he
stream. Driving down to the low bridge across the river, we gazed up
at the town piled high above our heads, culminating in a fortress
which, cut in a dark square out of the sky's turquoise, looked old as
the beginning of the world.

Sisteron was brown, too, but not at all green; and beyond, for a time,
the country was still in a grim brown study, though it ought to have
remembered that it was now laughing Provence. It gave us crumbling
chateaux, high-perched ancient rock villages without stint, and even a
house (in the strangely named village of Malijai) where Napoleon had
lain, early in the Hundred Days; but not a smile or a wild flower.
Then, in a flash, its mood changed. The savage land had been tamed by
some whispered word of Mother Nature, and grew youthfully pretty under
our eyes. The poplars, in their autumn cloaks of gold, fringed the
road with flame, and scattered largesse of red copper filings in our
path; the dark mountains drew up over their bare shoulders scarfs of
crimson, and the sun flung a million diamonds into the wide bed of the
Durance.

Night was falling as we drove into the lazy-looking Provencal town of
Digne, where all was green and sleepy, at peace with itself and the
world at large. Even the beautiful Doric _chateau d'eau_ was green
with moss, and the water of its fountain laughed in sleep; the famous
basilica showed grey through green lichen; its wonderful rose window
had a green frame of ivy, and the strange, sculptured beasts guarding
the door had saddles of green velvet mould.

We slept at Digne, and made an early morning start, the car plunging
us almost from the first into scenery which only Gustave Dore could
have imagined. Gnome villages and elfin castles clung to slim
pinnacles of rock which seemed to swing, like blown branches, against
the sky. Wild grey mountains bristled with rocky spines, and trails of
scarlet foliage poured like streams of blood down their rough sides,
completing the resemblance to fierce, wounded boars.

Our road was a road of steep gradients, leading us through gorges of a
grandeur which would have been called appalling when the world was a
little younger, and more in awe of savage Nature. If a midge could be
provided with a proportionately tiny motor car, and sent coasting at
full tilt down a greased corkscrew, from the handle to the sharp end
of the screw, the effect would have been somewhat that of our Mercedes
leaping down the steep defiles. We were