Now for another. A lady whom I know very well indeed, and who never deviated from the truth in her life--save when she swore at the altar to honour and obey me--was walking one day, when a girl of thirteen, beside a quickset hedge; her brother was on the other side. I believe they were looking for birds' nests. All at once she saw a little man dressed entirely in green, with jacket, breeches, and high peaked hat, seated in the hedge, staring at her. She was paralysed with terror for a moment, then recovering herself, she called to her brother to come round and see the little green man. When he arrived the dwarf had disappeared.
Now these are funny stories, and are to be explained by the fact that the sun was hot on the head. But it does not strike me that the explanation is wholly satisfactory. _Why_ should the sun on the head superinduce visions of kobolds? Is it because other people have suffered from a hot sun, and that the hot sun reproduces year after year the same phenomenon, that the fable of little men, pixies, gnomes, brownies, fairies, leprechauns is to be found everywhere? Or--is it possible that there is such a little creation only visible to man when he is subject to certain influences?
Sir Charles Isham, of Lamport, has collected a good deal of evidence of a similar nature. I do not venture to express an opinion one way or another. I can remember still, with vividness, the impression produced on me by what I saw that hot day on the Crau, when but a child of five years; but I cannot for the life of me explain it satisfactorily to myself.
Difficulty of finding one's way about in Arles--The two inns--The _mistral_--The charm of Arles is in the past--A dead city--Situation of Arles on a nodule of limestone--The Elysian Fields--A burial-place for the submerged neighbourhood--The Alyscamp now in process of destruction--Expropriation of ancient tombs--Avenue of tombs--Old church of S. Honoré--S. Trophimus--S. Virgilius--Augustine, apostle of the English, consecrated by him--The Flying Dutchman--Tomb of Ælia--Of Julia Tyranna--Her musical instruments--Monument of Calpurnia--Her probable story--Mathematical _versus_ classic studies--Tombs of _utriculares_--Christian sarcophagi--Probably older than the date usually attributed to them--A French author on the wreckage of the Elysian Fields.