RAMBLES ON
THE RIVIERA

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CHAPTER I.
A PLEA FOR PROVENCE

“À Valence, le Midi commence!” is a saying of the French, though this RhÔne-side city, the Julia-Valentia of Roman times, is in full view of the snow-clad Alps. It is true, however, that as one descends the valley of the torrential RhÔne, from Lyons southward, he comes suddenly upon a brilliancy of sunshine and warmth of atmosphere, to say nothing of many differences in manners and customs, which are reminiscent only of the southland itself. Indeed this is even more true of Orange, but a couple of scores of miles below, whose awning-hung streets, and open-air workshops are as brilliant and Italian in motive as Tuscany itself. Here at Orange one has before him the most wonderful old Roman arch outside of Italy, and an amphitheatre so great and stupendous in every way, and so perfectly preserved, that he may well wonder if he has not crossed some indefinite frontier and plunged into the midst of some strange land he knew not of.

The history of Provence covers so great a period of time that no one as yet has attempted to put it all into one volume, hence the lover of wide reading, with Provence for a subject, will be able to give his hobby full play.

The old Roman Provincia, and later the mediÆval Provence, were prominent in affairs of both Church and State, and many of the momentous incidents which resulted in the founding and aggrandizing of the French nation had their inception and earliest growth here. There may be some doubts as to the exact location of the FossÉs Mariennes of the Romans, but there is not the slightest doubt that it was from Avignon that there went out broadcast, through France and the Christian world of the fourteenth century, an influence which first put France at the head of the civilizing influences of Christendom.

The Avignon popes planned a vast cosmopolitan monarchy, of which France should be the head, and Avignon the new Rome.

The Roman emperors exercised their influence throughout all this region long before, and they left enduring monuments wherever they had a foothold. At Orange, St. RÉmy, Avignon, Arles, and NÎmes there were monumental arches, theatres, and arenas, quite the equal of those of Rome itself, not in splendour alone, but in respect as well to the important functions which they performed.

The later middle ages somewhat dimmed the ancient glories of the Romanesque school of monumental architecture—though it was by no means pure, as the wonderfully preserved and dainty Greek structures at NÎmes and Vienne plainly show—and the roofs of theatres and arenas fell in and walls crumbled through the stress of time and weather.

In spite of all the decay that has set in, and which still goes on, a short journey across Provence wonderfully recalls other days. The traveller who visits Orange, and goes down the valley of the RhÔne, by Avignon, St. RÉmy, Arles, NÎmes, Aix, and Marseilles, will be an ill-informed person indeed if he cannot construct history for himself anew when once he is in the midst of this multiplicity of ancient shrines.

Day by day things are changing, and even old Provence is fast coming under the influences of electric railroads and twentieth-century ideas of progress which bid fair to change even the face of nature: Marseilles is to have a direct communication with the RhÔne and the markets of the north by means of a canal cut through the mountains of the Estaque, and a great port is to be made of the Étang de Berre (perhaps), and trees are to be planted on the bare hills which encircle the Crau, with the idea of reclaiming the pebbly, sandy plain.

No doubt the deforestation of the hillsides has had something to do, in ages past, with the bareness of the lower river-bottom of the RhÔne which now separates Arles from the sea. Almost its whole course below Arles is through a treeless, barren plain; but, certainly, there is no reflection of its unproductiveness in the lives of the inhabitants. There is no evidence in Arles or NÎmes, even to-day—when we know their splendour has considerably faded—of a poverty or dulness due to the bareness of the neighbouring country.

Irrigation will accomplish much in making a wilderness blossom like the rose, and when the time and necessity for it really comes there is no doubt but that the paternal French government will take matters into its own hands and turn the Crau and the Camargue into something more than a grazing-ground for live-stock. Even now one need not feel that there is any “appalling cloud of decadence” hanging over old Provence as some travellers have claimed.

The very best proof one could wish, that Provence is not a poor impoverished land, is that the best of everything is grown right in her own boundaries,—the olive, the vine, the apricot, the peach, and vegetables of the finest quality. The mutton and beef of the Crau, the Camargue, and the hillsides of the coast ranges are most excellent, and the fish supply of the Mediterranean is varied and abundant; loup, turbot, thon, mackerel, sardines, and even sole,—which is supposed to be the exclusive specialty of England and Normandy,—with langouste and coquillages at all times. No cook will quarrel with the supply of his market, if he lives anywhere south of Lyons; and Provence, of all the ancient gouvernements of France, is the land above all others where all are good cooks,—a statement which is not original with the author of this book, but which has come down since the days of the old rÉgime, when Provence was recognized as “la patrie des grands maÎtres de cuisine.”

“It was September, and it was Provence,” are the opening words of Daudet’s “Port Tarascon.” What more significant words could be uttered to awaken the memories of that fair land in the minds of any who had previously threaded its highways and byways? From the days of Petrarch writers of many schools have sung its praises, and the literature of the subject is vast and varied, from that of the old geographers to the last lays of Mistral, the present deity of ProvenÇal letters.

