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Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Romantic
Cities of Provence
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Romantic Cities of Provence

Author: Mona Caird

Illustrator: Joseph Pennell

Edward Millington Synge

Release date: January 27, 2018 [eBook #56442]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel and the Online

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANTIC CITIES

OF PROVENCE ***
 E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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ROMANTIC CITIES OF
PROVENCE
 CLOISTERS OF ST. TROPHINE, ARLES.
By E. M. Synge.

ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE

BY

MONA CAIRD
 ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES BY

JOSEPH PENNELL AND EDWARD M. SYNGE

NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN

TO
MARGUERITE HAMILTON SYNGE

[All rights reserved.]

 Preface
This volume can hardly be said to have been written: it came about.
The little tour in the South of France which is responsible for its
existence, happened some years ago, and was undertaken for various
reasons, health and rest among others, and the very last idea which
served as a motive for the journey was that of writing about the
country whose history is so voluminous and so incalculably ancient.
Nobody but a historian and a scholar already deeply versed in the
subject could dream of attempting to treat it in any serious or
complete fashion. But this fact did not prevent the country from
instantly making a profound and singular impression upon a mind
entirely unprepared by special study or knowledge to be thus stirred.
The vividness of the impression, therefore, was not to be accounted
for by associations of facts and scenes already formed in the
imagination. True, many an incident of history and romance now
found its scene and background, but before these corresponding parts
of the puzzle had been fitted together the potent charm had
penetrated, giving that strange, baffling sense of home-coming which
certain lands and places have for certain minds, remaining for ever
mysterious, yet for ever familiar as some haunt of early childhood.
An experience of that sort will not, as a rule, allow itself to be set
aside. It works and troubles and urges, until, sooner or later, some
form of transmutation must take place, some condensing into form of
the formless, some passing of impulse into expression, be it what it
may.
And thus the first stray notes and sketches were made without
ultimate intention. But the charm imposed itself, and the notes grew
and grew. Then a more definite curiosity awoke and gradually the
scene widened: history and imagination took sisterly hands and
whispered suggestions, explanations of the secret of the extraordinary
magic, till finally the desultory sketches began to demand something
of order in their undrilled ranks. The real toil then began.
The subject, once touched upon, however slightly, is so unendingly
vast and many-sided, so entangled with scholarly controversy, that
the few words possible to say in a volume of this kind seem but to
cause obscurity, and worst of all, to falsify the general balance of
impression because of the innumerable other things that must
perforce be left unsaid. An uneasy struggle is set up in the mind to
avoid, if possible, that most fatal sort of misrepresentation, viz., that
which contains a certain proportion of truth.
And how to choose among varying accounts and theories, one
contradicting the other? Authorities differ on important points as
radically and as surely as they differ about the spelling of the names
of persons and places. There is conflict even as to the names in use
at the present day, as, for instance, the little mountain range of the
Alpilles, which some writers persistently spell Alpines, out of pure
pigheadedness or desire to make themselves conspicuous, as it seems
to the weary seeker after textual consistency. Where doctors disagree
what can one do who is not a doctor, but try to give a general
impression of the whole matter and leave the rest to the gods?
As for dates——!
Now there are two things with which no one who has not been
marked out by Providence by a special and triumphant gift ought to
dream of attempting to deal, namely, dates and keys—between which
evanescent, elusive and fundamentally absurd entities there is a
subtle and deep-seated affinity. If meddled with at all, they must be
treated in a large spirit: no meticulous analysis; no pursuit of a
pettifogging date sharpening the point of accuracy down to a paltry
twelve months. And correspondingly, as regards the smaller kind of
keys, no one who values length of days should ever touch them! They
are the vehicles of demoniac powers. Of course the good, quiet, well-
developed cellar or stable-door key is another matter; and thus (to
pursue the parallel) dates can be dealt with in a broadly synthetic
