day was yet young, and it was perfectly fair; it ap-
peared well, for a longish drive, to take advantage,
without delay, of such security. After I had left the
town I became more intimate with that Provencal
charm which I had already enjoyed from the window
of the train, and which glowed in the sweet sunshine
and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs
of the little olives. The olive-trees in Provence are
half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout,
nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond
the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the
very texture of the country. The road from Nimes,
for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough
for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner-table.
It stretches away over undulations which suggest a
kind of harmony; and in the curves it makes through
the wide, free country, where there is never a hedge
or a wall, and the detail is always exquisite, there is
something majestic, almost processional. Some twenty
minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the
termination of the drive, my vehicle met with an ac-
cident which just missed being serious, and which
engaged the attention of a gentleman, who, followed
by his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome
horse happened to ride up at the moment. This young
man, who, with his good looks and charming manner,
might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet,
gave me some very intelligent advice in reference to
one of my horses that had been injured, and was so
good as to accompany me to the inn, with the re-