It would be a singularly hard-headed, cold-hearted person who could set
out for Vaucluse without the smallest thrill; and hard heads and cold
hearts don't "run in our family." As we spun away from the Hotel de
l'Europe soon after two o'clock that afternoon I felt that I was largely
composed of thrill. Cold as the wind had grown, the thrill kept me warm,
mingling in my veins with ozone.
Inside the car the middle-aged honeymooners had an air of desperate
resignation which the consciousness of doing their duty according to
Baedeker gives to tourists. The tap was turned on in the newly invented
heating-apparatus in the car floor, through which hot water from the
radiator can be made to circulate; and I wondered, if this extreme
measure were resorted to already, what would be left to do when we
reached those high, white altitudes of which the chauffeur had been
speaking. I prayed that Lady Turnour might not read in the papers about
the "phenomenal fall of snow" in those regions, for if she did I was
afraid that even Mr. Dane's magnetic powers of persuasion might fail to
get her there. He might dangle Queen Margherita of Italy over her head
in vain, if worst came to worst: for what are queens to the most
inveterate tuft-hunters if the feet be cold? Yet now that "adventures"
were vaguely prophesied, I felt I could not give up the promised gorges
and mountains.
Out of Avignon we slid, past the old, old ramparts and the newer but
impressive walls, and turned at the right into the Marseilles road.
"Vaucluse!" said a kilometre-stone, and then another and another
repeated that enchanted and enchanting word, as we flew onward between
the Rhône and the Durance.
This was our own old way again, as far as the Pont de Bonpas; then our
road wound to the northeast, away from the world we knew--I said to
myself--and into a world of romance, a world created by the love of
Petrarch for Laura, and sacred to those two for ever more.
The ruined castle, with machicolated towers and haughty buttresses, on
the great rampart of a hill, was for me the porter's lodge at the
entrance gate of an enchanted garden, where poetic flowers of love
bloomed through seasons and centuries; laurels, roses, and lilies, and
pansies for remembrance. We didn't see those flowers with our bodies'
eyes, but what of that? What did it matter that to the Turnours in their
splendid glass cage this was just a road, with queer little gnome
dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness,
with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks?
My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they clustered thicker and
brighter about Pieverde, where I insisted to Mr. Dane that Laura had
been born.
He was inclined to dispute this at first, and bring up the horrid theory
that the pure white star of Petrarch's life had been a mere Madame de
Sade, with a drove of uninteresting children. But eagerly I quoted
Petrarch himself, using all the arguments on which Pamela and I prided
ourselves at the Convent; and by the time we had got as far as that
sweet "little Venice full of water wheels," L'Isle, I'd persuaded him to
agree with me. In the midst of all that lovely, liquid music of running,
trickling, fluting water, who could go on callously insisting that Laura
resisted Petrarch merely because she was a fat married woman with a
large family?
All was green and pastoral here, and we seemed to have come into eternal
spring after the bleak, windy plains encircling Avignon. It was
beautiful to remember Petrarch's description of his golden-haired,
dark-eyed love, fair and tall as a lily, sitting in the grass among the
violets, where her bare feet gleamed whiter than the daisies when she
took off her sandals. Even Nicolete, flower of Provençal song, had no
whiter feet than Laura, I am sure!
We were slipping past the banks of a little river, clear as sapphires
and emeralds melted and mingled together. The sound of its singing
drowned the sound of the motor, so that we seemed to glide toward
Vaucluse noiselessly and reverently.
At the Inn of Petrarch and Laura the car had to stop; and looking up, we
could see on the height above the castle home of Petrarch's dearest
friend, Philippe de Cabassole, guardian of Queen Jeanne of Naples. Up
there on the cliff Petrarch's eyes must often have turned toward
Pieverde with longing thoughts of Laura, that "white dove" who was
always for him sixteen, as when he met her first.
No farther than the inn could any wheeled thing go; and having
justified my presence by buttoning Lady Turnour up in her coat, and
finding her muff under several rugs, I stood by the car, gazing after
the couple as they trudged off along the path to the hidden fairy
fountain of Vaucluse. When they should have got well ahead I meant to go
too, for if a cat may look at a king, a lady's maid may try to drink--if
she can--a few drops from the cup of a great poet's inspiration. At
first I resented those two ample, richly clad, prosaic backs marching
sturdily toward the magic fountain; then suddenly the back of Sir Samuel
became pathetic in my eyes. Hadn't he, I asked myself, loved his Emily
("Emmie, pet," as I've heard him call her) as long and faithfully as
Petrarch loved his Laura? Perhaps, after all, he had earned the right to
visit this shrine.