fashion, in centuries and group of centuries, so that while the author
gains in peace of mind, the reader is spared the painful experience of
being stalked and hunted from page to page, and confronted round
every corner by quartets of dreary figures, minutely defining moments
of time which are about as much to him as they are to Hecuba!
The chronology in this volume, therefore, may be described as frugal
rather than generous in character, but what there is of it is handled in
the "grand manner."
Such, then, is the history of the volume which still retains the
character of its irregular origin. Historically it attempts nothing but the
roughest outline of the salient points of the story about which a
traveller interested in the subject at all is at once curious for
information. The one thing on which it lays stress is the quality of the
country as distinguished from its outward features. For to many (for
example, to our severe critic whose impressions are recorded in
Chapter III.) these external features are devoid of all attraction. It is
necessary to keep this fact in mind.
A wide plain bounded by mountains of moderate height and an
insignificant chain of bare limestone hills (the Alpilles); cities ancient
indeed, but small, shabby, not too clean, with dingy old hotels, and no
particular advantages of situation—such a description of Provence
would be accurate for those who are not among its enthusiasts. To
traverse the country in an express train, especially with the eyes still
full of the more obvious beauties of the Pyrenees and the Alps, is to
see all the wonder of the land of the troubadours reduced to the mere
flatness of a map. In a few minutes the "rapide" had darted past
some of its most ancient and romantic cities—quiet and simple they
stand, merged into the very soil, with no large or striking features to
catch the eye; only a patch of grey masonry in the landscape and a
few towers upon the horizon, easily missed in the quick rush of the
train.
A deeper sound in the rumble of the flying wheels for a couple of
minutes announces the crossing of some river: long stretches of
waste land, covered for miles and miles with sunburnt stones, and
again stretches of country, low-lying, God-forsaken, scarcely
cultivated, with a few stunted, melancholy trees, a farmstead on the
outskirts here and there: these are the "features of the country," as
they might be described without departure from bare, literal, all-
deceiving fact.
How many travellers of the thousands who pass along this line every
year are interested in such a scene or guess its profound and
multitudinous experiences? How many realise as they rattle past, that
in this arid land of the vine and the cypress were born and fostered
the sentiments, the unwritten laws and traditions on which is built all
that we understand by civilised life? How many say to themselves as
they pass: "But for the men and women who dreamt and sang and
suffered in this Cradle of Chivalry, the world that I live in would never
have been born, the thoughts I think and the emotions to which I am
heir would never have arisen out of the darkness?"
But, indeed, the strange, many-sided country gives little aid or
suggestion for such realisations: it has reticently covered itself with a
mantle; it seems to crouch down out of sight while the monster
engine thunders by with its freight of preoccupied passengers.
A bare, flat, sun-scorched land.
Yes, these are the "facts," but ah! how different from the magic truth!
With facts, therefore, this volume has only incidentally to do. It is a
"true and veracious history," but by no means a literal one. As to the
mere accidents of travel, these are treated lightly. Exactly in which
order the cities were visited no reader need count upon certainly
knowing—and indeed it concerns him nothing—when and where the
observations were made by "Barbara," or the "severe critic," or the
landlady of the Hotel de Provence and so forth, the following pages
may or may not accurately inform him (with the exception, indeed, of
the curious, self-revelation of Raphael of Tarascon, which is given
almost word for word as it occurred, for here accident and essence
chanced to coincide); but he may be sure that though Barbara
possibly did not speak or act as represented then and there, she did
or might have so spoken or acted elsewhere and at another time. The
irrelevancies of chance and incident have been ignored in the
interests of the essential. Barbara may not recognise all her
observations when she sees them. Tant pis pour Barbara! They are
true in the spirit if not in the letter. And so throughout.
From the moment that the original "notes" began to be written, the
one and sole impulse and desire has been to suggest, to hint to the
imagination that which can never be really told of the poetry, the
idealism, the glory, the sadness, and the great joy of this wondrous
land of Sun and Wind and Dream.
 Contents
PAGE

