Lady
Turnour had insisted on changing her motoring hat for a Gainsborough
confection which would, I was deadly certain, cause her to loathe Nimes
while memory should last; but the better part was mine. Toqued and
veiled, the mistral could crack its cheeks if it liked; it couldn't hurt
mine, or do unseemly things to my hair.
In the gardens of Louis XIV. I gave myself to Nimes as devotee forever;
and as the glories of the past slowly dawned upon me, that Past round
which the King had planted his flowers and formal trees, and placed
vases and statues, I wished I were a worthier worshipper at the shrine.
I think that there can be no more beautiful town in the world than Nimes
in springtime. The wind brought fairy perfumes, and lovely little green
and golden puff-balls fell from the budding trees at our feet, as if
they wanted to surprise us. The fish in the crystal clear water of the
old Roman baths, which King Louis tried to spoil but couldn't, swam back
and forth in a golden net of sunshine. We two children of the twentieth
century amused ourselves in attempting to reconstruct the baths as they
must have looked in the first century; and the glimmering columns under
the green water, now lost to the eye, now seen again, white and elusive
as mermaids playing hide and seek, helped our imagination.
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