Rocks shut out from our sight the distant fountain, and the last
windings of the path that led to it, clasping the secret with great
stone arms, like those of an Othello jealously guarding his young wife's
beauty from eyes profane.
"Aren't you going now?" asked my brother, with a certain wistfulness.
"Ye-es. But what about you?"
"Oh, I've been here before, you know."
"Don't you believe in second times? Or is a second time always second
best?"
"Not when--Of course I want to go. But I can't leave the car alone."
My eyes wandered toward the inn door. "There's a boy there who looks as
if he were born to be a watch-dog," said I, basely tempting him.
"Couldn't you--"
"No, I couldn't," he said decidedly. "At a place like this, where there
are a lot of tourists about, it wouldn't be right. It was different at
Valescure, when I took you in to lunch."
"You mean I mustn't make that a precedent."
"I don't mean anything conceited."
"But you won't desert Mr. Micawber. I believe I shall name the car
Micawber! Well, then, I must go by myself--and if I should fall into the
fountain and be drowned--"
"Don't talk nonsense, and don't do anything foolish," said Mr. Dane,
sternly, whereupon I turned my back upon him, and plunged into the cool
shadows of the gorge. The great white cliff of limestone was my goal,
and always it towered ahead, as I followed the narrow pathway above the
singing water. I sighed as I paused to look at a garden which maybe once
was Petrarch's, for it was sad to find my way to fairyland, alone. Even
a brother's company would have been better than none, I thought!
Soon I met my master and mistress coming back.
There was nothing much to see, said her ladyship, sharply, and I mustn't
be long; but Sir Samuel ventured to plead with her.
"Let the girl have ten minutes or so, if she likes, dear," said he.
"We'll be wanting a cup of hot coffee at the inn. And it is a pretty
place." There was something in his voice which told me that he would
have felt the charm--if his bride had let him.
Pools of water, deep among the rocks, were purple-pansy colour or beryl
green; but the "Source" itself, in its cup of stone, was like a block of
malachite. There was no visible bubbling of underground springs fighting
their way up to break the crystal surface of the fountain,--this
fountain so unlike any other fountain; but to the listening ear came a
moaning and rushing of unseen waters, now the high crying of Arethusa
escaping from her pursuing lover, now rich, low notes as of an organ
played in a vast cavern.
Above the gorge, the towering rocks with their huge holes and archways
hollowed out by turbulent water in dim, forgotten ages, looked exactly
as if the whole front wall had been knocked off a giant's castle,
exposing its secret labyrinths of rough-hewn rooms, floor rising above
floor even to the attics where the giant's servants had lived, and down
to the cellars where the giant's pet dragons were kept in chains.
I hadn't yet exhausted my ten minutes, though I began to have a guilty
consciousness that they would soon be gone, when I heard a step behind
me, and turning, saw Mr. Dane.
"They're having coffee in the car," he said. "Sir Samuel proposed it to
his wife, as if he thought it would be rather more select and exclusive
for her than drinking it in the inn; but I have a sneaking suspicion
that it was because he wanted to let me off. Not a bad old boy, Sir
Samuel."
So we saw the fountain of Vaucluse together, after all. I don't know why
that should have seemed important to me, but it did--a little.
We didn't say much to each other, all the way back to Avignon, but I
felt that the day had been a brilliant success, and was sure that the
next could not be as good. "What--not with St. Remy and Les Baux?"
exclaimed my brother. But I knew very little about St. Remy, and still
less about Les Baux. For a minute I was ashamed to confess, but then I
told myself that this was a much worse kind of vanity than being pleased
with the colour of one's hair or the length of one's eyelashes. Mr. Jack
Dane was too polite to show surprise at my ignorance; but that evening,
just as I was getting ready to go down to dinner, up he came with a
tray, as he had the night before; and on the tray, among covered dishes,
was a book.
"Two of your chauffeur-admirers from Aix are in the dining-room," he
said, "so I thought you'd rather stop up in your room and read T.A.
Cook's 'Old Provence,' than go downstairs. Anyway, it will be better for
you."
I was half angry, half flattered that he should arrange my life for me
in this off-hand way, whether I liked it or not; but the French half of
me will do almost anything rather than be ungracious; and it would have
been ungracious to say I was tired of dining in my room, and could take
care of myself, when he had given himself the trouble of carrying up my
dinner. So I swallowed all less obvious emotions than meek gratitude for
food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the
delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with
it--the book, not the pudding--after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost
literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and when
morning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. Remy and Les
Baux.
Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as
a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l'Europe
following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady
Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.
Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, "because the thing
is to see the sunset there," I heard her telling an extremely
rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned
the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.
The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had
a misleading air, as if it didn't want you to think it was taking you to
a place of any importance. And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land;
not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great
enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the
glory of it to future generations. At any moment we might meet a
Fellore. I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back
at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman's eyes are almost as
mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or
zenana gratings.
St. Remy itself--birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and
prophecies--was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of
trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast
palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up a
steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I
found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal
Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.
Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen
helped to build them for Julius Cæsar, when he determined that posterity
should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do
justice to the memory of Marius.
When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that
he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the
dreadful difficulty of pronouncing his name; but when we had got out of
the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had
kept his head through all the centuries, while Cæsar (with a hand on the
prisoner's shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the
first time.
I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the
Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should
take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for
somebody else. But Mr. Dane assured me with the obstinate air people
have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was
really the more interesting of the two--the first Triumphal Archway set
up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would
turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the
three Julii, and then away over the wide plain that lay beneath this
ragged spur of the Alpilles. In the distance I could see Avignon, and
the pale, opal-tinted, gold-veined hills that fold in the fountain of
Vaucluse. Never, since we came into Provence, had I been able so clearly
to realize the wild fascination of her haggard beauty. "Here Marius
stood in his camp," I thought, "shading his eyes from the fierce sun,
and looking out over this strange, arid country for the Barbarians he
meant to conquer." My heart beat with an intoxicating excitement, such
as one feels on seeing great mountains or the ocean for the first time;
and then down I tumbled, with a bump, off my pedestal, when Lady Turnour
wanted to know what I supposed she'd brought me for, if not to put on
her extra cloak without waiting to be told.
Watches are really luxuries, not necessities, with the Turnours, because
their appetites always strike the hour of one, and if they're sometimes
a little in advance, they can be relied upon never to be behindhand. I
knew before I glanced at the little bracelet-watch Pamela gave me
(hidden under my sleeve) that it must be on the stroke of half-past
twelve when her ladyship began to complain of the sharp wind, and say we
had better be getting back to St. Remy. She was cross, as usual when she
is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a
dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short
expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes;
whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a
microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked
up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself
altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a
box on the ear. I could not endure such a punishment--and the front
seat would look so empty, so unfinished, without me!
As we went back down the steep hill from old Glanum, St. Remy appeared a
little oasis of spring in the midst of a winter which had come back for
something it had forgotten. All its surrounding orchards and gardens,
screened from the shrewish Mistral by the shoulders of the Alpilles, and
again by lines of tall cypress trees and netted, dry bamboos, had begun
to bloom richly like the earlier gardens on the Riviera. There was a
pinky-white haze of apple blossoms; and even the plane trees in the long
main street were hung with dainty, primrose-coloured spheres, like
little fairy lanterns. Not only did every man seem a possible Felibre,
but every girl was a beauty. Some of them wore a charming and becoming
head-dress, such as I never saw before, and the chauffeur said it was
the head-dress of the women of Arles, where we would go day after
to-morrow.
Impertinent chauffeurs or couriers would have been more out of place in
poetic St. Remy than the sensational Nostradamus himself; and there was
no trouble of that sort for me in lunching at the pleasant, quiet hotel.
Mr. Dane had bought a French translation of Mistral's "Memoires," and as
we ate, he and I alone together, he read me the incident of the
child-poet and his three wettings in quest of the adored water-flowers.
Nothing could be more beautiful than the wording of the exquisite
thoughts, yet I wished we could have seen those thoughts embodied in
Provençal, the language practically created by Mistral, as Italian was
by Dante and Petrarch, or German by Goethe.
Not far away lay Mas du Juge, described in the book, where he was born,
and Maillane, where he lives, and I longed to drive that way; but as the
Turnours would be sure to say that there was nothing to see, the
chauffeur thought it wiser not to turn out of our road. We might find
the poet at Arles, perhaps, in his museum there, or lunching at the
Hotel du Forum, a favourite haunt of his on museum days.
