moonlight I could have fancied myself in some Arab town; I was in a labyrinth of lanes, where the heat of day still hung.  The women sat before the doors in their pretty Sunday dresses, chattering with the young men, and no carriage nor any sound disturbed their low talk in that harmonious tongue on which the poems of the trouveres have shed such glory.  It was exquisite.  What a beautiful, nay, what an adorable country is France in all her varied aspects, east and west, north and south!  What endless enchantments they afford, if only one can get rid of the sickening politics that break up and destroy everything they touch!

On the morrow I travelled down the Rhone, through the Camargue, with its droves of oxen and its flights of flamingos, lost in dreamy reverie as though foreseeing even then that beautiful poem of “Mireille,” which Mistral and Gounod have since rendered immortal.

We sailed from Toulon, a splendid squadron, twenty strong, to manoeuvre at sea.  We were under the orders of Admiral Hugon, “Le Pere la Chique,” as the men called him.  The soubriquet bears its own explanation with it.  Born at Granville and thoroughly Norman in character, the admiral concealed the most unshakable determination under an appearance of the greatest good-nature.  I never met a more thorough-born sailor.  He divined what weather was coming, foretold it long before the barometer did, and took all the necessary precautions in advance.  He was the very personification of the seafaring instinct.  Besides this, he had a long record of bravery behind him.  At Navarino, where he commanded the Armide, he came up and lay with true fraternal chivalry between the Turkish ships and a British frigate that was suffering very much from their fire, which same service the British corvette Rose rendered him in return, and with equal gallantry, towards the close of the engagement.

The consequence of all this was that we all felt ourselves well led, and had the most absolute confidence in our chief, and I myself was particularly fond of him.  It really was a fine sight both from the picturesque point of view and from that of a justifiable national pride, when our twenty white-sailed ships manoeuvred all together, under the admiral’s signal, on the blue Mediterranean waters, with no sound to break the silence except the shrill voices of the officers of the watch.

We went on in this fashion, sailing and manoeuvring and firing our guns, and gauging day by day the respective values alike of officers and men, till we got to the Gulf of Naples, where we cast anchor, so as to give everybody a spell of rest and recreation.  Very complete the recreation was, every class of the population joining to give us the kindliest of welcomes.  We sent our crews ashore, and there the Frenchman’s gaiety soon went into partnership with the Neapolitan’s.  Everywhere corricoli were to be seen galloping along carrying clusters of merry sailors.  Our ambassador,