This was not the end of the matter. In prison one of these culprits murdered another of his fellow boy-convicts because he thought the latter had given evidence against him. It is hard to say which came out worst in this affair, the Director, Chaplain, and warders, or the jury at Draguignan.
Although M. de Pourtalès was willing to renew the experiment, the establishment was not restored, and of the reformatory only the ruins remain.
Exceptional character of the Maures—Warm quarters in the Southern nooks of the chain—A future for them—The cork tree—The carob—The mulberry—The Saracens take possession of the chain—King Hugh makes terms with them: his history—Marozia—S. Majolus—William of Provence—Le Grand Fraxinet—Grimaud—S. Tropez—The Bravade.
A HUNCH of granite heaved up, and carrying on its back the beds of schist and gneiss that had overlain it, stands up between the Gapeau and the Argens. Its nearest geological relations, not connexions, are the Cevennes and Corsica, all pertaining to the same period of upheaval. Only to the east does the granite assert itself above the overlying formations. This mass of mountain is of no great elevation, never rising above 1,200 feet, and extending over a superficies of 200,000 acres.
“It forms by itself,” says Elisée Reclus, “an orographic system sharply limited. Its mass of granite, gneiss, and schist is separated from the surrounding limestone mountains by profound and wide valleys, those of the Aille, the Argens, and the Gapeau. In fact, it constitutes an _ensemble_ as distinct from the rest of Provence as if it were an island separated from the continent.”
The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast.
I know a farm kitchen where a pair of curved settees are drawn about the fire, and the gap between the settees is closed in the evening by a green baize curtain. The family sits on a winter night in this cosy enclosure, the men with their pipes and jugs of cider, the women knitting and sewing; all chattering, singing, laughing.