THE MAUSOLEUM, SAINT-REMY
THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH, SAINT-REMY
The photographs will show the wonderful state of preservation of the monument, as well as its beautiful details. The arch also preserves much of its detail, and the two monuments together have a striking effect. Mr. Cook draws a just comparison between these sane and beautiful relics of classical antiquity and the misery and squalor of the mediæval ruins of Les Baux. It is a comparison that strikes one forcibly throughout Provence. We shall see other examples of Roman architecture—in the Pont du Gard, the Arenas at Nîmes and Arles, and elsewhere—and in comparison with them all but fragments of the oldest churches and palaces and fortifications that came after them are things of yesterday. And yet the Roman works seem to be built to stand for ever, and tell their tale so that all may read it; while with the buildings of centuries after, the tale is confused often beyond unravelment. We know of the history that led to the erection of these "antiquities" at Saint-Remy, and the men who made them, almost as if they were things of a generation ago. Move forward a thousand years and the long history of Les Baux was just beginning. Its princes crept out of obscurity, and its stately buildings arose, to arrive at splendour through long centuries, to decay and to lie in ruins for centuries more; and all the time these other buildings within a few miles of them, whose life has been twice as long as theirs in all their phases, have continued almost in their first perfection. And you must move on for much more than a thousand years before you find the Christian legends that derived from the people and events which these monuments commemorated firmly fixed in the minds of men, and giving rise to the beautiful buildings which now vie with those of the Romans in interest. In this country, one is not allowed to forget how many hundreds of years it took for the church to produce its fine flowers of architecture, when one is continually coming across those of a civilization that was old before the Church ever existed.
Not far from these Roman "antiquities" is an interesting church and cloister of the twelfth century, but I did not turn aside to see it, as walking had now become a painful business, and it took me half an hour to limp down the long avenue that led to the pleasant town of Saint-Remy. It is a gay, clean little town, its broad streets and squares shaded by great limes and planes and chestnuts, its gardens full of flowering shrubs, and rich with beds of colour. One seems to have got back to the country about Grasse, but here the flowers are grown for seed, not for scent. Saint-Remy's chief industry is the production of seeds for the horticulturists. I should have liked to see something of it, but had to content myself with sitting still until the departure of the omnibus for Avignon.
This was a great clumsy petrol-driven conveyance in which the men stood in one compartment, holding on to anything within reach as it lurched and swayed along the road, and the women sat in another. I think it was market-day. At any rate the seated compartment was full of peasant women nursing their baskets, every window closed and the heat considerable. I might have borne that for the sake of a seat, of which there was one vacant, but when I opened the glass door between the compartments I was met with such a powerful efflux of garlic that I closed it again hurriedly and swayed and lurched with the rest until we reached Châteaurenard.