PREFACE 7
CHAPTER

I. THE SPELL OF PROVENCE 17

II. AVIGNON 29
III. A SEVERE CRITIC—UZÈS AND BARBENTANE 49
IV. PETRARCH AND LAURA 67
V. THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS 81
VI. THE BIRTH OF CHIVALRY 93
VII. THE GAY SCIENCE 111
VIII. ORANGE AND MARTIGUES 131
IX. ROMANTIC LOVE 143
X. ARLES 159
XI. SONG, DANCE, AND LEGEND 171
XII. TARASCON 189
XIII. THE PONT DU GARD 209
XIV. A HUMAN DOCUMENT 219
XV. BEAUCAIRE AND ITS LOVE-STORY 229
XVI. CARCASSONNE, THE ALBIGENSES AND PIERRE VIDAL 241
XVII. MAGUELONNE 261
XVIII. THE SPIRIT OF THE WILDERNESS 269
 XIX. ROSES OF PROVENCE 283
XX. AN INN PARLOUR 295
XXI. LES BAUX 307
XXII. RAIMBAUT DE VACQUEIRAS AND GUILHELM DES BAUX 321
XXIII. THE SORCERESS OF THE ALPILLES 335
XXIV. ACROSS THE AGES 349
XXV. THE SONG OF THE RHONE 373
XXVI. THE CAMARGUE 385
XXVII. "ARTISTS IN HAPPINESS" 401
 List of Illustrations
Cloisters of St. Trophine, Arles (E. M. Synge) Frontispiece
PAGE

A Provençal Road (Joseph Pennell) 19

Pont de St. Benézet, Avignon (E. M. Synge) 32
Palace of the Popes and Cathedral " 35
Chartreuse du Val-de-Bénédiction,
" 43
Villeneuve-les-Avignon
Castle of St. André, Villeneuve-les-Avignon " 45
Chateauneuf, near Avignon " 53
Rienzi's Tower, Avignon " 57
Street at Uzès " 61
Gateway, Barbentane " 63
Vale and Source of the Sorgue, Vaucluse " 71
Mill in Vale of the Sorgue at Vaucluse " 78
On the Durance " 85
Aigues Mortes from the Camargue " 86
At the Port of Aigues Mortes " 96
Church at Barbentane (E. M. Synge) 101
Castle of Montmajour, Arles " 106
View from St. Gilles, in the Camargue " 115
açade of Church, St. Gilles (Joseph Pennell) 117
Outside the Church, Saintes Maries " 119
The Church of Les Saintes Maries at Night " 122
arm in Provence " 126
Roman Gateway at Orange (on the Lyons
" 134
Road)
ooking down the Grande Rue, Martigues " 135
On the Grand Canal, Martigues " 137
Church at Martigues " 138
Boats, Martigues " 139
The Portal of the Church, Martigues " 140
A Square at Nimes " 145
n the Camargue, from the Railway (E. M. Synge) 149
Old Bridge at St. Gilles " 155
St. Trophime, Arles (Joseph Pennell) 161
es Aliscamps, Arles " 166
Arles from the River " 169
Roman Theatre, Arles (E. M. Synge) 170
Tarascon from Beaucaire, showing King
" 192
René's Castle
The Château of King René, Tarascon (Joseph Pennell) 198
Entrance to King René's Castle, Tarascon (E. M. Synge) 205
The Pont du Gard (E. M. Synge) 213
The Roman Tour Magne, Nimes, from the
(Joseph Pennell) 215
Fountain Garden
View from Visigoth Tower, Beaucaire (E. M. Synge) 232
Visigoth Tower, Castle of Beaucaire " 235
Beaucaire from Tarascon (Joseph Pennell) 238
Roman Fountain at Nimes " 244
Entrance Towers, Carcassonne (E. M. Synge) 247
The Ramparts, Carcassonne " 253
Maguelonne from the Lagoon " 265
Church of Maguelonne " 267
On the Verge of La Crau " 273
Base of Monument of Marius, St. Remy (Joseph Pennell) 285
Roman Arch, St. Remy " 287
a Croix de Vertu, St. Remy (E. M. Synge) 291
Grove at St. Remy " 299
Roman Monuments, St. Remy " 303
Quarry in Valley below Les Baux " 310
Daudet's Windmill (Joseph Pennell) 315
es Baux from the Road to Arles (E. M. Synge) 317
Window in Ruined House of a Seigneur of
" 319
Les Baux
es Baux from the Road to St. Remy,
showing Platform in Front of Church of " 331
St. Vincent
At Les Baux (E. M. Synge) 337
es Baux from Level of the Town " 341
Old House, St. Remy " 345
The Church Door, Saintes Maries (Joseph Pennell) 353
a Lice, Arles " 359
A Provençal Farm (E. M. Synge) 366
Cow-boys of the Camargue (Joseph Pennell) 371
Anglore on the River Bank (E. M. Synge) 379
Porch of Church of St. Gilles in the
" 388
Camargue
Aigues Mortes, looking along the Walls " 391
The Church of Les Saintes Maries seen from
(Joseph Pennell) 394
the Camargue

