Having Ordered Our Coach To Be Refitted, And Provided With Fresh
Horses, As Well As With Another Postilion, In Consequence
Of
which improvements, I payed at the rate of a loui'dore per diem
to Lyons and back again, we departed
From Aix, and the second day
of our journey passing the Durance in a boat, lay at Avignon.
This river, the Druentia of the antients, is a considerable
stream, extremely rapid, which descends from the mountains, and
discharges itself in the Rhone. After violent rains it extends
its channel, so as to be impassable, and often overflows the
country to a great extent. In the middle of a plain, betwixt
Orgon and this river, we met the coach in which we had travelled
eighteen months before, from Lyons to Montpellier, conducted by
our old driver Joseph, who no sooner recognized my servant at a
distance, by his musquetoon, than he came running towards our
carriage, and seizing my hand, even shed tears of joy. Joseph had
been travelling through Spain, and was so imbrowned by the sun,
that he might have passed for an Iroquois. I was much pleased
with the marks of gratitude which the poor fellow expressed
towards his benefactors. He had some private conversation with
our voiturier, whose name was Claude, to whom he gave such a
favourable character of us, as in all probability induced him to
be wonderfully obliging during the whole journey.
You know Avignon is a large city belonging to the pope. It was
the Avenio Cavarum of the antients, and changed masters several
times, belonging successively to the Romans, Burgundians, Franks,
the kingdom of Arles, the counts of Provence, and the sovereigns
of Naples.
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