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from, and
what this papal mule and the seven year kick was all about. Nobody, not
even Francet Mamaï, my fife player, who knows the Provencal legends
like the back of his hand, has been able to tell me. Francet, like me,
thinks that it is from an old tale from Avignon, but he has not heard
of it elsewhere.
    —You'll find it in the Cicada's open library, the old piper told me
with a snigger.
    It seemed a good idea to me, and, the Cicada's library being right
outside my door, I decided to shut myself in for a week.
    It's a marvellous library, well stocked, and open twenty four hours a
day to poets and it is served by those little cymbal-clashing
librarians who make music for you all the time. I stayed in there for
several delightful days, and after a week's searching—lying on my
back—I came up with just what I was looking for: my own version of the
mule with the famous seven year grudge. The story is charming and
simple, and I will tell it to you as I read it yesterday from a
manuscript, which had the lovely smell of dried lavender, and long
strands of maiden hair fern for bookmarks.
    * * * * *
    If you hadn't seen Avignon in papal times, you'd seen nothing. For
gaiety, life, vitality, and a succession of feasts, no town was its
peer. From morning till night there were processions, pilgrimages,
flower strewn streets, high-hung tapestries, cardinals' arriving on the
Rhone, buntings, galleries with flags flying, papal soldiers chanting
Latin in the squares, and brothers' rattling their collecting boxes.
There were such noises coming from the tallest to the smallest
dwelling, which crowded and buzzed all around the grand Papal Palace,
like bees round a hive. There was the click-click of the lace-makers'
machines, the to and fro of the shuttles weaving gold thread for the
chasubles, the little hammer taps of the cruet engravers, the twanging
harmonic scales of the string instrument makers, the sing-songs of the
weavers, and above all that, the peal of the bells, and the
ever-throbbing tambourines, down by the bridge. You see, here in
Provence, when people are happy, they must dance and dance. And then;
they must dance again. When the town streets proved too narrow for the
farandole, the fifers and tambourine players were placed in the cooling
breeze of the Rhone, Sur le pont d'Avignon , where, round the clock, l'on y dansait, l'on y dansait . Oh, such happy times; such a happy
town. The halberds which have never killed anyone, the state prisons
used only to cool the wine. Never any famine. Never any war…. That's
how the Comtat Popes governed their people, and that's why their people
missed them so much….
    There was one pope called Boniface who was a particularly good old
stick. Oh, how the tears flowed in Avignon when he died. He was such a
loveable, such a pleasant prince. He would laugh along with you as he
sat on his mule. And when you got near to him—were you a humble madder
plant gatherer or a great town magistrate—he blessed you just as
thoughtfully. Truly, a Pope from Yvetot, but a Provencal Yvetot, with
something joyful in his laugh, a hint of marjoram in his biretta, and
no sign of a lady love…. The only romantic delight ever known to the
good father, was his vineyard—a small one that he had planted himself
amongst the myrtles of Château-Neuf, a few kilometres from Avignon.
    Every Sunday, after vespers, this decent man went to pay court to the
vineyard. As he sat in fine sunshine, his mule close by, his cardinals
sprawled out under the vines, he opened a bottle of vintage wine—a
fine wine, the colour of rubies, which has been known ever since as Château-Neuf du Pape —which he liked to sip while looking fondly at
his vineyard. Then, the bottle empty and the daylight fading, he went
merrily back to town, his whole chapter in tow. As he passed over the pont d'Avignon , amongst the drums and farandoles, his mule, taking
her cue from the music, began a jaunty little amble, while he himself
beat the dance