THE HOMECOMING

A bagatelle, pleasantly misted with sentiment, has a rural Provencal village setting where Valentin, an old man, is about to lose the horse whom he has cared for with single-minded devotion through the years. But now Pompidou is 28, his legs are stiff, and he will be given a chance to die gloriously in the bull ring at Arles. Valentin, determined to give him a happier release, steals him and takes him off to the Camargue, a stretch of marsh lands between two rivers, to set him free where-------. A story with much of the gentleness of Daudet, the bouquet of Provence, and there are soft, shaded drawings by Rita Parsons. An abiding appeal for old and young.