Vaucluse, most charming of places, in its narrow leafy valley, surrounded by towering cliffs, is celebrated as having been the home of Petrarch for sixteen years during the thirteen hundreds.  We may hope that his worshipped Laura sometimes brightened his home there with her presence.  The famous Fountain of Vaucluse rushes out from its cave a full-grown river.  It wastes no time in infant frivolities, but settles down to work at once, turning a mill within two hundred yards of its birthplace.

Avignon is another somnolent spot.  The gigantic and gloomy Palace of the Popes dominates the place, though it is far more like a fortress than a palace.  Here the Popes lived from 1309 to 1377 during their enforced abandonment of Rome, and Avignon remained part of the Papal dominions until the French Revolution.  The President took less interest in the Palace of the Popes than he did in a famous cook at one of the Avignon hotels.  He could hardly recall some of the plats of this noted artist without displaying signs of deep emotion.  These ancient towns on the banks of the swift-rushing green Rhone seemed to me to be perpetually dozing in the warm sun, like old men, dreaming of their historic and varied past since the days of the Romans.

My French legal friends were much exercised by a recent decision of the High Court.  M. Thiers had been President of the Republic from 1870 to 1873.  A distant cousin of his living in Marseilles, being in pecuniary difficulties, had applied ineffectually to M. Thiers for assistance.  Whereupon the resourceful lady had opened a restaurant in Marseilles, and had had painted over the house-front in gigantic letters, “Restaurant tenu par la cousine de Monsieur Thiers.”  She was proceeded against for bringing the Head of the State into contempt, was fined heavily, and made to remove the offending inscription.  My French friends hotly contested the legality of this decision.  They declared that it was straining the sense of the particular Article of the Code to make it applicable in such a case, and that it was illogical to apply the law of Lese-majeste to the Head of a Republican State.  The President pertinently added that no evidence as to the quality of food supplied in the restaurant had been taken.  If bad, it might unquestionably reflect injuriously on the Head of the State; if good, on the other hand, in view of the admitted relationship of the proprietress of the restaurant to him, it could only redound to M. Thiers’ credit.  This opens up interesting possibilities.  If relationship to a prominent politician may be utilised for business purposes, we may yet see in English watering-places the facades of houses blazoned with huge inscriptions:  “This Private Hotel is kept by a fourth cousin of Lord Rose—­,” whilst facing it, gold lettering proudly proclaims that “The Proprietress of this Establishment is a distant relative of Mr. Ar—­Bal—­“; or, to impart variety, at the next turning the public might perhaps be informed in gleaming capitals that “The Cashier in this Hotel is connected by marriage with Mr. As—–.”  The idea really offers an unlimited field for private enterprise.