Memoirs of the Foreign Legion by Maurice Magnus

ARLES, Orange, Avignon--what memories! when I visited these places first, many many years before, I never thought that one day I should pass them as a soldier of the French Army. They were at that time my first taste of the southern part of Europe; I was on my way to the Riviera, and how I relished the mild cloudless days in early October after the London fogs! The bull-fight in the arena at Aries on a Sunday afternoon, the Roman theatre at Orange, the Papal Palace at Avignon and the Broken Bridge--these had meant to me the realization of my childhood dreams, and had intensified my love for history.

Now I was talking to an American merchant and his son, who had sold something or other to France, and had come over with it on the same boat to Cette, as there was no room to dock at Marseilles. Kindly but dull they were; they looked opulent, the war was throwing fortune into their arms. "Well--I hope you will come out of the war without any holes in your skin," the elder drawled in his twang, as he said good-bye to me at Aries. My next travelling companions were a dentist and his wife from Vienne, who deplored my foolishness in having entered the Legion, and wanted to know why I hadn't gone into the Ambulance or Flying Corps. What a difference from years ago!