The Loire divides France on a line running from the southeast to the middle of the west coast, parting the territory into two great divisions, which in the middle ages had a separate form of legislation, of speech, and of literature. The language south of the Loire was known as the langue d’oc (an expression which gave its name to a province), so called from the fact, say some etymologists and philologists, that the expression of affirmation in the romance language of the south was “oc” or “hoc.” Dialects were common enough throughout this region, as elsewhere in France; but there was a certain grammatical resemblance between them all which distinguished them from the speech of the Bretons and Normans in the north. This southern language was principally distinguished from northern French by the existence of many Latin roots, which in the north had been eliminated. Foreign influences, curiously enough, had not crept in in the south, and, like the Spanish and the Italian speech, that of Languedoc (and Provence) was of a dulcet mildness which in its survival to-day, in the chief ProvenÇal districts, is to be remarked by all.

Northward of the Loire the langue d’oeil was spoken, and this language in its ultimate survival, with the interpolation of much that was Germanic, came to be the French that is known to-day.

The ProvenÇal tongue, even the more or less corrupt patois of to-day which Mistral and the other FÉlibres are trying to purify, is not so bad after all, nor so bizarre as one might think. It does not resemble French much more than it does Italian, but it is astonishingly reminiscent of many tongues, as the following quatrain familiar to us all will show:

An Esperantist should find this easy.

The literary world in general has always been interested in the FÉlibres of the land of “la verte olive, la mure vermeille, la grappe de vie, croissant ensemble sous un ciel d’azur,” and they recognize the “littÉrature provenÇale” as something far more worthy of being kept alive than that of the Emerald Isle, which is mostly a fad of a few pedants so dead to all progress that they even live their lives in the past.

This is by no means the case with the ProvenÇal school. The life of the FÉlibres and their followers is one of a supreme gaiety; the life of a veritable pays de la cigale, the symbol of a sentiment always identified with Provence.

Of the original founders of the FÉlibres three names stand out as the most prominent: Mistral, who had taken his honours at the bar, Roumanille, a bookseller of Avignon, and Theodore Aubanal. For the love of their pays and its ancient tongue, which was fast falling into a mere patois, they vowed to devote themselves to the perpetuation of it and the reviving of its literature.

In 1859 “MirÈio,” Mistral’s masterpiece, appeared, and was everywhere recognized as the chief literary novelty of the age. Mistral went to Paris and received the plaudits of the literary and artistic world of the capital. He and his works have since come to be recognized as “le miroir de la Provence.”

The origin of the word “fÉlibre” is most obscure. Mistral first met with it in an ancient ProvenÇal prayer, the “Oration of St. Anselm,” “emÈ li sÉt fÉlibre de la lÉi.”

Philologists have discussed the origin and evolution of the word, and here the mystic seven of the FÉlibres again comes to the fore, as there are seven explanations, all of them acceptable and plausible, although the majority of authorities are in favour of the Greek word philabros—“he who loves the beautiful.”

Of course the movement is caused by the local pride of the ProvenÇaux, and it can hardly be expected to arouse the enthusiasm of the Bretons, the Normans, or the native sons of the Aube. In fact, there are certain detractors of the work of the FÉlibres who profess regrets that the French tongue should be thus polluted. The aspersion, however, has no effect on the true ProvenÇal, for to him his native land and its tongue are first and foremost.

Truly more has been said and written of Provence that is of interest than of any other land, from the days of Petrarch to those of Mistral, in whose “Recollections,” recently published (1906), there is more of the fact and romance of history of the old province set forth than in many other writers combined.

Daudet was expressive when he said, in the opening lines of “Tartarin,” “It was September, and it was Provence;” Thiers was definite when he said, “At Valence the south commences;” and Felix Gras, and even Dumas, were eloquent in their praises of this fair land and its people.

Then there was an unknown who sang:

and who struck the note strong and true; but again and again we turn to Mistral, whose epic, “MirÈio,” indeed forms a mirror of Provence.

Madame de SÉvignÉ was wrong when she said: “I prefer the gamesomeness of the Bretons to the perfumed idleness of the ProvenÇaux;” at least she was wrong in her estimate of the ProvenÇaux, for her interests and her loves were ever in the north, at ChÂteau Grignan and elsewhere, in spite of her familiarity with Provence. She has some hard things to say also of the “mistral,” the name given to that dread north wind of the RhÔne valley, one of the three plagues of Provence; but again she exaggerates.

The “terrible mistral” is not always so terrible as it has been pictured. It does not always blow, nor, when it does come, does it blow for a long period, not even for the proverbial three, six, or nine days; but it is, nevertheless, pretty general along the whole south coast of France. It is the complete reverse of the sirocco of the African coast, the wind which blows hot from the African desert and makes the coast cities of Oran, Alger, and Constantine, and even Biskra, farther inland, the delightful winter resorts which they are.

In summer the “mistral,” when it blows, makes the coast towns and cities of the mouth of the RhÔne, and even farther to the east and west, cool and delightful even in the hottest summer months, and it always has a great purifying and healthful influence.

Ordinarily the “mistral” is faithful to tradition, but for long months in the winter of 1905-06 it only appeared at Marseilles, and then only to disappear again immediately. The ProvenÇal used to pray to be preserved from Æolus, son of Jupiter, but this particular season the god had forsaken all Provence. From the 31st of August to the 4th of September it blew with all its wonted vigour, with a violence which lifted roof-tiles and blew all before it, but until the first of the following March it made only fitful attempts, many of which expired before they were born.

