from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head.  It has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and life.  In passing, let it not be forgotten that it was somewhere or other in this ’chiaro fondo di Sorga,’ as Carlyle describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the Glaciere, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from his foes, and had his accursed life, by some diabolical providence, spared for future butcheries.  On we go across the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red roots of the ‘garance’ lying in swathes along the furrows.  In front rise ash-grey hills of barren rock, here and there crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf sumach.  A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage.  Yet the river foams in torrents at our side.  Whence can it issue?  What pass or cranny in that precipice is cloven for its escape?  These questions grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of limestone rocks which leads to the cliff-barrier, and find ourselves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse.  Here is the village, the little church, the ugly column to Petrarch’s memory, the inn, with its caricatures of Laura, and its excellent trout, the bridge and the many-flashing, eddying Sorgues, lashed by millwheels, broken by weirs, divided in its course, channelled and dyked, yet flowing irresistibly and undefiled.  Blue, purple, greened by moss and water-weeds, silvered by snow-white pebbles, on its pure smooth bed the river runs like elemental diamond, so clear and fresh.  The rocks on either side are grey or yellow, terraced into oliveyards, with here and there a cypress, fig, or mulberry tree.  Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and ilex—­shrubs of Provence—­with here and there a sumach out of reach, cling to the hard stone.  And so at last we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable precipice.  At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and nestling wild figs are glassed as in a mirror—­a mirror of blue-black water, like amethyst or fluor-spar—­so pure, so still, that where it laps the pebbles you can scarcely say where air begins and water ends.  This, then, is Petrarch’s ‘grotto;’ this is the fountain of Vaucluse.  Up from its deep reservoirs, from the mysterious basements of the mountain, wells the silent stream; pauseless and motionless it fills its urn, rises unruffled, glides until the brink is reached, then overflows, and foams, and dashes noisily, a cataract, among the boulders of the hills.  Nothing at Vaucluse is more impressive than the contrast between the tranquil silence of the fountain and the roar of the released impetuous river.  Here we can realise the calm clear eyes of sculptured water-gods, their brimming urns, their gushing streams, the magic of the mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood.  Or again, looking up at the sheer steep cliff, 800