Cross in Village Square at Les Saintes

(E. M. Synge) 396
Maries
es Saintes Maries " 398
 CHAPTER I
THE SPELL OF PROVENCE
 "Aubouro-te, raço Latino—
Emé toun péu que se desnouso
A l'auro santo dou tabour,
Tu siès la raço lumenouso
Que viéu de joio e d'estrambord;
Tu siès la raço apoustoulico
Que souno li campano â brand:
Tu siès la troumpo que publico
E siès la man que trais lou gran
Aubouro-te, raço Latino!"

Latin race arouse thyself!

With thy hair loosened to the holy air of the tabor,
Thou art the race of light,
Who lives in enthusiasm and joy:
Thou art the apostolic race—
That sets the bells a-chiming;
Thou art the trumpet that proclaims:
Thou art the hand that sows the seed—
O Latin race, arise!

From "Ode to the Latin Race," by Mistral.

 A PROVENÇAL ROAD.
By Joseph Pennell.

CHAPTER I
THE SPELL OF PROVENCE
During the night there was a great and unexplained tumult: rustling
sounds in the little courtyard to which our rooms looked out;
whisperings along the corridors; distant bangings; footsteps, voices—
or was it the remaining rumours of a dream?
Then a great sigh and a surging among the shrubs in the courtyard.
The creepers sway against the windows, and something seems to
sweep through the room. Presently a rush and a rattle among the
jalousies, and a high scream as of some great angry creature flying
with frantic wings over the courtyard and across the sky.
The mistral!
There was no mistaking our visitor.
A great angry creature, indeed, and no one who has seen the Land of
the Sun and Wind only under the sway of the more benign power can
have any conception of the passion and storm of this mighty Brigand
of the Mountain.
We begin now to understand the meaning of the epithet, "windy
Avignon." And if one considers its position on the plain of the Rhone
and the Durance—the country stretching south and east to the
mysterious stony desert of the Crau[1] and the great regions of the
mouths of the Rhone—it is easy to see how the Black Wind, rushing
down from his home in the ranges of Mont Ventoux and the Luberon,
must sweep the streets of the city and fill every nook and corner with
whirl and trouble.
The Rhone that "bends round Avignon to salute Our Lady on her high
rock," as Mistral proclaims, grows white with anger under the lash,
noble river that she is!
Round farmstead and garden, along her banks, and far away on the
great spaces of this wonderful country, long, tall rows of cypresses
keep guard over house and home; for only these steadfast trees of
Wisdom and of Sorrow can stand against the fury of the mistral. For
unnumbered ages, long, long before all human history or tradition, he
has lorded it over the country, descending after the fashion of the
ancient Ligurian inhabitants from the hill-tops, for raid and ravage in
the valleys.
Many have been his victims from first to last; among them the
daughter to whom Madame de Sévigné addresses her famous letters.
She suffers from his onslaught upon her Provençal château of
Grignan, which was nearly destroyed by the monster; unless, indeed,
the lady is romancing a little to keep her lively mother amused and
quiet; for Madame de Sévigné writes: "Vous dépeignez cette horreur
comme Virgile!"
A householder seriously damaged in his property would be most
unlikely to describe the disaster thus classically. Perhaps a chimney or
two blown off and a roof carried away may have stimulated Madame
