204 Travels in France 



TAnglois success to the plough! and had so much agricultural 

 conversation, that I wished for my farming friends in Suffolk 

 to partake my satisfaction. If Monsieur Faujas de St. Fond 

 comes to England, as he gives me hope, I shall introduce him to 

 them with pleasure. In the evening return to MontiHmart. — 

 30 miles. 



25^/?. To Chateau Rochemaur, across the Rhone. It is 

 situated on a basaltic rock, nearly perpendicular, with every 

 columnar proof of its volcanic origin. See Monsieur de Faujas' 

 Recherches. In the afternoon to Piere Latte, through a country 

 sterile, uninteresting, and far inferior to the environs of MontiH- 

 mart. — 22 miles. 



26th. To Orange, the country not much better; a range of 

 mountains to the left : see nothing of the Rhone. At that town 

 there are remains of a large Roman building, seventy or eighty 

 feet high, called a circus, of a triumphal arch, which, though a 

 good deal decayed, manifests, in its remains, no ordinary decora- 

 tion, and a pavement in the house of a poor person which is very 

 perfect and beautiful, but much inferior to that of Nismes. The 

 vent de bize has blown strongly for several days, with a clear sky, 

 tempering the heats, which are sometimes sultry and oppressive ; 

 it may, for what I know, be wholesome to French constitutions, 

 but it is diabolical to mine ; I found myself very indifferent, and 

 as if I was going to be ill, a new and unusual sensation over my 

 whole body: never dreaming of the wind, I knew not what to 

 attribute it to, but my complaint coming at the same time, puts 

 it out of doubt; besides, instinct now, much more than reason, 

 makes me guard as much as I can against it. At four or five in 

 the morning it is so cold that no traveller ventures out. It is 

 more penetratingly drying than I had any conception of; other 

 winds stop the cutaneous perspiration ; but this piercing through 

 the body seems, by its sensation, to desiccate all the interior 

 humidity. — 20 miles. 



2'ith. To Avignon. — Whether it was because I had read much 

 of this town in the history of the middle ages, or because it had 

 been the residence of the popes, or more probably from the 

 still more interesting memoirs which Petrarch has left concerning 

 it, in poems that will last as long as Italian elegance and human 

 feelings shall exist, I know not — but I approached the place with 

 a sort of interest, attention, and expectancy that few towns 

 have kindled. Laura's tomb is in the church of the Cordeliers; 

 it is nothing but a stone in the pavement, with a figure engraven 

 on it partly effaced, surrounded by an inscription in Gothic 



