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.
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