de Grignan's fancy. There were always those letters to be written and
a certain dearth of subjects for a lady besieged by the mistral in a
Provençal château. What Madame de Grignan must have said one
gathers from the mother's reply—
"Voila le vent, le tourbillon, l'ouragon, les diables déchainés, qui
veulent emporter votre château.... Ah ma fille, quelle ébranlement
universel!"
The mother recommends taking refuge in Avignon; a curious place to
flee to from such a foe! But in those days there was no swift flight
possible, and a removal from the howling country to the whistling
town was all that could be achieved even by the wealthy. One
wonders how the removal of a household was effected when there
were no railways and probably few roads—and a mistral at full tilt
across the plains!
Poets of all ages have sung of the feats of the amazing wind, and
there are descriptions of its furious descent upon the Crau, where in
default of anything better to wreak its anger upon, it sends the stones
hurling across the plain. Nothing can stand against it. Mistral says that
in tempest "il souffle toujours. Les arbres ... se courbent, se secouent
à arracher leurs troncs."
The ancients assigned a place to the great wind among their deities,
and the Emperor Augustus erected a temple in its honour. It is curious
how this pagan feeling of personality in the wind survives to this day.
Its famous namesake, the Provençal poet, whose home is at Maillane,
on the great plain among the guardian cypresses, expresses the
sentiment in a hundred forms, and he adduces a still more striking
instance in the account he once gave of his father—a fine specimen of
the Provençal farmer or yeoman—who had a positive adoration for "le
bon vent."
"Le jour ou l'on vannait le blé, souvent il n'y avait pas un souffle d'air
pour emporter la poussière blonde, alors, mon père avait recours a
une sorte d'invocation au mistral.
"Souffle mon mignon, disait il, et il priait et implorait.
"Eh bien, le vent venait et mon père, etait plein de joie, et il criait
'brava, brava.'"
In his house at Maillane, protected from foreign intrusion by the
double army of the winds and the mosquitos, this chief of the Félibres
passes his days, rejoicing in their scourges because they frighten
away the wandering tourist—"tempted by our horizons and our sky"—
from the land of the Sun and the Cypress.
To him the roar and shriek of the mistral is always a "musico
majestuoso."
This tremendous being (as indeed he seems when one has once felt
the very earth shaking beneath his assault) must be responsible for
much in the Provençal character and literature; it is impossible to
believe it to have been without profound influence on the imagination
of the many races that have made the country their home.
Its voice is elemental, passionate, sometimes expressing blind fury,
but often full of an agony that even its own tremendous cry cannot
utter; a torment as of Prometheus and a grandeur of spirit no less
than his.
The mistral produces effects of astonishing contrast; for when he is
silent Provence is the most smiling, kindly land in the world; and half
its stories are of gentle and lovely things: of chivalry, of romance, of
dance and song and laughter. But when once the Black Wind begins
to rouse himself from his lair on Mont Ventoux, then tragedy and pain
and despair are abroad on wide dark wings.

