“Monsieur Numa?”
“What is that stone building on the other side of the Rhône?”
“That, Monsieur Numa, is the jonjon of Queen Jeanne.”
“Oh, yes, that’s so—I remember; poor jonjon! Its name is as much of a ruin as the tower itself!”
And then he told Hortense the story of the royal dungeon, for he was thoroughly grounded in his native legends.
That ruined and rusty tower up there dated from the time of the Saracen invasion, although more modern than the ruin of the abbey near it, a bit of whose half crumbled wall still remained standing near at hand, with its row of narrow windows showing against the sky and its big ogival doorway. He showed her, against the rocky slope, a worn pathway leading to a pond that shone like a cup of crystal, where the monks used to go to fish for eels and carp for the table of the abbot. As they looked at the lovely spot Numa remarked that the men of God had always known how to select the choicest spots in which to pass their comfortable, restful lives, generally choosing the summits where they might soar and dream, but whence they descended upon the quiet valleys and levied their toll on all the good things from the surrounding villages.
Oh, Provence in the Middle Ages! land of the troubadours and courts of beauty!
Now briers dislocate the stones of the terraces erstwhile swept by the trains of courtly beauties—Stephenettes or Azalaïses—while ospreys and owls scream at night in the place where the dead and gone troubadours used to sing! But was there not still a perfume of delicate beauty, a charming Italian coquetry pervading this landscape of the Alpilles, like the quiver of a lute or viol floating through the pure, still air?
Numa grew excited, forgetting that he had only his sister-in-law and old Ménicle’s blue cloak for audience, and, after a few commonplaces fit for local banquets and meetings of the Academy, broke forth into one of those ingenious and brilliant impromptus that proved him to be indeed the descendant of the light Provençal troubadours.
“There is Valmajour!” said Ménicle all at once, pointing upwards with his whip as he leaned round on the box.