There were occasions when it rose from its torpor and ruffled the waves of the blue Mediterranean into the white horses of the poets, but it immediately retired as if shorn of its former strength.

“C’est humiliant,” said the observer at the meteorological bureau at Marseilles, as he shut up shop and went out for his apÉritif.

All Provence was marvelling at the strange anomaly, and really seemed to regret the absence of the “mistral,” though they always cursed it loudly when it was present—all but the fisherfolk of the Étang de Berre and the old men who sheltered themselves on the sunny side of a wall and made the best use possible of the “cheminÉe du Roi RenÉ,” as the old pipe-smokers call the glorious sun of the south, which never seems so bright and never gives out so much warmth as when the “mistral” blows its hardest.

A Martigaux or a Marseillais would rather have the “mistral” than the damp humid winds from the east or northeast, which, curiously enough, brought fog with them on this abnormal occasion. The cafÉ gossips predicted that Marseilles, their beloved Marseilles with its CannebiÈre and its Prado, was degenerating into a fog-bound city like London, Paris, and Lyons. At Martigues the old sailors, those who had been toilers on the deep sea in their earlier years, told weird tales of the “pea-soup” fogs of London,—only they called them purÉes.

One thing, however, all were certain. The “mistral” was sure to drive all this moisture-laden atmosphere away. In the words of the song they chanted, “On n’sait quand y’r’viendra.” “Va-t-il prendre enfin?” “Je ne sais pas,” and so the fishermen of Martigues, and elsewhere on the Mediterranean coast, pulled their boats up on the shore and huddled around the cafÉ stoves and talked of the mauvais temps which was always with them. What was the use of combating against the elements? The fish would not rise in what is thought elsewhere to be fishermen’s weather. They required the “mistral” and plenty of it.

The Provence of the middle ages comprised a considerably more extensive territory than that which made one of the thirty-three general gouvernements of the ancient rÉgime. In fact it included all of the south-central portion of Languedoc, with the exception of the Comtat Venaissin (Avignon, Carpentras, etc.), and the ComtÉ de Nice.

In Roman times it became customary to refer to the region simply as “the province,” and so, in later times, it became known as “Provence,” though officially and politically the Narbonnaise, which extended from the Pyrenees to Lyons, somewhat hid its identity, the name Provence applying particularly to that region lying between the RhÔne and the Alps.

The Provence of to-day, and of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a wider region which includes the mouth of the RhÔne, Marseilles, and the Riviera. It was that portion of France which first led the Roman legions northward, and, earlier even, gave a resting-place to the venturesome Greeks and Phoceans who, above all, sought to colonize wherever there was a possibility of building up great seaports. The chief Phocean colony was Marseilles, or Massilia, which was founded under the two successive immigrations of the years 600 and 542 B. C.

In 1150, when the Carlovingian empire was dismembered, there was formed the ComtÉ and Marquisat of Provence, with capitals at Avignon and Aix, the small remaining portion becoming known as the ComtÉ d’Orange.

Under the comtes Provence again flourished, and a brilliant civilization was born in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which gave almost a new literature and a new art to those glorious gems of the French Crown. The school of Romanesque church-building of Provence, of which the most entrancing examples are still to be seen at Aix, Arles, St. Gilles, and Cavaillon, spread throughout Languedoc and DauphinÉ, and gave an impetus to a style of church-building which was the highest form of artistic expression.

It was at this time, too, that ProvenÇal literature took on that expressive form which set the fashion for the court versifiers of the day, the troubadours and the trouvÈres of which the old French chronicles are so full. The speech of the ProvenÇal troubadours was so polished and light that it lent itself readily to verses and dialogues which, for their motives, mostly touched on love and marriage. Avignon, Aix, and Les Baux were very “courts of love,” presided over—said a chivalrous French writer—by ladies of renown, who elaborated a code of gallantry and the droits de la femme which were certainly in advance of their time.

The reign of RenÉ II. of Sicily and Anjou, called “le bon Roi RenÉ,” brought all this love of letters to the highest conceivable plane and constituted an era hitherto unapproached,—as marked, indeed, and as brilliant, as the Renaissance itself.

The troubadours and the “courts of love” have gone for ever from Provence, and there is only the carnival celebrations of Nice and Cannes and the other Riviera cities to take their place. These festivities are poor enough apologies for the splendid pageants which formerly held forth at Marseilles and Aix, where the titled dignitary of the celebration was known as the “Prince d’Amour,” or at Aubagne, Toulon, or St. Tropez, where he was known as the “Capitaine de Ville.”

The carnival celebrations of to-day are all right in their way, perhaps, but their spirit is not the same. What have flower-dressed automobiles and hare and tortoise gymkanas got to do with romance anyway?

The pages of history are full of references to the Provence of the middle ages. Louis XI. annexed the province to the Crown in 1481, but Aix remained the capital, and this city was given a parliament of its own by Louis XII. The dignity was not appreciated by the inhabitants, for the parliamentary benches were filled with the nobility, who, as was the custom of the time, sought to oppress their inferiors. As a result there developed a local saying that the three plagues of Provence were its parliament; its raging river, the stony-bedded Durance; and the “mistral,” the cold north wind that blows with severe regularity for three, six, or nine days, throughout the RhÔne valley.

