It was mid-day when she entered Rioz; a town standing in a dell, surrounded with apple-orchards and fields of corn and colza, with a quaint old square tower of the thirteenth century arising among its roofs, and round about it old moss-green ramparts whereon the bramble and the gorse grew wild.
But as the morning advanced the mists lifted, the sun grew powerful; the roads were straight and without shadow; the mules stumbled, footsore; she herself grew tired and fevered.
She led her fatigued and thirsty beasts through the nearest gateway, where a soldier sat smoking, and a girl in a blue petticoat and a scarlet bodice talked to him, resting her hands on her hips, and her brass pails on the ground.
She left the sacks of flour at their destination, which was a great bake-house in the center of the town; stalled the mules herself in a shed adjoining the little crazy wineshop where Flamma had bidden her bait them, and with her own hands unharnessed, watered, and foddered them.
The wineshop had for sign a white pigeon; it was tumble-down, dusky, half covered with vines that grew loose and entwined over each other at their own fancy; it had a little court in which grew a great walnut-tree; there was a bench under the tree; the shelter of its boughs was cool and very welcome in the full noon heat. The old woman who kept the place, wrinkled, shriveled, and cheery, bade her rest there, and she would bring her food and drink.
But Folle-Farine, with one wistful glance at the shadowing branches, refused, and asked only the way to the house of the Prince Sartorian.
The woman of the cabaret looked at her sharply, and said, as the market-women had said, "What does the like of you want with the Prince?"
"I want to know the way to it. If you do not tell it, another will," she answered, as she moved out of the little courtyard.
The old woman called after her that it was out by the west gate, over the hill through the fields for more than two leagues: if she followed the wind of the water westward, she could not go amiss.
"What is that baggage wanting to do with Sartorian?" she muttered, watching the form of the girl as it passed up the steep sunshiny street.