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ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE
[Illustration: 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,
VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON " 43
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
FAÇADE OF CHURCH, ST. GILLES (_Joseph Pennell_) 117
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, SAINTES MARIES " 119
THE CHURCH OF LES SAINTES MARIES AT
NIGHT " 122
FARM IN PROVENCE " 126
ROMAN GATEWAY AT ORANGE (ON THE
LYONS ROAD) " 134
LOOKING 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
IN THE CAMARGUE, FROM THE RAILWAY (_E. M. Synge_) 149
OLD BRIDGE AT ST. GILLES " 155
ST. TROPHIME, ARLES (_Joseph Pennell_) 161
LES ALISCAMPS, ARLES " 166
ARLES FROM THE RIVER " 169
ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES (_E. M. Synge_) 170
TARASCON FROM BEAUCAIRE, SHOWING KING RENÉ'S
CASTLE " 192
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
FOUNTAIN GARDEN (_Joseph Pennell_) 215
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
LA 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
LES BAUX FROM THE ROAD TO ARLES (_E. M. Synge_) 317
WINDOW IN RUINED HOUSE OF A SEIGNEUR OF LES
BAUX " 319
LES BAUX FROM THE ROAD TO ST. REMY, SHOWING
PLATFORM IN FRONT OF CHURCH OF ST.
VINCENT " 331
AT LES BAUX (_E. M. Synge_) 337
LES BAUX FROM LEVEL OF THE TOWN " 341
OLD HOUSE, ST. REMY " 345
THE CHURCH DOOR, SAINTES MARIES (_Joseph Pennell_) 353
LA 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
CAMARGUE " 388
AIGUES MORTES, LOOKING ALONG THE WALLS " 391
THE CHURCH OF LES SAINTES MARIES SEEN FROM
THE CAMARGUE (_Joseph Pennell_) 394
CROSS IN VILLAGE SQUARE AT LES
SAINTES MARIES (_E. M. Synge_) 396
LES 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.
[Illustration: A PROVENÇAL ROAD.
_By Joseph Pennell._]
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.