“You will not find that anywhere but in the Library of the Grasshoppers,” said the old fifer to me, with a laugh. The idea struck me as a good one, and since the Library of the Grasshoppers is at my door, I went and shut myself up there for a week. It is a marvellous library, admirably equipped, open to poets day and night, and attended by little librarians who constantly make music for you with cymbals. There I passed some delicious days, and, after a week of research--on my back--I ended by discovering what I wished to know, that is to say, the history of my mule and of that famous kick saved up for seven years. The story is a pretty one, although a trifle naïve, and I am going to try to tell it you just as I read it yesterday morning in a sky-colored manuscript, which smelled delightfully of dry lavender, and had long gossamer threads for binding threads. He who has never seen the Avignon of the time of the Popes, has seen nothing. For gayety, for life, for animation, for a succession of fêtes, there never was a city its equal. From morning till night there were processions and pilgrimages; streets strewn with flowers and hung with rich tapestries; cardinals arriving by the Rhône, banners flying, galleys bedecked with flags; papal soldiers chanting in Latin on the public squares; begging friars with their alms-rattles; then, in addition, from roof to cellar of the houses which swarmed humming around the great papal palace like bees about their hive, there were heard the _tic-tac_ of the lace-makers’ looms, the flying of the shuttles weaving cloth-of-gold for vestments, the little hammers of the vase-sculptors, the keyboards being attuned at the lute-makers’, the songs of the warpers; and, overhead, the booming of the bells was heard, and always below sounded the tinkle of the tambourines on the river bank by the bridge. For with us, when the people are happy they must be dancing, dancing ever; and since in those days the streets in the city were too narrow for the farandole, fifers and tambourine players took up their post upon the Avignon Bridge, in the cool breezes of the Rhône, and day and night they danced and danced.... Ah! happy time, happy city, when halberds did not wound, and state prisons were used only for cooling wine! No famine; no wars! That shows the way the Popes of the Comtat[11] knew how to govern their people; that is why their people regretted them so deeply!