Charles V. invaded Provence in 1536, and the League and the Fronde were disturbing influences here as elsewhere.

The ComtÉ d’Orange was annexed by France, by virtue of the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, and the Comtat Venaissin was acquired from the Italian powers in 1791.

Toulon played a great part in the later history of Provence, when it underwent its famous siege by the troops of the Convention in 1793.

Napoleon set foot in France, for his final campaign, on the shores of the Golfe Jouan, in 1815.

History-making then slumbered for a matter of a quarter of a century. Then, in 1848, Menton and Roquebrune revolted against the Princes of Monaco and came into the French fold. It was as late as 1860, however, that the ComtÉ de Nice was annexed.

This, in brief, is a rÉsumÉ of some of the chief events since the middle ages which have made history in Provence.

It is but a step across country from the RhÔne valley to Marseilles, that great southern gateway of modern France through which flows a ceaseless tide of travel.

Here, in the extreme south, on the shores of the great blue, tideless Mediterranean, all one has previously met with in Provence is further magnified, not only by the brilliant cosmopolitanism of Marseilles itself, but by the very antiquity of its origin. East and west of Marseilles and the Bouches-du-RhÔne is a region, French to-day,—as French as any of those old provinces of mediÆval times which go to make up the republican solidarity of modern France,—but which in former times was as foreign to France and things French as is modern Spain or Italy.

To the eastward, toward Italy, was the ancient independent ComtÉ de Nice, and, on the west, Catalonia once included the region where are to-day the French cities of Perpignan, Elne and Agde.

Of all the delectable regions of France, none is of more diversified interest to the dweller in northern climes than “La Provence Maritime,” that portion which includes what the world to-day recognizes as the Riviera. Here may be found the whole galaxy of charms which the present-day seeker after health, edification, and pleasure demands from the antiquarian and historical interests of old Provence and the Roman occupation to the frivolous gaieties of Nice and Monte Carlo.

Tourists, more than ever, keep to the beaten track. In one way this is readily enough accounted for. Well-worn roads are much more common than of yore and they are more accessible, and travellers like to keep “in touch,” as they call it, with such unnecessary things as up-to-date pharmacies, newspapers, and lending libraries, which, in the avowed tourist resorts of the French and Italian Rivieras, are as accessible as they are on the Rue de Rivoli. There are occasional by-paths which radiate from even these centres of modernity which lead one off beyond the reach of steam-cars and fils tÉlÉgraphiques; but they are mostly unworn roads to all except peasants who drive tiny donkeys in carts and carry bundles on their heads.One might think that no part of modern France was at all solitary and unknown; but one has only to recall Stevenson’s charming “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” to realize that then there were regions which English readers and travellers knew not of, and the same is almost true to-day.

Provence has been the fruitful field for antiquarians and students of languages, manners, customs, and political and church history, of all nationalities, for many long years; but the large numbers of travellers who annually visit the sunny promenades of Nice or Cannes never think for a moment of spending a winter at Martigues, the ProvenÇal Venice, or at NÎmes, or Arles, or Avignon, where, if the “mistral” does blow occasionally, the surroundings are quite as brilliant as on the coast itself, the midday sun just as warm, and the sundown chill no more frigid than it is at either Cannes or Nice.

Truly the whole Mediterranean coast, from Barcelona to Spezzia in Italy, together with the cities and towns immediately adjacent, forms a touring-ground more varied and interesting even than Touraine, often thought the touring-ground par excellence. The ProvenÇal Riviera itinerary has, moreover, the advantage of being more accessible than Italy or Spain, the Holy Land or Egypt, and, until one has known its charms more or less intimately, he has a prospect in store which offers more of novelty and delightfulness than he has perhaps believed possible so near to the well-worn track of southern travel.

CHAPTER II.
THE PAYS D’ARLES

THE Pays d’Arles is one of those minor sub-divisions of undefined, or at least ill-defined, limits that are scattered all over France. Local feeling runs high in all of them, and the Arlesien professes a great contempt for the Martigaux or the inhabitant of the Pays de Cavaillon, even though their territories border on one another; though indeed all three join hands when it comes to standing up for their beloved Provence.

There are sixty towns and villages in the Pays d’Arles, extending from Tarascon and Beaucaire to Les Saintes Maries, St. Mitre, and Fos-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, and eastward to Lambesc, the pays enveloping La Crau and the Étang de Berre within its imaginary borders. Avignon and Vaucluse are its neighbours on the north and northeast, and, taken all in all, it is as historic and romantic a region as may be found in all Europe.

The literary guide-posts throughout Provence are numerous and prominent, though they cannot all be enumerated here. One may wander with Petrarch in and around Avignon and Vaucluse; he may coast along Dante’s highway of the sea from the Genoese seaport to Marseilles; he may tarry with Tartarin at Tarascon; or may follow in the footsteps of Edmond Dantes from Marseilles to Beaucaire and Bellegarde; and in any case he will only be in a more appreciative mood for the wonderful works of Mistral and his fellows of the FÉlibres.

