As the conveyance of merchandise engaged a prodigious number of persons, the raftsmen had organized themselves into the guild of Utriculares, or Wind‐bag men, and as they became not infrequently involved in contests with those whose interests they crossed, and on whose privileges they infringed, they enlisted the aid of lawyers to act as their patrons, to bully their enemies, and to fight their battles against assailants. Among the numerous classic monumental inscriptions that remain in Provence, there are many in which a man of position is proud to have it recorded that he was an honorary member of the club of the inflated‐skin men. Nemausus owed much of its prosperity to the fact that it was the trade center for wool and for skins. The Cevennes and the great limestone plateaux that abut upon them nourished countless herds of goats and flocks of sheep, and the dress of everyone at the period being of wool the demand for fleeces was great; consequently vast quantities of wool were brought from the mountains of Nîmes, whence it was floated away on rafts sustained by the skins that came from the same quarter. The archipelago that studded the fresh‐water sea was inhabited by fishermen, and these engaged in the raft‐carriage. The district presented a singular contrast of high culture and barbarism. In Arles, Nîmes, Narbonne there was a Greek element. There was here and there an infusion of Phœnician blood. The main body of the people consisted of the dusky Ligurians, who had almost entirely lost their language, and had adopted that of their Gaulish conquerors, the Volex. These latter were distinguished by their fair hair, their clear complexions, their stalwart frames. Another element in the composite mass was that of the colonists. After the battle of Actium, Augustus had rewarded his Egypto‐Greek auxiliaries by planting them at Nemausus, and giving them half the estates of the Gaulish nobility. To these Greeks were added Roman merchants, round‐headed, matter‐of‐fact looking men, destitute of imagination, but full of practical sense. These incongruous elements that in the lapse of centuries have been fused, were, at the time of this tale, fairly distinct. “You are in the right, my friends,” said Æmilius. “The kiln is heated too hot for comfort. It would roast me. I will go even to Arelate, if you will be good enough to convey me thither.” “With the greatest of pleasure, sir.” Æmilius had an office at Arles. He was a lawyer, but his headquarters were at Nemausus, to which town he belonged by birth. He represented a good family, and was descended from one of the colonists under Agrippa and Augustus. His father was dead, and though he was not wealthy, he was well off, and possessed a villa and estates on the mountain sides, at some distance from the town. In the heats of summer he retired to his villa.