All the "merry hamlets" of Provence have delightful courts or places

shaded with plane-trees. Here the villagers assemble on Sundays and
Saints' days, and here may always be found a few happy loungers
resting on the benches, or playing some game of whose mysterious
antiquity they are blissfully unconscious.
It is the country of mediævalism; it is still more the country of
paganism, of Greek temples, Phœnician inscriptions and tombs,
Roman baths, amphitheatres, aqueducts; it boasts a profusion of
exquisite churches, splendid mediæval castles; scenes of troubadour
history, of the reputed Courts of Love; of a thousand traditions and
stories that have become the heritage of every civilised people.
In the valley of Elorn, near Landerneau—called the Cradle of Chivalry
—was found, according to the legend, the veritable round table of
King Arthur, and here rose into the sky the towers of the Château de
Joyeuse Garde of the Arthurian legends.
But Provence rests its claim to having been the birthplace of Chivalry
on better grounds than this, for the first troubadour was a Provençal,
the Comte Quilhelm de Poictier; a most debonnaire gentleman, of
attractive appearance, courtly manners, and an exhaustive knowledge
of the Gay Science, making great havoc with the hearts of ladies.
The colour of the landscape in Provence is as vivid as the history of its
people.
A writer speaks of "la couleur violente, presque exaspérée, des
montagnes."
There is no country that can be less conveyed to the imagination by
an enumeration of topographical facts. The more exact the
description the less we arrive at the land that Mistral sees and loves.
Of this poet, characteristically Provençal, Lamartine is reported to
have said—
"I bring you glad tidings, a great epic poet is born among us. The
West produces no more such poets, but from the nature of the South
they will spring forth. It is from the sun alone that power flows."
It is from the sun that life flows, is the irresistible conclusion that one
comes to under the skies of the Midi.
Science has insisted upon the fact, and no one seriously disputes it,
but not to dispute and to actually accept are two very different
conditions of mind. Legend, proverb, history, song, all seem to tell of
a life more intense, more "vibrant," as their great poet describes the
Provençals—in the troubadour country than elsewhere; unless indeed
one goes still farther into the regions of the sun and falls under the
kindred spell of Italy.
In England archæology seems cold and dead. In the South it conjures
up visions of a teeming life; generation after generation of peoples,
race after race, civilisation after civilisation.
Paradox as it seems, the multitude of dead or ruined or vanished
cities that have lined the coast from the Pyrenees to the Var strangely
enhances this sense of vitality and persistence of human activities.

But one records and records, and yet one has not Provence. One has
but her mountains and contours, her blue sky, and perhaps her wild
wind—but there is always something beyond.
One sees the Rhone and the Durance on their way to the sea—
splendid headlong rivers; one sees the melancholy brooding
wilderness of the Crau, where Hercules and the quarrelsome Titans
flung those huge stones at one another in the dim old days; one sees
always the strange, fantastic little limestone chain of the Alpilles
which finishes to the south-east the great semicircle begun to the
west by the higher ranges. The eye follows everywhere, fascinated,
the battalions of cypresses, while over all is the flooding light,
vibrating, living. And yet after all is said, Provence is still an unknown
land.
It is one of the haunted lands, the spell-weaving lands. It enslaves as
no obvious technical beauty of landscape can enslave.
Provence is like one of its own enchanting ladies of the troubadour
days, and strangely significant is it that this nameless quality of the
country should have been thus reproduced by the crown and flower
of its people. For this attribute of charm belongs to knight and baron,
soldier and singer, if we may trust the old songs and the old stories.
But, par excellence, it belonged to the cultivated lady of the epoch.
Take, for instance, the mysterious Countess of Die or Dia, of whose
identity nothing is certainly known. She was a writer of songs and the
heroine of one of the poetical love-stories of the age: a lady capable
of deep and faithful love, unhappily for her peace of mind. Of the
subtlety of her attractions one may judge by the power which the
mere dead records wield to this day over the imagination. This is how
a modern author writes of her—
"Her voice had the colour of Alban wine, with overtones like the gleams
of light in the still, velvety depths of the goblet, and when she smiled,
it seemed as if she drew from a harp a slow, deep chord in the mode of
Æolia. Though not at all diffident, and not at all prudish, she wore
usually an air of shyness, the shyness of one whose thoughts dread
intrusion."

