An Embassy to Provence

ighted at a chance meeting and fed only by half a dozen letters in eleven years! When these kindly souls in part had satisfied their eager desire for news of the American troubadour and of those belonging to him, they diverted their interest in a hospitable fashion to his ambassadors, and with a genuine heartiness pressed us with questions concerning ourselves. They were delighted when we told them that we had preferred to shun Paris, and to come directly from America to their own beautiful city of Marseilles; and more delighted to find that our plan for a whole summer of travel was a circuit of not much more than a hundred miles in Languedoc and Provence. As to our method of traveling?in the shabby little carriage drawn by the infinitely lazy little mare?they set our minds at rest in a moment by protesting that it was nothing less than ideal. And then they listened with great sympathy to the narrative of our small adventures by the way since our departure from Nimes. When we came to our entanglement in Vers, and the vast commotion with which our cyclonic passage had filled that very little town, dear old Rouma- nille fairly held fast to his comfortably fat sides and laughed until his cheeks were a-stream with tears. It was better, he vowed, than any farce! When we touched upon the more serious side of our undertaking, our desire to study the new literature that in these latter days had blossomed so vigorously in Provence, their interest took a correspondingly ...