Mistral at Maillane.

Starting from Orange and crossing the Aygues, a torrent whose muddy waters
are lost in the Rhône, but whose bed is dried by the July and August suns,
leaving only a desert of pebbles, where the Mason-bee builds her pretty
turrets of rock-work, we come presently to the Sérignaise country; an arid,
stony tract, planted with vines and olives, coloured a rusty red, or
touched here and there with almost a hue of blood; and here and there a
grove of cypress makes a sombre blot. To the north runs a long black line
of hills, covered with box and ilex and the giant heather of the south. Far
in the distance, to the east, the immense plain is closed in by the wall of
Saint-Amant and the ridge of the Dentelle, behind which the lofty Ventoux
rears its rocky, cloven bosom abruptly to the clouds. At the end of a few
miles of dusty road, swept by the powerful breath of the mistral, we
suddenly reach a little village. It is a curious little community, with its
central street adorned by a double row of plane-trees, its leaping
fountains, and its almost Italian air. The houses are lime-washed, with
flat roofs; and sometimes, at the side of some small or decrepit dwelling,
we see the unexpected curves of a loggia. At a distance the facade of the
church has the harmonious lines of a little antique temple; close at hand
is the graceful campanile, an old octagonal tower surmounted by a narrow
mitre wrought in hammered iron, in the midst of which are seen the black
profiles of the bells.

I shall never forget my first visit. It was in the month of August; and the
whole countryside was ringing with the song of the cicadae. I had applied
to a job-master of Orange, counting on him to take me thither; but he had
never driven any one to Sérignan, had hardly heard of Fabre, and did not
know where his house was. At length, however, we contrived to find it. At
the entrance of the little market-town, in a solitary corner, in the centre