A Tour Through Old Provence

by A. S. Forrest

The value of this find was quickly appreciated by the keeper of the languishing little hotel that stands in the “Place Fortin.” He obtained possession of the “Golden Tresses,” and, with an eye to business, altered the name of his hostelry to “A la Chevelure d’Or,” and exhibited the relic to his customers. After this curious relic was recovered by Mistral and lodged in the Museum which he founded in Arles, the sign of the hotel was changed to “The Hôtel Monaco,” a name obviously suggested by the connection of the town with the Grimaldi family, who were presented with the marquisate of Les Baux by Louis XIII. in 1642. But change and decay is the keynote of Les Baux; the name has again altered with the declining fortunes of the town, and, as if in mockery of the destitution and poverty that lie around it on all sides, the sign upon the weather-beaten walls of the neglected hotel reads “Hôtel de MONTE-CARLO.”

An old man upon whose hatband the word “Guide” is with difficulty discerned, one or two stray hungry-looking dogs, a few wild-looking fowls, the Hôtel Proprietaire, and innumerable flies constitute the crowd who forgather daily in the most popular resort of the town. The arrival of a traveller awakens but mild excitement in Les Baux. Two human hearts may beat a little quicker in the hopes of gain. The dogs sniff round the stranger with bewildered curiosity, and the flies buzz gleefully on discovering a new victim to torment. The guide (and a guide who knows the place is necessary to the stranger), bent with age, is quite in harmony with the surroundings. With a pathetic humour he leads his clients up the “Grande Rue,” and tells them, with a smile, that it is not like the “Cannebière” at Marseilles, for the only café in Les Baux is the Hôtel de Monte-Carlo.

At every step he points to some ruined doorway with fine carving of the seventeenth century; windows with beautifully moulded mullions and inscriptions; houses once inhabited by noble families whose fame still survives. At every turning, in front of every doorway, in the ancient chapel, in the roofless convent of the White Penitents, at the cemetery and the Château, the old man shakes his head and croons to himself in a voice ineffably sad, “Ah! Les Baux!” Nearly every house in the town is, in some part, hewn out of the rocks, and what carving and masonry they possess is generally on their fronts and gables. The

kitchens and cellars are excavated in the rocks. The ruins of the Chapel of St. Catharine show still the remains of the architecture of the thirteenth century, but the other four churches that once ministered to the religious population contain only vestiges of their former style.

Of the larger mansions of the town, the most important is that of the “Hôtel de Manvilles,” at the end of the Grande Rue, a fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century building, the chief features of which are the beautiful windows, framed in with delicate classic pilasters, supporting entablatures composed of simple and dignified mouldings. On one of the wings of the building the inscription “Post Tenebras Lux 1571,” on the frieze over a window of great beauty, recalls that Claud II., one of the counts of this house, espoused, at the instigation of his Protestant wife, the cause of the party at the Reformation.

The mansion of the Porcelets, near by the Church of St. Vincent, has been restored, and, after being an orphanage, is now the school for the handful of children who have had the misfortune to be born amidst these melancholy surroundings. Few of them will remain in their native town after they have grown up, and one would imagine that the memories they will carry away with them of their early days will seem like some fantastic dream. The Porcelet family were of the highest social rank in the fourteenth century, and they were also very numerous. These were the first nobles of the town of Arles and Marquises of Maillane, friends of King René, and the object of his satire.

Regarding the origin of their name, there is a legend that relates in detail how a haughty dame of this family flouted and taunted a poor beggar-woman with having a family too large for a person in her miserable condition to maintain. The woman was, so the story says, really a fairy in disguise, who laid a spell on the high-born dame, condemning her to give birth to as many children as a sow, which happened to be near by, should bring forth little pigs. In time the sow had a litter of nine, and when the great dame had, in the course of time, a family equally large the people nicknamed them Porcelets, a name that stuck to them ever after.

These legends of the past, when recounted on the spot, have a fascination that is enhanced by the romantic surroundings.