CHAPTER XII

THE SECOND MEETING


Europe's beauty-spots of to-day were the beauty-spots of the Roman
Empire two thousand years ago. Wherever the traveller around Europe now
reaches a place that makes instant appeal; where harsh winds are
screened away and blazing sunshine filters through feathery foliage;
where all Nature beckons one to halt and rest awhile--there he is
practically certain to find Roman remains. The wealthy Romans wintered
at Nice and Cannes and St Raphael; took the waters at Baden-Baden and
Aix in Savoy; made sporting centres of Treves on the Moselle and Ronda
in Andalusia; dallied by the marble baths of Nîmes.

Nîmes had captured Rivière at sight. His first day in that leisured,
peaceful, fragrant town, nestling amongst the hills against the keen
_mistral_, had decided him to settle there for some weeks. He had taken
a couple of furnished rooms in a villa with a delightful old-world
garden. For a lengthy stay he much preferred his own rooms to the
transiency and restlessness of a hotel, and at the Villa Clémentine he
had found exactly what he required. The living-room opened wide to the
sun. One stepped out from its French windows into the garden, where a
little pebbly path led one wandering amongst oleanders and dwarf
oranges and flaming cannas, to a corner where a tiny fountain made a
home for lazy goldfish floating in placid contentment under the hot sun.