Avignon. Thursday 20.

My dear Grandmamma, 

The Pont du Gard sends you a little piece of thyme to remind you of your visit there. What a place it is! Papa and I had a delicious day there; we arrived quite early from Nimes and wandered in the morning a long way down the garden amusing ourselves by examining the kinds of flowers that grew on it’s [?] (there were so many quantities of broom and cistus and other things whose name I didn’t know); presently we espied some delightful castle towers on the opposite banks and resolved to cross over. After a little search we discovered a dam along which we clambered and when the water flowing over it became deep we took off our shoes and stockings and waded; we finally emerged through a little hole in the wall of a mill, almost under the mill wheel, but the millers did not seem to be at all surprised at our sudden apparition, and after some conversation we made our way to the castle. It was very interesting; an old housekeeper showed us over it and exhibited with pride the room where Louise XIII had slept and the portraits of the young master of the place and his dead father and mother. His name is M. Calderon (he’s a Spaniard) and he always comes to his chateau in May for the yeng-dange. I wish I could reproduce the accent of the Midi. He has a very nice house to come to, a lovely courtyard full of wisteria and a moat overgrown with clustering yellow roses. We lunched near the Pont and lay under it’s arches all the afternoon till it was time to come away to Avignon. 

Altogether we are having a wonderfully delightful little journey. The weather is perfect; I don’t know what we have enjoyed most really – the Pont du Gard day was perfect, but then so was an afternoon we spent at a little fortified town on the Mediterranean and an evening when we sat in the Amphitheatre at Nimes till the little moon came and looked over the wall at us and told us it was time to go home.

Today we go to Arles, tomorrow to Marseilles and Saturday we cross to Algiers. 

Much love to Auntie Bessie. Ever your very affectionate granddaughter

Gertrude

If some lace comes for me from Hood’s[?], would you kindly keep it till I return