The troubadours and the “courts of love” have gone the way of all mediÆval institutions and nothing has quite come up to take their place, but the memory of all the literary history of the old province is so plentifully bestrewn through the pages of modern writers of history and romance that no spot in the known world is more prolific in reminders of those idyllic times than this none too well known and travelled part of old France.

If the spirit of old romance is so dead or latent in the modern traveller by automobile or the railway that he does not care to go back to mediÆval times, he can still turn to the pages of Daudet and find portraiture which is so characteristic of Tarascon and the country round about to-day that it may be recognized even by the stranger, though the inhabitant of that most interesting RhÔne-side city denies that there is the slightest resemblance.

Then there is Felix Gras’s “Rouges du Midi,” first written in the ProvenÇal tongue. One must not call the tongue a patois, for the ProvenÇal will tell you emphatically that his is a real and pure tongue, and that it is the Breton who speaks a patois.

From the ProvenÇal this famous tale of Felix Gras was translated into French and speedily became a classic. It is romance, if you like, but most truthful, if only because it proves Carlyle and his estimates of the celebrated “Marseilles Battalion” entirely wrong. Even in the English translation the tale loses but little of its originality and colour, and it remains a wonderful epitome of the traits and characters of the ProvenÇaux.

Dumas himself, in that time-tried (but not time-worn) romance of “Monte Cristo,” rises to heights of topographical description and portrait delineations which he scarcely ever excelled.

Every one has read, and supposedly has at his finger-tips, the pages of this thrilling romance, but if he is journeying through Provence, let him read it all again, and he will find passages of a directness and truthfulness that have often been denied this author—by critics who have taken only an arbitrary and prejudiced view-point.

Marseilles, the scene of the early career of Dantes and the lovely MercÉdÈs, stands out perhaps most clearly, but there is a wonderful chapter which deals with the Pays d’Arles, and is as good topographical portraiture to-day as when it was written.

Here are some lines of Dumas which no traveller down the RhÔne valley should neglect to take as his guide and mentor if he “stops off”—as he most certainly should—at Tarascon, and makes the round of Tarascon, Beaucaire, Bellegarde, and the Pont du Gard.

“Such of my readers as may have made a pedestrian journey to the south of France may perhaps have noticed, midway between the town of Beaucaire and the village of Bellegarde, a small roadside inn, from the front of which hung, creaking and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered with a rude representation of the ancient Pont du Gard.”

There is nothing which corresponds to this ancient inn sign to be seen to-day, but any one of a dozen humble houses by the side of the canal which runs from Beaucaire to Aigues Mortes might have been the inn in question, kept by the unworthy Caderousse, with whom Dantes, disguised as the abbÉ, had the long parley which ultimately resulted in his getting on the track of his former defamers.

Dumas’s further descriptions were astonishingly good, as witness the following:

“The place boasted of what, in these parts, was called a garden, scorched beneath the ardent sun of this latitude, with its soil giving nourishment to a few stunted olive and dingy fig trees, around which grew a scanty supply of tomatoes, garlic, and eschalots, with a sort of a lone sentinel in the shape of a scrubby pine.”

If this were all that there was of Provence, the picture might be thought an unlovely one, but there is a good deal more, though often enough one does see—just as Dumas pictured it—this sort of habitation, all but scorched to death by the dazzling southern sun.

At the time of which Dumas wrote, the canal between Beaucaire and Aigues Mortes had just been opened and the traffic which once went on by road between this vast trading-place (for the annual fair of Beaucaire, like that of Guibray in Normandy, and to some extent like that of Nijni Novgorod, was one of the most considerable of its kind in the known world) and the cities and towns of the southwest came to be conducted by barge and boat, and so Caderousse’s inn had languished from a sheer lack of patronage.

Dumas does not forget his tribute to the women of the Pays d’Arles, either; and here again he had a wonderfully facile pen. Of Caderousse and his wife he says:

“Like other dwellers of the southland, Caderousse was a man of sober habits and moderate desires, but fond of external show and display and vain to a degree. During the days of his prosperity, not a fÊte or a ceremonial took place but that he and his wife were participants. On these occasions he dressed himself in the picturesque costume worn at such times by the dwellers in the south of France, bearing an equal resemblance to the style worn by Catalans and Andalusians.

“His wife displayed the charming fashion prevalent among the women of Arles, a mode of attire borrowed equally from Greece and Arabia, with a glorious combination of chains, necklaces, and scarves.”

The women of the Pays d’Arles have the reputation of being the most beautiful of all the many types of beautiful women in France, and they are faithful, always, to what is known as the costume of the pays, which, it must be understood, is something more than the coiffe which usually marks the distinctive dress of a petit pays.

It is a common error among rhapsodizing tourists who have occasionally stopped at Arles, en route to the pleasures of the Riviera, to suppose that the original Arlesien costume is that seen to-day. As a matter of fact it dates back only about four generations, and it was well on in the forties of the nineteenth century when the ruban-diadÈme and the Phrygian coiffe came to be the caprice of the day. In this form it has, however, endured throughout all the sixty villages and towns of the pays.

The ruban-diadÈme, the coiffe, the corsage, the fichu, the jupon, and a chain bearing, usually, a Maltese cross, all combine to set off in a marvellous manner the loveliness of these large-eyed beauties of Provence.

