It was my first visit to the theatre and my star ordained I should see a play of Provence. As for the _Bishop of Castro_, it was a sombre piece that did not much interest us, and my aunts maintained that they played _Maniclo_ much better at Maillane. For at that time, in our villages, we got up plays both comic and tragic during the winter months. I have seen the _Death of Cæsar, Zaire, Joseph and his Brethren_, played by the villagers, their costumes made up out of their wives’ skirts and the counterpanes from their beds. They loved the tragedies, and followed with great pleasure the mournful declamation of the five-act piece. But they also gave _L’Avocat Pathelin_, translated into Provençale, and various lively comedies from the Marseillaise _répertoire_. Bénoni was always the leading spirit of these evenings, where, with his violin, he accompanied the songs, and as a youngster I remember taking part in several plays and earning much applause. The morning after _Maniclo_ came the inevitable parting, and with a heart heavy as a pea that had soaked nine days, I bade farewell to my mother, and went to be shut up in the school of Monsieur Millet, Rue Pétramale. Monsieur Millet was a big man, tall, with heavy eyebrows, a red face, little pig’s eyes, feet like an elephant’s, hideous square fingers and slovenly appearance. A woman from the hills, fat and uncomely, cooked for us and managed the house. I never ate so many carrots before or since, carrots badly cooked in a flour sauce. In three months, my poor little body was reduced to a skeleton. Avignon, the predestined, where one day the Gai-Savoir was to effect the renaissance, was not at that time the bright town of to-day. She had not enlarged her Place de l’Horloge, nor widened out the Place Pic, nor constructed the Grande Rue. The Roque de Dom, which commands the town, was no lovely garden laid out as for a king, but, save for the cemetery, a bare and barren rock, while the ramparts, half in ruins, were surrounded by ditches full of rubbish and stagnant water. Rough street-porters formed the city corporation, and made laws as they chose for the town suburbs. It was they and their chief, a sort of Hercules nicknamed “Four Arms,” who swept away the Town Hall of Avignon in 1848. Here, as in Italy, every week each house was visited by a black-clad penitent, who, face covered, with two holes for eyes, went round shaking his money-box chaunting solemnly: “For the poor prisoners!”