The Hermit of Serignan 



During the greater part of the year the Aygues 

 is a vast sheet of flat white stones; of the torrent 

 only the bed is left, a furrow of enormous width, 

 comparable to that of its mighty neighbour, the 

 Rhone. When persistent rains fall, when the snows 

 melt on the slopes of the Alps, the dry furrow 

 fills for a few days, complaining, overflowing to 

 a great distance, and displacing, amid the uproar, 

 its pebbly banks. Return a week later: the din 

 of the flood is succeeded by silence. The terrible 

 waters have disappeared, leaving on the banks, as 

 a trace of their brief passage, some wretched muddy 

 puddles quickly drunk up by the sun. 



These sudden floods bring a thousand living 

 gleanings, swept off the flanks of the mountains. 

 The dry bed of the Aygues is a most curious botani- 

 cal garden. You may find there numbers of vege- 

 table species swept down from the higher regions, 

 some temporary, dying without offspring in a sea- 

 son, others permanent, adapting themselves to the 

 new climate. They come from far away from 

 a great height, these exiles; to pluck certain of 

 them in their actual home you would have to 

 climb Ventoux, passing the girdle of beeches and 

 reaching the height at which woody vegetation 

 ceases. 



An insect which is sometimes found by chance 

 in the osier-beds of the Aygues, and is by itself 

 worth the journey, is the Apoderus of the hazel- 

 tree. 



It tells us also many things, this little red 

 Weevil " from the heights rich in hazel-bushes " 



225 



