During the ascent some of us felt a sort of seasickness, caused first by fatigue and secondly by the rarefaction of the air. The barometer had fallen 5·4 inches; the air which we were breathing had lost a fifth of its density and was therefore one-fifth less rich in oxygen. Had we been in good condition, this slight alteration in the air would have passed unnoticed; but, coming immediately after the exertions of the day before and a sleepless night, it increased our discomfort. And so we climbed slowly, with aching legs and panting chests. More than one of us had to stop and rest after every twentieth step. At last we were there. We took refuge in the rustic chapel of Sainte-Croix to take breath and counteract the nipping morning air by a pull at the gourd, which this time was drained to the last drop. Soon the sun rose. Ventoux projected to the extreme limits of the horizon its triangular shadow, whose sides became brightly tinged with violet by the effect of the diffracted rays. To the south and west stretched misty plains, where, when the sun was higher in the heavens, we should be able to make out the Rhône, looking like a silver thread. On the north and east, under our feet, lay an enormous bank of clouds, a sort of ocean of cotton-wool, whence peeped, like islands of slag, the dark summits of the lower mountains. A few tops, with their trailing glaciers, gleamed in the direction of the Alps. But botany called our attention and we had to tear ourselves from this magic spectacle. The time of our ascent, in August, was a little late in the year; many plants were no longer in flower. Would you do some really fruitful herborizing? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the Sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candytuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white flowers and goes winding among the loose stones; the opposite-leaved saxifrage and the musky saxifrage, both of them packed into little dark cushions, studded in the first case with purple flowers and in the second with white flowers washed with yellow. When the sun’s rays are hotter, we shall see fluttering idly from one tuft of blossom to another a magnificent Butterfly with white wings adorned with four bright-crimson spots, surrounded with black.