CHATEAUNEUF, NEAR AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.
He placidly continued his crushing observations. Vaucluse he considered a much over-rated spot, though the cliffs and crags above the source of the river were rather striking. Was there anything more to see in Avignon after one had done the Palace and the Museum? I reluctantly admitted there was but little one could recommend to a critical spirit. Our level-headed tourist had spent an hour in Villeneuve that morning—the little town across the bridge with the big castle, he explained—and found it depressing—everything peeling off. The description was annoyingly apt. There was no gainsaying it. Only it was not exhaustive.
Its author intended to go next morning to see the Pont du Gard, about which one heard so many laudatory accounts. He was told that he wouldn't think as much of it as he expected. How much he expected after this warning I was unable to estimate, but I thought it safe to prophesy disappointment. He said himself that he confidently anticipated it. I wondered vaguely whether the condition of mind thus described was capable of analysis, but did not attempt it. I felt Barbara was emotionally in a state of unstable equilibrium, and dared not add to her provocations. My neighbour further complained that considering the general importance of Avignon and one's extreme familiarity with its name, historically speaking, it seemed surprisingly shabby and small—narrow streets and all that. We admitted the narrow streets.
And there wasn't a decent church in the whole place! Wouldn't compare with Bruges or Rouen. My tourist was at Rouen in the autumn of '98, and at Bruges in September of '99, on a cycling tour—or was it August?
I thought it might be August.
Yes (our friend's memory clarified most satisfactorily), it was the last week in August. On the 18th he had left London. I knew that hot weather we had all over England and the Continent at the end of August in that year?
I evidently must have known it, so it seemed scarcely worth while confessing that my memory failed to distinguish the particular heat of that summer from the more or less similar oppressiveness of any other season.
Well, he and two fellows cycled all through Holland and Belgium in ten days and three hours; saw everything. They made an average of sixty miles a day. Barbara, who hailed from north of the Tweed, said "Aw!" and the flattered cyclist hastened to add, with becoming modesty, that of course the roads were good and the country flat. They did ninety several days. Pretty fair with the thermometer at 70° in the shade——
"An interesting country for such a tour?"
"Rather flat; never get a really good spin; though on the other hand, there is no uphill work."