Starting for Les Baux, we turned our faces straight toward the wild
little mountains loved by Mistral, his dear Alpilles. They soon
surrounded us in tumbling gray waves, piled up on either side of the
road as the Red Sea must have tumultuously fenced in the path of the
Israelites. Strange, hummocky mountains were everywhere, as far as we
could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great
ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved,
some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock
that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a
python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber
fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last
night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii
of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient town the whole
world over--a place of tangled histories; yet I tried vainly to picture
what it would be like. Then, suddenly, we reached a turn in that strange
road which, if it had led downhill instead of up, would have seemed like
the way Orpheus took to reach Hades.
We had come face to face with a huge chasm in the rock, a gap with
sheer walls sliced clean down, like a cut in a great cheese; and I felt
instinctively that this must be the dark doorway through which we should
see Les Baux.
Through the cut in the stone cheese our road carried us; and the busts
on the rocky ledges were so near now we could almost have put out our
hands and touched them--but curiously enough, in this place of all
others, they were the likenesses of modern men. Mr. Dane and I picked
out an unmistakable Gladstone on the right, a characteristic
Beaconsfield on the left; and farther on Mr. Chamberlain's head was
fantastically grafted on to the body of a prehistoric animal. We were
just tracing Pierpont Morgan's profile, near a few of Hannibal's
elephants, when the car sprang clear of the chasm, out upon the other
side of the doorway; and there rose before us Les Baux, a hundred times
more wonderful, more tragic, than I had hoped to find it.
Far, far below our mountain road lay a valley so flat that it might have
been levelled on purpose for the tilting of knights in great
tournaments. Above and around us (for suddenly we were in as well as
under it) was a City of Ghosts.
Huge masses of rock, like Titan babies' playthings, had been hollowed
out for dwellings, fit houses for our late cousins the cave-dwellers.
There were colossal pillars and dark, high doorways such as one sees in
pictures of the temples at Thebes; but all this, said Mr. Jack Dane, was
merely a preface for what was yet to come, only an immense quarry whence
the stones to build Les Baux had been torn. We were still on the road to
the real Les Baux; and even as he spoke, the Aigle was clawing her way
bravely up a hill steeper than any we had mounted. At the top she turned
abruptly, and stopped in a queer, forlorn little place, where to my
astonishment our journey ended in front of a small house ambitiously
named Hotel Monte Carlo. Then I remembered the story I had read: how a
young prince of the Grimaldi family came begging Louis XIII. to protect
him from Spain; how Louis, who didn't want Spain to grab Monaco,
promptly gave soldiers; how the Grimaldi's shrewd wit did more to get
the Spanish out of the little principality than did the fighting men
from France; and how Louis, as a reward, turned poor, war-worn Les Baux
into a Grimaldi marquisate.
That little episode in history accounted for the Hotel Monte Carlo; and
I wondered if it were put up on the site of the Grimaldis' miniature
pleasure-palace, which the forest-burning revolutionists tore down just
before Les Baux, after all its strange passings from hand to hand,
became the property of the nation.
Against the rocks a few mean houses leaned apologetically, but on every
side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the
ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I
looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into
the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a
rat in the heart of a dead princess."
Strange, haggard hill, whispered about by history ever since Christians
ran before Alaric the Visigoth, and hid in its caverns already echoing
with legends of mysterious Phoenician treasure! Strange robber house of
Les Baux, founded thirteen hundred years ago, and claiming half
Provence two centuries later! No wonder, after all the fighting and
plundering, loving and hating, that all it asks now is for its bleached,
picked bones to be left in peace!
I thought this, standing by the little Hotel Monte Carlo, waiting for my
mistress and her husband to be supplied with a guide. He was the most
intelligent and efficient-seeming guide imaginable, who looked as if he
had the whole history of Les Baux behind his bright dark eyes; and I
hoped that the humble maid and chauffeur might be allowed to follow the
"quality" within respectful earshot.
Soon they began to walk on, and I turned to look at my brother, who was
lingering by the car. Already the guide had begun to be interesting. I
caught a few words: "Celtic caverns"--"Leibulf, the first Count"--"the
terrible Turenne, called the 'Fléau de Provence'--the Lady Alix's
guardian"--which made me long to hear more; but I didn't want to crawl
on until my Fellow Worm could crawl with me.
"I can't go," he said. "It wouldn't do to leave the car here. There are
several gipsy faces at the inn window, you see. Why there should be
gipsies I don't know; but there are, for those are gipsies or I'll eat
my cap. And I've got to keep watch on deck."
"How horrid to leave you here alone, seeing nothing--not even the
sunset!" I exclaimed. "I think I shall stop with you, unless _she_ calls
me--"
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he had begun, when the summons came,
sooner than I had expected.