A PROVENÇAL ROAD.
By Joseph Pennell.
CHAPTER I
THE SPELL OF PROVENCE
During the night there was a great and unexplained tumult: rustling sounds in the little courtyard to which our rooms looked out; whisperings along the corridors; distant bangings; footsteps, voices—or was it the remaining rumours of a dream?
Then a great sigh and a surging among the shrubs in the courtyard. The creepers sway against the windows, and something seems to sweep through the room. Presently a rush and a rattle among the jalousies, and a high scream as of some great angry creature flying with frantic wings over the courtyard and across the sky.
The mistral!
There was no mistaking our visitor.
A great angry creature, indeed, and no one who has seen the Land of the Sun and Wind only under the sway of the more benign power can have any conception of the passion and storm of this mighty Brigand of the Mountain.
We begin now to understand the meaning of the epithet, "windy Avignon." And if one considers its position on the plain of the Rhone and the Durance—the country stretching south and east to the mysterious stony desert of the Crau[1] and the great regions of the mouths of the Rhone—it is easy to see how the Black Wind, rushing down from his home in the ranges of Mont Ventoux and the Luberon, must sweep the streets of the city and fill every nook and corner with whirl and trouble.
The Rhone that "bends round Avignon to salute Our Lady on her high rock," as Mistral proclaims, grows white with anger under the lash, noble river that she is!