This hôtel Nègre Coste has made no changes since before the great Revolution, and I doubt not but that members of the Committee of Public Safety or Revolutionary tribunals have entered this same door, nay, slept in that same bed where I shall presently forget all about them. It is my day now, theirs is done, and most of them have not even graves alone, but rest in the public fosses. From my window I look down upon the Cours Mirabeau, though it bore no such name in his day. In this city King René lived and reigned in peace, the centre of all the music and romance of this section and apparently unaware of that werewolf Louis XI, awaiting just outside for his death in order to seize the kingdom. The "Cours" is long and narrow, with a promenade in its centre, the whole being sheltered by double rows of plane trees cut square over the tops, and forming beneath a long tunnel where the sunlight filters through the green gloom of the leaves, as thick here as in Vallambrosa. At the head of the Cours the statue of the king gazes downward upon the two old moss-grown fountains, where all form and shape has long since been lost in the passing years and plashing waters. To the music of one just outside my window in the quaint little hotel, I sink to sleep and dreams of King René and Margaret of Anjou intermingle with those of wild rushes over long highways. The morning sunlight shines brightly, and Jean would like to move on, but Jean has not that sort of a man to deal with. The twentieth century and the automobile must wait while I spend some hours in exploring this quaint town, a decision of which Madame, mine hostess, approves, as she smiles from a seat near the door where she sits knitting and watching her hotel. Madame is old and knows many things, amongst them, that "Monsieur would visit the Cathedral, it is ancient and very curious, and is to be found far up by the first turn to the left." Modern Aix holds some thirty thousand people, and to the great outer world is but little known. One hears much of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Aix-les-Bains, but little of Aix in Provence, yet to my thinking it is more interesting than either of the others, certainly than Aix-les-Bains, though the German city with its memories of Charlemagne holds its own for interest intense and abiding. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX From a photograph]