Mona Caird

"Beauty gives men the best hint of ultimate good which their experience as yet can offer."

"The Life of Reason"—George Santayana.

CHAPTER VIII

ORANGE AND MARTIGUES

Every one who has travelled in mountain regions has been puzzled by the curious fact that the more peaks his journeyings reveal to him the more there are to reveal. The number of the mountains seems to increase in geometrical proportion and the traveller has presently to learn that, in spite of all appearances, the last towering summit that moves into view will presently become the platform from which he must crane his neck to contemplate a still more towering wooer of the clouds and a still grander scene of desolation and primÆval silence.

The traveller in Provence receives a similar impression in relation not to material but to historical immensities. No sooner has one spot been explored, than another mountain-peak of tradition comes into sight, luring ever farther afield.

This is one of the pains of the ardent traveller, and it forms a curious analogy with the life-journey itself, in which renunciation after renunciation has to be made, not merely of things far distant and beautiful, but of things beautiful and near, which only need the stretch of the hand to touch, but yet are farther from reach than the Pole-star itself. Among the serious renunciations that had to be made during our ProvenÇal visit must be counted CourthÉson, where one of our favourite troubadours, Raimbaut de Vacquciras, spent so many of his early days at the Court of Guilhelm des Baux (of whom more hereafter). Then there was Ventadour—not exactly near, but still within hail—once so brilliant a centre of learning and song; and Salon, the reputed scene of Mary Magdalene's later life. Of this bright little prosperous city, famous for its oil trade, with its dripping fountain and grey donjon, we did catch an early morning glimpse en route for an inexorable train. Rocamadour, full of romantic beauty; Le Puy, strangest of rock-set cities; ill-fated BÉziers, of the Albigensian wars; Dragignan, and a hundred others were one and all alluring and unattainable.

A few hours between trains permitted a visit to Orange and its great theatre and triumphal arch, which redeem the place from a somewhat featureless commonplace.

We had to ask our way to the theatre, unluckily of some perfidious inhabitant whose misdirection would have landed us in the suburbs, had not Fortune, in the shape of a dapper youth in the first rosy flush of a dawning moustache, come to the rescue.

In the pursuit of his father's trade as a corn-dealer, he had travelled and learnt English together with a becoming admiration for the British nation, his enlightenment being assisted by an English mother. It seemed strange to think of an Englishwoman settled down in this little French provincial town, but as our guide chattered on, unconsciously revealing the life of the place, it was clear that French provincial human nature is much the same as any other. Heartburning, gossip, jealousies, stupendous proprieties, "convenances" of the most all-shadowing and abstruse kind made up the dreary existence of the inhabitants. Wretched "jeunes filles" unable to cross a street unattended, mothers on the prowl for husbands for the "jeunes filles" (our young friend intimated delicately that he had a perilous time of it among enterprising parents); the men intent on business and the recreations of the cafÉ and so forth—it all sounded disheartening enough, and the hopelessness of it seemed to settle on the spirit like a blight.

Our guide regarded his native town with disdain. Its narrow streets and dingy aspect he pointed out with ironical pomp.

"This, you see, is our main street. Magnificent you cannot deny!" Had he not travelled and seen better things?

But the great monuments?

The youth shrugged his shoulders.

For those who liked that sort of thing——!

From behind blinds of discreet windows inquiring heads might often be seen peering out at our quaint procession of three, and our guide would then pull himself up and step out with a brisk experienced stride, as of one who has relations with a world that is not Orange!

But those faces dimly seen behind blinds—one smiled, but they brought a shiver at the same time.

"English tourists often come to have a look at the monuments, and then I always try to act as guide. I like to talk to them—I get so tired of living here. It is terrible!"

Poor budding, ambitious youth!

The great Roman theatre stands apart from the rest of the buildings, a vast, blank surface of masonry forming the faÇade. Inside are the circular tiers of seats, and up these we clambered to the top, looking down into the silent stage and feeling that familiar, bootless longing of the traveller for a glimpse of the scene in the days of its glory.

The Roman arch is at the farther end of the town, standing apart in its majesty, a grand forlorn monument of that wonderful people.

It was hard sometimes to steer among so many possibilities of adventure. It behoved us to choose wisely since time and tide were hastening. But perhaps it was we, not time and tide, that were really hastening. These do not hasten; it is only their unhappy victims who are never ready for their coming. To the truly wise and understanding mind, doubtless, haste would be a thing unknown. Its possessor would be able to meditate serenely between trains at Clapham Junction.

But for less accomplished mortals the sense of limited time with otherwise unlimited opportunity, tends to a certain breathlessness which, however, in our case, gradually gave way before the influences of the country.

One of the places that we had to renounce, might, from all accounts, have been a sort of Finishing School for students of Serenity. This was Martigues, the little town on the Etang de Berre, where all good painters go when they die. They also wisely go there in swarms before they die. They place here, in opposition to orthodox scholarship, the site of the Garden of Eden. And judging by their records, this, if mistaken, is not surprising. The place induces on a suitable temperament a sort of sketching debauch:—Martigues from the Lagoon; Old Houses, Martigues; Churches, Martigues; Groups of Boats, Martigues; Nooks and Corners, Martigues; the Harbour, Martigues; Sailors and Fishermen, Martigues; Martigues in the Morning; Martigues at Noon; Martigues at Night; Martigues ad infinitum.

Quiet waterways among the mellowest of old houses, churches keeping tranquil guard above the ripple of the lagoon; the silence of the sunny port cheerily broken by cries of sailors and bargemen, by the drowsy life of the place; lights and shadows, colour in every tone, form in a thousand avatars; creepers clambering over decaying walls, flowers in odd crannies; all this offers infinitely more attraction to the artist than all our Horticultural-Gardens-of-Paradise put together. So it is not to Heaven that he goes, if he can help it; he goes to Martigues.

He is never tired of it, as his numerous sketches show.

Not to have seen Martigues is a precious privilege in its way: it is a life-long safeguard against satiety; for then, whatever comes, one unfulfilled desire at least remains: to see Martigues—and sketch!