that I had known many
women as charming and as handsome as she, about whom much less noise had
been made; and I was convinced that her singer was factitious and
literary, and that there are half a dozen stanzas in Wordsworth that
speak more to the soul than the whole collection of his _fioriture_.
This was the crude state of mind in which I determined to go, at any
risk, to Vaucluse. Now that I think it over, I seem to remember that I
had hoped, after all, that the submersion of the roads would forbid it.
Since morning the clouds had gathered again, and by noon they were so
heavy that there was every prospect of a torrent. It appeared absurd to
choose such a time as this to visit a fountain--a fountain which would
be indistinguishable in the general cataract. Nevertheless I took a
vow, that if at noon the rain should not have begun to descend upon
Avignon I would repair to the head-spring of the Sorgues. When the
critical moment arrived the clouds were hanging over Avignon like
distended water-bags, which only needed a prick to empty themselves. The
prick was not given, however; all nature was too much occupied in
following the aberrations of the Rhone to think of playing tricks
elsewhere. Accordingly I started for the station in a spirit which, for
a tourist who sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply of
sentiment, was shockingly perfunctory.

"For tasks in hours of insight willed
May be in hours of gloom fulfilled."

I remembered these lines of Matthew Arnold (written, apparently, in an
hour of gloom), and carried out the idea, as I went, by hoping that with
the return of insight I should be glad to have seen Vaucluse. Light has
descended upon me since then, and I declare that the excursion is in
every way to be recommended. The place makes a great impression, quite
apart from Petrarch and Laura.

There was no rain; there was only, all the afternoon, a mild, moist wind
and a sky magnificently black; which made a _repoussoir_ for the paler
cliffs of the fountain. The road, by train, crosses a flat,
expressionless country, towards the range of arid