We returned over the plain in the wind, under the gloomy sky, passed L’Isle at dusk, and after walking an hour with a rain following close behind us, stopped at an auberge in Le Thor, where we rested our tired frames and broke our long day’s fasting.  We were greeted in the morning with a dismal rain and wet roads, as we began the march.  After a time, however, it poured down in such torrents, that we were obliged to take shelter in a remise by the road, side, where a good woman, who addressed us in the unintelligible Provencal, kindled up a blazing fire.  On climbing a long hill, when the storm had abated, we experienced a delightful surprise.  Below us lay the broad valley of the Rhone, with its meadows looking fresh and spring-like after the rain.  The clouds were breaking away; clear blue sky was visible over Avignon, and a belt of sunlight lay warmly along the mountains of Languedoc.  Many villages, with their tall, picturesque towers, dotted the landscape, and the groves of green olive enlivened the barrenness of winter.  Two or three hours’ walk over the plain, by a road fringed with willows, brought us to the gates of Avignon.

We walked around its picturesque turreted wall, and rambled through its narrow streets, washed here and there by streams which turn the old mill-wheels lazily around.  We climbed up to the massive palace, which overlooks the city from its craggy seat, attesting the splendor it enjoyed, when for thirty years the Papal Court was held there, and the gray, weather-beaten, irregular building, resembling a pile of precipitous rocks, echoed with the revels of licentious prelates.  We could not enter to learn the terrible secrets of the Inquisition, here unveiled, but we looked up at the tower, from which the captive Rienzi was liberated at the intercession of Petrarch.

After leaving Avignon, we took the road up the Rhone for Lyons, turning our backs upon the rainy south.  We reached the village of Sorgues by dusk, and accepted the invitation of an old dame to lodge at her inn, which proved to be a blacksmith’s shop!  It was nevertheless clean and comfortable, and we sat down in one corner, out of the reach of the showers of sparks, which flew hissing from a red-hot horseshoe, that the smith and his apprentice were hammering.  A Piedmontese pedlar, who carried the “Song of the Holy St. Philomene” to sell among the peasants, came in directly, and bargained for a sleep on some hay, for two sous.  For a bed in the loft over the shop, we were charged five sous each, which, with seven sous for supper, made our expenses for the night about eleven cents!  Our circumstances demanded the greatest economy, and we began to fear whether even this spare allowance would enable us to reach Lyons.  Owing to a day’s delay in Marseilles, we had left that city with but fifteen francs each; the incessant storms of winter and the worn-out state of our shoes, which were no longer proof against water or mud, prolonged our journey