VIII
When people come to stay at St. Remy, it is nearly always in order to make the excursion to Les Baux; a more desolate one cannot well be imagined, nor one that places in stronger relief the contrast between the sane and beautiful relics of antiquity and the misery, the squalor of mediæval ruins. Who was the misguided man who first made it fashionable to admire barren mountains and ruins, and other such dismal monstrosities? I should like to quarter him to all eternity in a palace at Les Baux.
The road thither quits the lovely flowery plain, to rise among arid limestone mountains. Flocks of sheep are grazing there, but there are more herbs than grass, and as the poor beasts climb ever in search of a more succulent blade, they send out beneath their feet the exquisite fragrance of mountain thyme and lavender and myrtle. On the steeper scaurs, the pale mountain roses of the cystus are all a-flower, and shed a spring-like beauty about the desolate scene.
It soon becomes more desolate. We wind higher and higher up the barren flanks of the Alpilles. The wind-eaten crags of white friable stone defy even the mountain herbs. It is melancholy cinder-grey lunar landscape.
This white stone is the sole harvest of these regions. As we advance we find the mountain scarred and hacked into countless quarries. Here and there, the great pale slabs are piled into a tomb-like dwelling for the quarrymen. Far off, on the very crest of the mountain, we see, above all this desolation, an orchard of almond-trees, the only thing that betokens a human presence more happy than the slave-like labours of the quarry. Behind these trees there rises, as it seems, an uttermost wall of crags, yet more jagged, more desolate than the others. They are, as a matter of fact, the ruins of churches and palaces, the residue of the once princely city of Les Baux.
When at last we jog into the tiny Place of the city, we find a squalid village nestling in the centre of the former capital, like a rat in the heart of a dead princess. About three or four hundred poor creatures live here: God only knows what they find to live on! Slices of white stone, I suppose, and almond-shells.
They are, at any rate, eager for pence and human society. The carriage has not stopped before a guide pounces out upon us, and carries us up through a steep unspeakable wilderness of dead houses, deserted these three hundred years, and all falling most lamentably into dissolution. There is a poor Protestant temple, with its elegant delicate sixteenth-century carvings all in ruin. “Post tenebras Lux” is proudly carved above the dilapidated portals. All these ruins, varying over some two-and-twenty centuries, appear of the same age, the same dead-level of abjection. The “baums” of the cave-dweller, their cupboards and door-holes still perceptible, appear but little older than this or that mediæval palace. Ah, the place is terribly changed since I came here last with Jean Lefèvre, in 1382, to purchase for the Duke of Anjou the rights of the Seigneurs des Baux to the Empire of the East!
Under the crag-like tower of the castle there is a windswept mountain-top, whence you look down on the vast level of Camargue and Crau. From these coast-like summits the sad-coloured salt-marsh appears infinite; it is treeless, melancholy beyond words. Were these spendthrift, sterile mountains planted with kindly woods; were yonder brown morasses drained and irrigated—(and indeed this latter labour is very fairly begun)—on what a different and happy scene might we look down, in barely a score of years! That blue streak on the horizon is the Mediterranean. There the three Maries landed, and began their inland march. Their three effigies, carved by their own hands, are still perceptible yonder, on a stone at the very foot of the mountain where we stand. Apparently they were wise enough not to seek the inhospitable summits of Les Baux.
There was one thing I should like to have seen in the dead city, but when we were there the relic had departed to a barber’s shop at Aigues Mortes. Some time ago, the landlord of the tavern at Les Baux, digging in his garden, came on a slab which, being removed, exposed a mediæval princess, still young and, to all appearance, living. A moment after, she had crumbled into dust, all save her wonderful golden hair—yards of it, crisp, silky, and shining—which filled the stone coffin with its splendour. In this poetic treasure-trove the landlord saw an excellent opportunity. He changed the name of his inn, which forthwith became The Sign of the Golden Hair; and there, sure enough, on the parlour table, in a coffin of glass and plush, lay the thousand-year-old tresses of the dead princess. The curiosity attracted custom, and having made his fortune, the landlord sold his tavern of Les Baux and retired to shave the inhabitants of Aigues Mortes “at the sign of the Capello d’Or.”
The villagers of Les Baux spend most of their time in delving for similar treasure. No one else has found a coffin full of golden hair; but skeletons, coins of all periods, and armour, are every-day occurrences. I made a mistake in thinking that these people lived off freestone and almond-husks. They dine on Gaulish tibias, skulls of Roman soldiers, dead cats of the Stone Period, and a miscellaneous assortment of rusty iron. Not one of them but will sell you a human bone from a desecrated sepulchre as a souvenir of your visit to Les Baux.