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She was also a charming hostess, but she lived under the shadow of a great sorrow. For three weeks before the event he hired all the places in all the stage-coaches running through Carpentras to Lyons. In 1840 M. Thiers went out of office, in consequence of a dispute with England about the Eastern Question.

By watching at Avignon the few Anthophoræ that I succeeded in discovering, I was able to detect the precise moment of their work; and on the following Thursday, the 21st of May, I repaired in all haste to Carpentras, to witness, if possible, the entrance of the Sitares into the Bee's cells. I was not mistaken: the works were in full swing.

But his heart was "none the less hot with indignation"; he had had enough of "Carpentras, that accursed little hole"; and when the vacations came round once more he "plainly considered the question" and declared "that he would never again set foot inside a communal school."

Jourdan at the head of this band, ravaged and fired le Comtal, laid siege to Carpentras, was repulsed, lost five hundred men, and fell back upon Avignon, still shuddering at the murder of Lescuyer. He resolved on lending his arm and his troop to the vengeance of the French party.

The majority of the insects which Fabre has studied are solitary, and are only to be encountered singly, scattered over wide areas of country. Some live only in determined spots, and not elsewhere, such as the famous Cerceris, or the yellow-winged Sphex, of which no trace is to be found beyond the limits of the Carpentras countryside.

At Avignon, where I have not yet seen Sitaris humeralis, the same species of Anthophora, observed at almost the same season, while pillaging the lilac-blossom, was always free of young Sitaris-grubs; at Carpentras, on the contrary, where there is not a single Anthophora-colony without Sitares, nearly three-quarters of the specimens which I examined carried a few of these larvæ in their fleece.

What would he do elsewhere, even in his beloved Carpentras, whither his faithful friend and pupil Devillario, who had formerly followed him in his walks around Avignon, would endeavour from time to time to draw him?

Why was he drawn by preference to this village of Sérignan? for he did not go thither without making some inquiries as to the possibility of obtaining shelter elsewhere, and the Carpentras cemetery had tempted him also; but what had particularly seduced and drawn him thither was the nearness of the mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded of curious dung-beetles, scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc. which only a little farther north grow rapidly scarcer and then altogether disappear.

Carpentras was not merely the country in which his wife's parents dwelt: it was, above all, a unique and privileged home for insects; not on account of its flora, but because of the soil, a kind of limestone mingled with sand and clay, a soft marl, in which the burrowing hymenoptera could easily establish their burrows and their nests.

The members were assembled in the great episcopal Palace, when Bertrand de Goth, a nephew of the dead Pope, claiming to be an ally of the French prelates against the Italians in the Conclave, arrived from a successful looting of the papal treasury at Montreux to pillage in Carpentras. He and his mercenaries massacred the citizens and burned the Cathedral.