How our author managed to gather such intimate detail from ancient
volumes is perhaps difficult to understand; and doubtless he has
reconstructed a voice and a smile from hints of the personality given
by musty documents written demurely in the quaint, beautiful old
langue d'oc. Still, there must have been some potent suggestion in
the chronicles to set the fancy working in this glowing way, and it is a
fact that all that one reads of the women of that time has a curious
elusive element, producing an impression of some attraction subtler
and more holding than can be expressed in direct words.
And Provence has a charm like that of her mysteriously endowed
women; unaccountable, but endless to those who are once drawn
within the magnetic circle. Have their sisters of to-day none of this
quality? One here and there, no doubt, but it is to be feared that
modern conditions do not favour the production of the type. Perhaps
the women of to-day are making a détour out of the region of
enchantment, but only in order to obtain a broader, more generous
grasp of the things of life. Some day they will give back to mankind
what has been taken away by the new adventures, and when the tide
turns, there will surely pour over the arid world a flood of beauty and
"youngheartedness" and romance such as the blinder, less conscious
centuries have never so much as dreamt of!
Meanwhile the troubadours had the privilege of dedicating their songs
and their hearts to the most fascinating women which civilisation had
as yet produced. Perhaps one associates such subtle attraction with
the powers of darkness, but there is nothing to show that such
powers had aught to do with the charm of the heroines of troubadour
song. On the contrary, they seem as a rule to have been of extremely
fine calibre; and if one consults one's memories of magnetic
personalities—after all there are not a very large array of them—it
almost always proves to be the powers of good in its broadest sense,
and not of evil, that give birth to the fascination that never dies.
And the fascination of this gay, sad, brilliant, sympathetic country is
not dreadful and diabolic. It is compounded of wholesome sunshine
and merriment, swift ardour of thought and emotion, of beautiful
manners; of the poetry of ancient industries: of sowing and reaping
and tillage; of wine-culture and olive-growing; of legends and quaint
proverbs, and a language full of the flavour of the soil and the sun
that reveals itself to the quick of ear and of heart long before it can
be fully understood. For it appeals to the heart, this sweet language
of the troubadours, and hard must have often been the task of those
poor ladies, wooed in this too winning tongue!
The traditions of chivalry are among the priceless possessions of the
human race, and it is in Provence that their aroma lingers with a
potency scarcely to be found in any other country. The air is alive with
rich influences. The heat of the sun, the extraordinary brilliance of
light and colour, the dignity of an ancient realm whose every inch is
penetrated with human doings and destinies, all combine towards an
enchantment that belongs to the mysterious side of nature and
prompts a host of unanswerable questions. The eye wanders
bewildered across the country, wistfully struggling to realise the
wonder and the beauty. It sweeps the peaked line of mountains with
only an added sense of bafflement, and rests at last, sadly, on some
lonely castle with shattered ramparts and roofless banqueting-hall,
where now only the birds sing troubadour songs, and ivy and wild
vines are the swaying tapestries.
 CHAPTER II
AVIGNON

"Sur le pont d'Avignon,

On y danse, on y danse!"

"Avenio ventosa, sine vento

Venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa."

Latin Proverb.

"Parlement mistral et Durance

Sont les trois fleaux de Provence."

Old Saying.

CHAPTER II
 AVIGNON
How the sun does pour down on to the great esplanade before the
Palace of the Popes! It is as warm as a June day in England and twice
as light. That astounding building towers into the blue, bare and
creamy white, every stern, simple line of it ascending swift and clear,
in repeated strokes, rhythmically grand, like some fine piece of blank
verse.
The parapet alone shows broken surfaces. Neither cornice nor corbel
nor window pediment; scarcely a window to interrupt the mass of
splendid masonry, only recurrent shafts of stone (continuing from the
machicolations above) which shoot straight and slim from base to
summit of the fortress, to meet there at intervals, as if a line of tall
poplars, two by two, had bent their heads together to form this
succession of sharply-pointed arches.
The arrangement of massive wall and slender arch gives to the
building a singular effect of strength and eternity combined with a
severe sort of grace.

PONT DE ST. BENÉZET, AVIGNON.

By E. M. Synge.
It stands there enormous, calm, yet with a delicacy of bearing
belonging surely to no other edifice of that impregnable strength and