landscape began to look like a hastily sketched water-colour, with its
hills and terraces of vine; and above was a pale sky, blurred like
greasy silver. The wind roamed moaning among the tops of the tall
cypresses, set close together to protect the meadows from one of "the
three plagues of Provence." And even as the mistral tweaked our noses
with a chilly thumb and finger, our eyes caught sight of the second and
more dreaded plague: the deceitfully gentle-seeming Durance, which in
its rage can come tearing down from the Alps with the roar of a famished
lion.

Far above the wide river, the Aigle glided across a high-hung suspension
bridge, the song of the water floating up to our ears mingling with the
purr of the motor--two giant forces, one set loose by nature, the other
by man, duetting harmoniously together, while the wind wailed over our
heads. But for the third and last plague of Provence we would have had
to search in vain, for the land is no longer tormented by Parliament.

Always the road had stretched before us, up hill after hill, as straight
drawn between its scantily grass-covered banks as the parting in an old
man's hair; and always, far ahead, wave following wave of hill and
mountain had seemed to roll toward us like the sea as we advanced to
meet them. After the vineyards had come wild rocks, set with crumbling
forts, and towers, and châteaux; then the mild interest of fruit blossom
spraying pink and white among primly pollarded olives; then grape
country again, with squat, low-growing vines like gnomes kicking up
gnarled legs as they turned somersaults; then a break into wonderful
mountain country, with Orgon's ruins towering skyward, dark as despair,
a wild romance in stone. But before we reached the great suspension
bridge, the Pont de Bonpas, the landscape appeared exhausted after its
sublime efforts, and inclined to quiet down for a rest. It was only near