Only after they have reached their thirteenth or fourteenth year do the young girls assume the coiffure,—when they have commenced to see beyond their noses, as the saying goes in French,—when, until old age carries them off, they are always as jauntily dressed as if they were toujours en fÊte.

There is a romantic glamour about Arles, its arena, its theatre, its marvellously beautiful Church of St. Trophime, and much else that is fascinating to all travelled and much-read persons; and so Arles takes the chief place in the galaxy of old-time ProvenÇal towns, before even NÎmes, Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence.

Everything is in a state of decay at Arles; far more so, at least, than at NÎmes, where the arena is much better preserved, and the “Maison CarrÉe” is a gem which far exceeds any monument of Arles in its beauty and preservation; or at Orange, where the antique theatre is superb beyond all others, both in its proportions and in its existing state of preservation.

The charm of Arles lies in its former renown and in the reminders, fragmentary though some of them be, of its past glories. In short it is a city so rich in all that goes to make up the attributes of a “ville de l’art cÉlÈbre,” that it has a special importance.

Marseilles, among the cities of modern France, has usually been considered the most ancient; but even that existed as a city but six hundred years before the Christian era, whereas Anibert, a “savant ArlÉsien,” has stated that the founding of Arles dates back to fifteen hundred years before Christ, or nine hundred years before that of Marseilles. In the lack of any convincing evidence one way or another, one can let his sympathies drift where they will, but Arles certainly looks its age more than does Marseilles.

It would not be practicable here to catalogue all the monumental attractions of the Arles of a past day which still remain to remind one of its greatness. The best that the writer can do is to advise the traveller to take his ease at his inn, which in this case may be either the excellent HÔtel du Nord-Pinus—which has a part of the portico of the ancient forum built into its faÇade—or across the Place du Forum at the HÔtel du Forum. From either vantage-ground one will get a good start, and much assistance from the obliging patrons, and a day, a week, or a month is not too much to spend in this charming old-time capital.

Among the many sights of Arles three distinct features will particularly impress the visitor: the proximity of the RhÔne, the great arena and its neighbouring theatre, and the Cathedral of St. Trophime.

It was in the thirteenth century that Arles first came to distinction as one of the great Latin ports. The RhÔne had for ages past bathed its walls, and what more natural than that the river should be the highway which should bring the city into intercourse with the outside world?

Soon it became rich and powerful and bid fair to become a ship-owning community which should rival the coast towns themselves, and its “lion banners” flew masthead high in all the ports of the Mediterranean.

The navigation of the RhÔne at this time presented many difficulties; the estuary was always shifting, as it does still, though the question of navigating the river has been solved, or made the easier, by the engineering skill of the present day.

The cargoes coming by sea were transshipped into a curious sort of craft known as an allege, from which they were distributed to all the towns along the RhÔne. The carrying trade remained, however, in the hands of the Arlesiens. The great fair of Beaucaire, renowned as it was throughout all of Europe, contributed not a little to the traffic. For six weeks in each year it was a great market for all the goods and stuffs of the universe, and gave such a strong impetus to trade that the effects were felt throughout the year in all the neighbouring cities and towns.

The Cathedral of St. Trophime, as regards its portal and cloister, may well rank first among the architectural delights of its class. The decorations of its portal present a complicated drama of religious figures and symbols, at once austere and dignified and yet fantastic in their design and arrangement. There is nothing like it in all France, except its near-by neighbour at St. Gilles-du-RhÔne, and, in the beauty and excellence of its carving, it far excels the splendid faÇades of Amiens and Reims, even though they are more extensive and more magnificently disposed.

The main fabric of the church, and its interior, are ordinary enough, and are in no way different from hundreds of a similar type elsewhere; but in the cloister, to the rear, architectural excellence again rises to a superlative height. Here, in a justly proportioned quadrangle, are to be seen four distinct periods and styles of architectural decoration, from the round-headed arches of the colonnade on one side, up through the primitive Gothic on the second, the later and more florid variety on the third, and finally the debasement in Renaissance forms and outlines on the fourth. The effect is most interesting and curious both to the student of architectural art and to the lover of old churches, and is certainly unfamiliar enough in its arrangement to warrant hazarding the opinion that it is unique among the celebrated mediÆval cloisters still existing.

Immediately behind the cathedral are the remains of the theatre and the arena. Less well preserved than that at Orange, the theatre of the Arles of the Romans, a mere ruined waste to-day, gives every indication of having been one of the most important works of its kind in Gaul, although, judging from its present admirable state of preservation, that of Orange was the peer of its class.

To-day there are but a scattered lot of tumbled-about remains, much of the structure having gone to build up other edifices in the town, before the days when proper guardianship was given to such chronicles in stone. A great porte still exists, some arcades, two lone, staring columns,—still bearing their delicately sculptured capitals,—and numerous ranges of rising banquettes.

This old thÉÂtre romain must have been ornamented with a lavish disregard for expense, for it was in the ruins here that the celebrated Venus d’Arles was discovered in 1651, and given to Louis XIV. in 1683.

