CHAPTER XX

AN INN PARLOUR

After dinner—which by the way was of extraordinary excellence—we were invited to the parlour of mine host, and felt like travellers in some old romance on the eve of antique adventures. Nothing antique, however, happened, except, indeed, the odd gathering of the family and the guests of the hotel, and the talk that went circling cheerfully round the fire in the little dull-tinted room. The dulness of colouring was the result of long use; everything having faded into harmony and grown together through long and affectionate association.

Besides Madame and a pretty niece who was staying with her, there were two youths employed in the seed industry, who lived in the town and came in every evening for their dinner. They were on terms of friendly intimacy with the host and hostess who evidently regarded their office in other lights than that of mere commercial enterprise. They looked upon their guests as under their charge, and their desire was to minister to their comfort and pleasure in every possible way. Monsieur and one of the youths played draughts, Madame sewed and chatted, and Mademoiselle, the niece, made herself generally agreeable. Between the two youths was a mild rivalry for her smiles. We, as strangers, were treated with special courtesy.

Madame and her husband did the honours of their homely salon most gracefully. The conversation turned on the Monuments of St. Remy, its objects of interest which strangers come to see, and its excursions: Les Baux above all, on the other side of the Alpilles.

"Une ville trÈs ancienne, sculptÉe dans les rochers, toute ÉlevÉe au dessus de la vallÉe—mais une citÉ vraiment remarquable, Mesdames. Vous devez certainment y aller."

And we decided at once to do so, arranging to have a trap to take us across the mountains on the following morning.

Meanwhile we gathered further information about St. Remy itself. There is La Maison de la Reine Jeanne, in which the family of the famous Mistral has lived for generations. In the foundations were discovered the bones of an elephant and various weapons, all supposed to be relics of Hannibal's passage through the country at the foot of the Alpilles.

The famous poet, however, does not live in this historical home at St. Remy, but at Maillane, a little village of the plain about seven kilometres distant. The house, to which many a pious pilgrimage has been made, is square and white and stands in a little shady garden with a high wall and iron gate facing the village street. Thanks to the poet and his colleagues the ancient costume still lingers at Maillane and at St. Remy, and on Sundays the women go to church in the soft, white fichu and picturesque head-dress that one has learnt to associate with the women of Arles. The ProvenÇal type is characteristic; dark eyes and hair, olive skin, and a singularly fine carriage of the figure and head.

Mistral and his fellow FÉlibres have much to do with the survival of art and old customs. One of this little band of modern troubadours lives still, as we learn, in the house of his family at St. Remy, and Mistral (as we have seen) is not far away across the plain, faithful always to the land that he loves so deeply and labours so hard to preserve in its ancient beauty, ancient faiths and ancient language. I had afterwards the privilege of visiting Mistral at Maillane and M. Girard and his wife at St. Remy, and of hearing them speak with intense enthusiasm and affection of the Provence that is passing away. M. Girard's angry melancholy at the erasure of all character and individuality from lands and peoples was pathetic and impressive.

He exhibited his fine collection of ancient furniture, crockery, pewter, and a thousand beautiful relics: among them a splendid example of the "CrÊche," that quaint ProvenÇal institution with which the children are made happy every Christmas. It is a modelled representation of the coming of the Magi, but on this root idea the artists of Provence have grafted many additions. The Virgin, beautifully sculptured and coloured, sits in a hilly landscape and holds a sort of grand reception: Magi and other distinguished visitors surround her, while shepherds, merchants, publicans and sinners, varied by ornate donkey-drivers and goatherds, are perched on hill-tops among companionable windmills about their own size; and peasants are lavishly distributed in very green meadows in the vicinity; all congregated to offer homage to the Madonna and the haloed Babe. The crÊche is reverently veiled with a curtain on ordinary days, and its owner drew this aside and lighted the candles to illumine the treasured heirloom which has delighted so many generations ... and not alone of children.

Our hostess of the HÔtel de Provence was learned about the seed industry of St. Remy, and explained how ruthlessly every bloom is nipped off and prevented from seeding if it does not answer truly to its type. That was how the splendid flowers were achieved: viz., by a persistent interference with the ordinary course of nature—a fact which gives food for thought. Besides flowers, St. Remy has some fine vegetables to boast of. I had often noticed strange, unknown, gourd-like things, bright red or yellow, in the shop windows. The cornichon serpent, "ce lÉgume extravagant," as somebody calls it, is said to measure nearly two metres! But that immoderate object we never saw.

