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THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE certainly he could not be visible, toiling so far below, from that proud terrace of the Adhémar which makes the church its footstool. Least of all would he be perceptible to the eyes—on other lines so discerning!—of the lady whose gaze, when not on her daughter's face, remained passionately fixed on the barrier of northern mountains, and the highway that ran through them to Paris. Paris! Grignan seems far enough from it even now—what an Ultima Thule, a land of social night, it must have been in the days when Madame de Sévigné's heavy travelling carriage had to bump over six hundred miles of rutty road to reach the doors of the Hôtel Carnavalet! One had to suffer Grignan for one's adored daughter's sake—to put up, as best one could, with the clumsy civilities of the provincial nobility, and to console one's self by deliciously ridiculing the pretensions of Aix society—but it was an exile, after all, and the ruined rooms of the castle, and the long circuit of the chemin de ronde, are haunted by the wistful figure of the poor lady who, though in autumn she could extol the "sugary white figs, the Muscats golden as amber, the partridges flavoured with thyme and [ 141 ]