Aigues Mortes with its wonderful walls untouched since they were built by Philip le Hardi; St. Gilles, in the Camargue (famous for its exquisite church), built perhaps on the site of the Greek city Heraclea, which had disappeared even in Philip's time; Arles, "the Gallic Rome," the residence of Roman Emperors and the capital of a later kingdom--these, too, belong to the astonishing list which might lengthen itself almost indefinitely.
Each town, moreover, is the scene of geological changes, of racial, social, and historical romance which would take a lifetime to learn and volumes to relate.
It is a strange, sad story--if truly the decadence of what we call prosperous cities and the desolation of brilliant sights be sad.
"Scarcely two thousand years," says Lenthéric, "have sufficed to convert these lagoons, formerly navigable, into sheets of pestilential water, to annihilate this immemorial vegetation, to transform into arid steppes this gracious archipelago of luxuriant wooded isles, and to outline this coast with a desolating dryness and an implacable monotony."
But at least it is peaceful: at least it is free from the fret and fume and tragedy of human life!
"Quan vez la landeta mover De joi sas alas contra 'lrai, Que s'oblida e s laissa cazer Per la doussor qu'al cor l'in vai Ailas! qual enueia m'enve, Cui qu'ieu ne vai jauzion! Meraveillas m'ai quar desse Lo cor de dezirier no m fon."
"When I behold the skylark winging its merry journey towards the sun and then forgetful of itself from sudden inebriety of pleasure, drop down precipitant; Oh! how I long then for a fate like hers! How much I enjoy then the joy to which I'm witness! I am astonished that my heart is not at once dissolved in longing."
From M. FAURIEL'S "HISTORY OF PROVENÇAL POETRY" (_Poem of the Skylark_).
It is impossible to wander a day in Provence without being drawn to wonder if not to speculate upon the origin of that extraordinary outbreak of new sentiment that we call chivalry. It seems like a miraculous birth. It is impossible even to imagine what would have been the destinies of mankind had the beautiful inspiration failed to descend out of the blue just at the most brutal epoch of European history.