The moonlight brings funny fancies, and our yellow headlights, wavering in concentric arcs with each turn of the course, almost seem to glint on the helmets and shields of the spear-bearing legionaries that marched that very way to force a southern culture on the Gauls. We slow down to pass through the rock-hewn gate that once was the Roman aqueduct bringing water down from mountain springs to the town.
Through the gate, a turn to the left and we reach the black bottom of the gorge untouched by the rising moon. We face a blast of wind that slows our speed and brings with it the first big drops of rain. We stop at the "Octroi" and assure the customs collector that we are military, and that we carry no dutiable wine, or beans or wood into the town.
Yet another gate, built across the narrow road between the cliff and the river, and we enter the town. It has been raining and the cobblestones are slippery. They shine in the gleams of pale light that come from the top-heavy street lamps. Gargoyle water spouts drip drainage from the gables of moss-speckled tiles.
We pass a fountain that the Romans left, and rounded arches further on show where the hooded Moor wrote his name in masonry. Barred windows and stone balconies projecting over the street take one's mind off the rattling motor and cause it to wander back to times when serenading lovers twanged guitars beneath their ladies' windows and were satisfied with the flower that dropped from the balcony.
The streets are wet and dark now and through their narrow windings our headlights reveal tall figures in slickers or khaki overcoats topped by peaked felt hats with the red cords of American artillerymen. Their identification is a surprise to the dreamer, because one rather expects these figures to sulk in the deeper shadows and screen their dark, bearded faces with the broad brims of black felt hats or muffle themselves to the chin in long, flowing black cloaks that hide rapiers and stilettos and other properties of mediæval charm.
We dine in a room three hundred years old. The presence of our automobile within the inner quadrangle of the ancient building jars on the sense of fitness. It is an old convent, now occupied by irreligious tenants on the upper three floors, restaurants and estaminets on the lower floor. These shops open on a broad gallery, level with the courtyard, and separated from it only by the rows of pillars that support the arches. It extends around the four sides of the court.
Centuries ago shrouded nuns, clasping beads or books of office, walked in uncommunicative pairs and mumbled their daily prayers beneath these time-worn arches, and to-night it affords a promenade for officers waiting for their meals to be served at madame's well laid tables within.
Madame's tables are not too many. There is not the space economy of an American café, where elbows interlock and waiters are forced to navigate fearsome cargoes above the diners' heads. Neither is there the unwholesome, dust-filled carpet of London's roast beef palaces.
Madame's floor is bare, but the wood has stood the scrubbings of years, and is as spotless as grass-dried linen. The high ceiling and the walls are of white stucco. In bas-relief are clusters of heraldic signs, of bishops' crooks and cathedral keys, of mounted chargers and dying dragoons, of miter and crown, and trumpet and shield, and cross.
Large mirrors, circled with wreaths of gilded leaves, adorn both end walls, and beneath one of them remains an ornate fireplace and mantelpiece of bologna coloured marble, surmounted with a gilt cock of wondrous design. Beneath the other mirror madame has placed her buffet, on which the boy who explores the dusty caves below places the cobwebbed bottles of red wine for the last cork pulling. Large gold chandeliers, dangling with glass prisms, are suspended from high ceiling and flood the room with light, against which the inner shutters of the tall windows must be shut because of danger from the sky.