The arena is much better preserved than the theatre. It is a splendid and colossal monument, surpassing any other of its kind outside of Rome. Its history is very full and complete, and writers of the olden time have recounted many odious combats and many spectacles wherein ferocious beasts and gladiators played a part. To-day bull-fights, with something of an approach to the splendour of the Spanish variety, furnish the bloodthirsty of Arles with their amusement. There is this advantage in witnessing the sport at Arles: one sees it amid a mediÆval stage setting that is lacking in Spain.

It is in this arena that troops of wild beasts, brought from all parts of the empire, tore into pieces the poor unfortunates who were held captive in the prisons beneath the galleries. These dungeons are shown to-day, with much bloodthirsty recital, by the very painstaking guardian, who, for an appropriate, though small, fee, searches out the keys and opens the gateway to this imposing enclosure, where formerly as many as twenty-five thousand persons assemble to witness the cruel sacrifices.

Tiberius Nero—a name which has come to be a synonym of moral degradation—was one of the principal colonizers of Arles, and built, it is supposed, this arena for his savage pleasures. In its perfect state it would have been a marvel, but the barbarians partly ruined it and turned it into a sort of fortified camp. In a more or less damaged state it existed until 1825, when the parasitical structures which had been built up against its walls were removed, and it was freed to light and air for the traveller of a later day to marvel and admire.

Modern Arles has quite another story to tell; it is typical of all the traditions of the Provence of old, and it is that city of Provence that best presents the present-day life of southern France.

Even to-day the well-recognized type of Arlesienne ranks among the beautiful women of the world. Possessed of a carriage that would be remarked even on the boulevards of Paris, and of a beauty of feature that enables her to concede nothing to her sisters of other lands, the Arlesienne is ever a pleasing picture. As much as anything, it is the costume and the coiffe that contributes to her beauty, for the tiny white bonnet or cap, bound with a broad black ribbon, sets off her raven locks in a bewitching manner. Simplicity and harmony is the key-note of it all, and the women of Arles are not made jealous or conceited by the changing of Paris fashions.

The contrast between what is left of ancient Arles and the commercial aspect of the modern city is everywhere to be remarked, for Arles is the distributing-point for all the products of the Camargue and the Crau, and the life of the cafÉs and hotels is to a great extent that of the busy merchants of the town and their clients from far and near. All this gives Arles a certain air of metropolitanism, but it does not in the least overshadow the memories of its past.

In the open country northwest of Arles is the ancient Benedictine abbey of Montmajour, twice destroyed and twice reËrected. Finally abandoned in the thirteenth century, it was carefully guarded by the proprietors, until now it ranks as one of the most remarkable of the historical monuments of its kind in all France.

It has quite as much the appearance of a fortress as of a religious establishment, for its great fourteenth-century tower, with its mÂchicoulis and tourelles, suggest nothing churchly, but rather an attribute of a warlike stronghold.

The majestic church needs little in the way of rebuilding and restoration to assume the splendour that it must have had under its monkish proprietors of another day. Beneath is another edifice, much like a crypt, but which expert archÆologists tell one is not a crypt in the generally accepted sense of the term. At any rate it is much better lighted than crypts usually are, and looks not unlike an earlier edifice, which was simply built up and another story added.

The remains of the cloister are worthy to be classed in the same category as that wonderful work of St. Trophime, but whether the one inspired the other, or they both proceeded simultaneously, neither history nor the local antiquaries can state.

Besides the conventional buildings proper there are a primitive chapel and a hermitage once dedicated to the uses of St. Trophime. Since these minor structures, if they may be so called, date from the sixth century, they may be considered as among the oldest existing religious monuments in France. The “Commission des Monuments Historiques” guards the remains of this opulent abbey and its dependencies of a former day with jealous care, and if any restorations are undertaken they are sure to be carried out with taste and skill.

Near Montmajour is another religious edifice of more than passing remark, the Chapelle Ste. Croix. Its foundation has been attributed to Charlemagne, and again to Charles Martel, who gave to it the name which it still bears in commemoration of his victory over the Saracens. It is a simple but very beautiful structure, in the form of a Greek cross, and admirably vaulted and groined. There are innumerable sepulchres scattered about and many broken and separated funeral monuments, which show the prominence of this little commemorative chapel among those of its class.

Every seven years, that is to say whenever the 3d of May falls on a Friday (the anniversary of the victory of Charles Martel), the chapel becomes a place of pious pilgrimages for great numbers of the thankful and devout from all parts of France.

CHAPTER III.
ST. RÉMY DE PROVENCE

ST. RÉMY DE PROVENCE is delightful and indescribable in its quiet charm. It’s not so very quiet either—at times—and its great FÊte de St. RÉmy in October is anything but quiet. On almost any summer Sunday, too, its cafÉs and terraces, and the numerous tree-bordered squares and places, and its Cours—the inevitable adjunct of all ProvenÇal towns—are as gay with the life of the town and the country round about as any local metropolis in France.

