ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF LES BAUX
Page [152]
But this further disappointment was hidden from me at the time, and I spent the next two days hobbling about Les Baux and getting an indelible impression of it, as familiarity with its nooks and corners increased. It became, by degrees, not so much a ruined city as a city of ruined houses, with a character to each. There are many intersecting streets and lanes, and as one poked about them here and there, some faint shadow of reality made itself felt above the destruction. Little bits of staircases, windows, hearths, chimneys, stood out from the mass of heaped stones. One could imagine the houses whole and clean and occupied. From some life seemed only recently to have departed, though they had been left to decay for centuries. The ghosts of the men and women of the past were very near to showing themselves, especially at dark, when what is preserved and what is destroyed was difficult to distinguish.
I spent much time on the quiet grassy summit of the rock. A few sheep are fed there, and the shepherds watch them, as they always do in this country, sitting in the shade of some ruin or leaning over the rough stone parapet to look at the valley below. An old inhabitant came up to read his paper there, as he told me he did every evening when it was fine, and we saw the first swallow of the summer as we talked. The children came to cut plants for salads, busily turning over the stones and filling their wire baskets. They are very friendly, the children of Les Baux. When I had been there two years ago a slim little dark-eyed girl of twelve had shown me the church, and I had taken her photograph sitting on the steps of the cross. Now I found her grown into a young woman, and present her here as one of the beauties of Les Baux. Her name is Martha Montfort and I wondered if perhaps she was a descendant of the great Montforts. For our Simon de Montfort's father was Count of Toulouse, and campaigned it here against the Albigenses.
The people at the inn were very kind to me over my accident, provided me with embrocation and cotton wool and the best of advice, and sent me away nearly cured. Mistral had visited them in the early days of their occupancy, and had written in their visitors' book, in his fine delicate hand, the following poem:
Fiéu de Maiano
S'ère vengu d'ou tèms
de Dono Jano
Quand èro à soun printems
e soubeirano
Coune èron autre-tèms