Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/112

96 We talked of old Provence, my Fellow Worm and I, while our master and mistress wearied for their luncheon; of the men and women who had passed along this road which we travelled. What would Madame de Sévigné, or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or George Sand have said if a blue car like ours had suddenly flashed into their vision? We agreed that, in any case, not one of them—or any other person of true imagination—would call abominable a wonderful piece of mechanism with the power of flattening mountains into plains, triumphing over space, annihilating distance; a machine combining fiercest energy with the mildest docility. No, only old fogies would close their hearts to a machine fit for the gods, and pride themselves on being motophobes forever. We felt ourselves, car and all, to be worthy of this magic way, lined with blossoms that played like rosy children among the strange rocks characteristic of Provence—rocks which seemed to have boiled up all hot out of the earth, and then to have vied with each other in hardening into most fantastic shapes. Even we felt ourselves worthy to meet a few troubadours, as we drew near to Aix, where once they held their Courts of Love; and we had talked ourselves into an almost dangerously romantic mood by the time we arrived at the hotel in the Cours Mirabeau.

There, in the wide central Place, sprayed a delicious fountain splashed with gold by the sunlight that filtered through an arbour of great trees; and there, too, was a statue of good King René. Perhaps, if I had n't known that Aix-en-Provence was the home of the troubadours, and that its springs had been loved by the Romans before