We were out betimes next morning, in the rose-garden which was glistening with dew. The Garden of Pleasure truly, guarded by the mournful cypresses! That seemed full of significance: the Roses of Pleasure sheltered by those dark trees of Experience and Grief.

Burns sings that "pleasures are like poppies"; and so perhaps they are, but there are some that are more like roses—Roses of Provence!

They are the sort of pleasures of which that strange pot-pourri that we call happiness is made. For surely there is such a thing as happiness, though the science of it is as hard to learn as any other; perhaps harder than them all. Maybe it is necessary for us unteachable mortals to have torn our way—bruised and bleeding—through that black line of cypresses before we come in sight of it.

If happiness is a will-o'-the-wisp, is it so because of the eternal nature of things, or because, as Carlyle frankly insists, men are mostly fools? Would not every desired object assume an elusive character if as soon as we came in touch with it, we flew off on the hunt for something else? On this principle we must go through life unpossessed of our own fortunes, strangers and pilgrims in our own kingdom. Barbara and I agreed that we would not forget to gather the roses in our ProvenÇal garden for the illusive sake of other roses further afield.

In this little mediÆval pleasure city it seemed natural to speculate about the life of the Middle Ages, and we wondered if part of the sad secret of those times lay in that inveterate habit of the human mind to look for the Earthly Paradise round the next corner. For then, possibly, there was only a sage here and there who had learnt the folly of it through long and footsore wanderings in the desert which stretches unremittingly between the traveller and his mirage Eden. The restless barbarous manners of the age must have made the truth harder to understand than it need be to us who have many centuries of growing experience behind us, both as a hereditary influence and as an object-lesson in the conduct of life.

Incessant war and struggle, with no great results, but only further struggle, further war as the fruit of the lifelong contest: such was the mediÆval life, and no one saw its absurdity. Not a trace of the old Greek spirit remained; not a vestige of the philosophies of the East, except perhaps in the cloister, and even here, at its best, the religion partook of the objective character of the general life, and placed the site of "heaven" for the saint, as the sinner placed his happiness,—round the next corner.

In those mad, picturesque, mediÆval days St. Remy used to be the country retreat of the Counts of Provence. They here retired from the excitements of their capital at Aix, the learned little city a few leagues to the northeast, beyond the Alpilles. We afterwards visited Aix, and found another larger town of plane-avenues, more dignified, more important, but almost as silent and forgotten as St. Remy itself. One could not but wonder what the Counts had found of country joys at St. Remy that they could not have commanded at the old city of Sextius with its shady ways and gardens.

But, in fact, the human mind seeks not merely a change from excitement to repose; it demands a change of scene and a change of thought-atmosphere for its own sake.

During the whole of our stay at St. Remy we lived in an atmosphere of roses. We could not gather enough of them to please our host; and we used to have great bunches in our rooms placed on the window-sill, so that the sunlight filtered through their petals; and over them we could see the garden of their birth and the pale mountains beyond. Our very dreams were of roses and rose-gardens!

One evening, inspired by their loveliness, I arranged a wreath of them in Barbara's hair, added a creamy shawl flowing to her feet, and stood back to admire the result. It was something to be proud of! Our dull, discreet rÉgime of ladylike nonentities had disappeared, and there was the poetry, the unapologetic grace of the classic world.

Barbara rose to try to see herself in the minute mirror.

She gasped in dismay.

"No, no! you dare to take it off! There are some more roses to come yet." (The victim made a comic face of resignation.) "I want profusion."

"You do!" said Barbara, sitting down to laugh. "Am I to wear this costume when we go to Les Baux to-morrow?" she asked.

"It depends on the weather."

But, alas! as soon as active opposition was withdrawn, Barbara removed the improvised costume, took the roses out of her hair and the vision of the ancient world faded away. When we went down to dinner we both of us had on our sombre prison garments.

And though Barbara laughed, I knew that the world was a sadder and a drearier place because of it!