52 STORIES FROM DAUDET

yesterday in a sky-blue manuscript
which smelt of dried lavender and had
threads of gossamer for book-marks.

If you never saw Avignon in the
days of the Popes, you never saw any-
thing worth seeing. For gaiety, for
life, for fun, for feasting, there never
was a city like it. From morn to eve
there were processions, pilgrimages,
streets heaped with flowers, hung with

‘tapestry, cardinals disembarking from
the Rhone, banners waving, galleys
covered with awnings, the Pope’s
soldiers chanting Latin in the open
spaces, the patter of the begging
friars; then all the houses crowded
together and buzzing round the papal
palace like bees round a hive, the
clicking of the bobbins on the lace
cushions, the tapping of the shuttles
going backwards and forwards weaving
the gold cloth of the copes, the small
hammers of the goldsmiths who beat
out the church plate, the tuning at