Those who have walked across the south of France, as I have done, may have noticed an inn, situated between Bellegarde and Beaucaire, roughly half-way between the village and the town (though rather closer to Beaucaire than to Bellegarde), outside which hangs a crude painting of the Pont du Gard on a metal plate which creaks at the slightest breath of wind. This little inn, lying parallel to the course of the Rhône, is situated on the left side of the road with its back to the river. It has what in Languedoc is described as a garden: that is to say that the side opposite the one through which travellers enter overlooks an enclosure in which a few stunted olive-trees lurk beside some wild figs, their leaves silvered with dust. Between them, the only vegetables that grow here are some heads of garlic, some peppers and some shallots. Finally, in one corner, like a forgotten sentry, a tall umbrella pine rises in melancholy fashion on its pliable trunk, while its crest, fanned out, blisters under thirty degrees of sunshine. All these trees, large or small, are naturally bent in the direction of the mistral, one of the three scourges of Provence, the two others, as you may or may not know, being the River Durance and Parliament.

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