The local merchants call St. RÉmy “toujours un pays mort,” but in spite of this they all eke out considerably more than what a full-blooded Burgundian would call a good living. As a matter of fact the population of St. RÉmy live on something approaching the abundance of good things of the CÔte d’Or itself. There is perhaps nothing remarkable about this, in the midst of a mild and pleasant land like Provence; but it seems wise to state it here, for we know of an Englishman who stayed three days at St. RÉmy’s most excellent Grand HÔtel de Provence and complained because he did not get beefsteaks or ham and eggs for a single meal! He got carp from Vaucluse, langouste from St. Louis-de-RhÔne, the finest sort of lamb (but not plain boiled, with cauliflower as a side dish), chickens of the real spring variety, or a brace of little wild birds which look like sparrows and taste like quail, but which are neither—with, as like as not, a bottle of ChÂteauneuf des Papes, grapes, figs, olives, and goat’s milk cheese. Either this, or a variation of it, was his daily menu for breakfast or dinner, and still he pined for beefsteaks! Had our traveller been an American he would perhaps have cried aloud for boiled codfish or pumpkin pie!

The hotel of St. RÉmy is to be highly commended in spite of all this, though the writer has only partaken of an occasional meal there. He got nearer the soil, living the greater part of one long bright autumn in the household of an estimable tradesman,—a baker by trade, though considering that he made a great accomplishment of it, it may well be reckoned a profession.

Up at three in the morning, he, with the assistance of a small boy,—some day destined to be his successor,—puts in his artistic touches on the patting and shaping of the various loaves, ultimately sliding them into the great low-ceiled brick oven with a sort of elongated snow-shovel such as bakers use the world over.

It was in his manipulating of things that the art of it all came in. Frenchmen will not all eat bread fashioned in the same form, and the cottage loaf is unknown in France. One may have a preference for a “pain mouffle,” a long sort of a roll; or, if he likes a crusty morsel, nothing but a “pistolet” or a “baton” will do him. Others will eat nothing but a great circular washer of bread—“comme un rond de cuir”—or a “tresse,” which is three plaited strands, also crusty. A favourite with toothless old veterans of the Crimea or beldames who have seen seventy or eighty summers is the “chapeau de gendarme,” a three-cornered sort of an affair with no crust to speak of.

By midday the baker-host had become the merchant of the town and had dressed himself in a garb more or less approaching city fashions, and seated himself in a sort of back parlour to the shop in front, which, however, served as a kitchen and a dining-room as well.

Many and bountiful and excellent were the meals eaten en famille in the room back of the shop, often enough in company with a beau-frÈre, who came frequently from Cavaillon, and a niece and her husband, who was an attorney, and who lived in a great Renaissance stone house opposite the fountain of Nostradamus, St. RÉmy’s chief titular deity.

These were the occasions when eating and drinking was as superlative an expression of the joy of life as one is likely to have experienced in these degenerate days when we are mostly nourished by means of patent foods and automatic buffets.

“My brother has a pretty taste in wine,” says the beau-frÈre from Cavaillon, as he opens another bottle of the wine of St. RÉmy, grown on the hillside just overlooking “les antiquitÉs.” Those relics of the Roman occupation are the pride of the citizen, who never tires of strolling up the road with a stranger, and pointing out the beauties of these really charming historical monuments. Truly M. Farges did have a pretty taste in wine, and he had a cellar as well stocked in quantity and variety as that of a Riviera hotel-keeper.

Not the least of the attractions of M. Farges’s board was the grace with which his Arlesienne wife presided over the good things of the casserole and the spit, that long skewer which, when loaded with a chicken, or a duck, or a dozen small birds, turned slowly by clockwork before a fire of olive-tree roots on the open hearth, or rather, on top of the fourneau, which was only used itself for certain operations. Baked meats and rÔti are two vastly different things in France.

“Marcel, he bakes the bread, and I cook for him,” says the jauntily coiffed, buxom little lady, whose partner Marcel had been for some thirty years. In spite of the passing of time, both were still young, or looked it, though they were of that ample girth which betokens good living, and, what is quite as important, good cooking; and madame’s taste in cookery was as “pretty” as her husband’s for bread-making and wine.

Given a casserole half-full of boiling oil (also a product of St. RÉmy’s; real olive-oil, with no dilution of cottonseed to flatten out the taste) and anything whatever eatable to drop in it, and Madame Farges will work wonders with her deftness and skill, and, like all good cooks, do it, apparently, by guesswork.

It is a marvel to the writer that some one has not written a book devoted to the little every-day happenings of the French middle classes. Manifestly the trades of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker have the same ends in view in France as elsewhere, but their procedure is so different, so very different.

It strikes the foreigner as strange that your baker here gives you a tally-stick, even to-day, when pass-books and all sorts of automatic calculators are everywhere to be found. It is a fact, however, that your baker does this at St. RÉmy; and regulates the length of your credit by the length of the stick, a plan which has many advantages for all concerned over other methods.

You arrange as to what your daily loaf shall be, and for every one delivered a notch is cut in the stick, which you guard as you would your purse; that is, you guard your half of it, for it has been split down the middle, and the worthy baker has a whole battery of these split sticks strung along the dashboard of his cart. The two separate halves are put together when the notch is cut across the joint, and there you have undisputable evidence of delivery. It’s very much simpler than the old backwoods system of keeping accounts on a slate, and wiping off the slate when they were paid, and it’s safer for all concerned. When you pay your baker at St. RÉmy, he steps inside your kitchen and puts the two sticks on the fire, and together you see them go up in smoke.

Baker’s Tally-sticks