"The Days of a Man 



Unwel- 

 come 



Avignon 



and 



Les Baux 



eyes which shone like jewels. To right or left at 

 times appeared the swirl of water among red sea- 

 weed, or again a flood of it rising through tall grass. 

 Outside my window stood a tree with limbs which 

 assumed the form of freakish scrolls, and I constantly 

 wondered what it might really be. 



After about a week I awoke one day ravenously 

 hungry and free from all illusions. My tree was 

 plainly a Grevillea; I also noticed that the nurse 

 took neither temperature nor pulse that morning. 

 This sudden turn for the better emboldened us to 

 leave by the night boat for Marseilles. This proved 

 a rough trip but its rocking helped me to sleep, 

 though in the Straits of Bonifacio between Corsica 

 and Sardinia I got up to look at the rocky, barren, 

 wind-swept extremities of the twin historic islands. 



From Marseilles, Holman went over to Cannes for 

 my family. Now happily reunited, we lingered for a 

 little in the Midi. At Toulon I introduced Miss 

 Jessie to bouillabaisse, dear to lovers of Thackeray. 

 Then turning northward toward Paris, we stopped 

 at " Papal Avignon, with its castle rising sheer above 

 the Rhone stream"; here I rested for a week, spend- 

 ing many hours under the vines of an old convent 

 garden. Meanwhile, however, we drove at times 

 along the river, with one particularly charming trip 

 through historic St. Remy up to the ancient, highly 

 picturesque, and ruined city of Les Baux on a rocky 

 outpost of the Alpilles overlooking the wild Val 

 d'Enfer. This being June, the native broom was in 

 its prime, clothing the rugged hillsides with a mantle 

 of brilliant gold. A few miles from St. Remy we 

 passed through Maillane, a sleepy little village nota- 

 ble only as the home of the poet Mistral. 

 C6i 4 ] 



