Our ride to Nîmes is hot and dusty and under a glaring sun. Nîmes is another spot too well known to need mention, and, like most of the places well known and greatly talked about, it is not so interesting as one of which one has heard but little. Certainly Nîmes, a bustling, prosperous city cannot approach Aix or Arles in interest of story and romance, and she has aside from her Roman remains nothing to detain us. I find that I am not alone in my opinion of these Roman remains. James in his _Little Tour in France_ speaks of them as monotonous and brutal, and not at all exquisite. He referred especially to the amphitheatres at Nîmes and Arles. They are cold and cheerless even under a brilliant sunlight; perhaps the memory of their wild beasts and all the blood and slaughter have much to do with this. Certainly here at Nîmes, while one must admire the splendid arches and sweeping lines of the whole, one does not linger with any such pleasure as, for instance, in Heidelberg or among the ruined abbeys of England. The Maison Carrée is beautiful to look upon and you feel glad that there is such a gem, yet it is cold and you soon leave it with no regret. It stands on the busy street of a too large town, and trams rattle and rush by its door. You cannot picture men in togas and sandals on those steps to-day. The rest of Nîmes, while probably a comfortable city in which to live, will not hold your interest for a moment and I roll off and away with no desire ever to return. How different our feelings at Avignon! Leaving Nîmes we roll southward for some hours until Montpellier is reached at half past five. The roads have been fine but the ride not so pleasant as that of yesterday. Montpellier is simply a place to spend the night with nothing to see, a busy place of some sixty thousand people. The streets and sidewalks bubble and sparkle until a late hour with the life that is so dear to these people,--open cafés and tables all over the sidewalks, much wine but never a case of intoxication. No matter in what part of the world you find this nation, they will arrange some portion of their abiding place to resemble their beloved Paris. It is so here, it is so in Saigon, and would be so on a desert island. This afternoon, during an enforced stoppage of fifteen minutes, I saw Jean smile, and looking round beheld a group for a picture. In the middle of the long dusty highway stood my little Jap servant gazing up into the face of an old French woman perched high on a pile of rubbish which loaded a small cart almost to the breaking point, the whole being drawn by the most diminutive donkey I have ever seen. Surely there was a strange juxtaposition; she who might have been a descendant of the Vixen in Dickens' _Two Cities_ gazing down upon a representative of the far-off rising Empire. Yama is greatly amused by the carts drawn by small dogs, and in many ways he finds France different from the Land of the Morning.