By the time Gaston Cremieux had thus delivered his soul upon the question of the town-bred ne'er-do-weels--the Vauriens of the Midi--he was striding along the edge of the Rhone, till at the end of the quay we turned in the direction of the Durance, the swift river which comes rushing from the mountains, and the muddy torrent of which makes turbulent the clear glaucous-blue of the Rhone from a little below Avignon. By this time my stomach, always on campaign, began to remind me that, though I had been learning the secrets of Communism, particularism was still rampant within my body. "Let us go to see Madame Felix," I suggested. "Her husband spoke at the reunion to-day. He is a chief among the workmen, but his wife is worth a score of him when a fellow is hungry, and his daughter Jeanne Felix is the girl best worth looking at in these parts--our friends at the Chateau alone excepted." Gaston Cremieux smiled indulgently and with a sort of patient scorn for my enthusiasms. "I hardly know what it is to be hungry," he said gently; "and except some of our brave mothers of the Commune, and of course Rhoda Polly, one woman is much the same to me as another." It was on the tip of my tongue to say, as I should have done to Deventer, "Then the more fool you!" But there was actually something about the young ex-Procureur of the Republic which made one shrink from familiarity. Instead, I turned through a growth of tall rushes, the cane-brakes peculiar to Provence, in the direction of the little ferry-house. It was war-year, and nobody had thought of cutting them. The stiff leaves whistled frostily as we pushed our way through, the supple yellow _cannes_ clattering behind us as they sprang back. After them came a tangle of withered vines, still clinging to the trellis of a dismantled house, and then we found ourselves on the river bank overlooking the cottage belonging to Mere Felix of the Durance Ferry. The boats were all on the other side, so I was obliged to make a trumpet of my hands and call loud and long for "Mariana," which besides being the baptismal name of the lady of the house, is an excellent resonant word to carry across an estuary. Now the Durance, though an absurdly tricky river, is no arm of the sea. Its race is short and turbulent, though it makes as much trouble as possible (which is no little) for those who dwell on its banks. It plays with inundations, whirlpools, eddies, and deceitful currents, as a child with toys. You cannot row for ten strokes straight upon it, for it will bubble up and snatch the oar out of your hand, or failing in this, it will suddenly send the bow of your boat deep into a reed-bed as if it were part of a conjuring trick. I knew somewhat more of the matter than most, for had not Jeanne Felix taught me? I had often gone over to spend a day there during the long vacations. For my father, buried among his books, made no objections to my roaming the country at will.