A Spring Walk in Provence

by Archibald Marshall

I dropped down to L'Escaréne, a picturesque old town with an ancient bridge straddling across the quick-flowing river. But before I reached it I was met by a man with a drum and several intoxicated youths carrying a flag, who cried "Vive la République" and "Vive l'armée," with the most patriotic fervour. I had begun my walk just at the time when the conscripts were being called up from their homes all over France, and lived in the thick of the concomitant disturbances during the next few days. These rather pathetic little processions of service-old boys, usually accompanied by middle-aged men more drunk than they were, trailing out of a town and back again, became a commonplace. They shouted at me frequently, but never rudely.

I sat under a naked vine-trellis on a raised terrace outside an inn and drank wine. A talkative damsel, with needlework to occupy her hands, but nothing to keep her fine eyes from noting everything that happened in the place, for the observation of which this was a vantage-ground, kept me company. She explained to me, with much shrugging of shapely shoulders, some of the differences between the patois used in this part of the country and the true French, but she disclaimed knowledge of Provençal. I was in Provence, but not yet among the true Provençals—unless I mistook her altogether, which is quite possible.

She gave me excited and exhaustive instructions how to reach the hill town of Berre, where I had thought to spend the night. I had had a description of it from the engineer in whose company I had dined the evening before, and when I came within sight of it, perched on its rock summit, an hour or two later, its high walls and dominating church tower lit by the westering sun, it gave me a little thrill—it was so beautiful, and so just right.

It was just right to look at from a distance, or for a walk through its narrow twisting alleys, part staircase, part passage, part drain. There is nothing more picturesque than these little rock-perched towns and villages that lie behind the Italian and French Rivieras. They are as untouched as anything in the way of congregated buildings can be in these days, and carry your imagination right back into the past. And I had thought that a night spent in some old inn in one of them would strengthen that touch of romance for me.

But in Berre there was no inn such as I had pictured, where one would sleep in such a room as I had slept in the night before and awake to a glorious view as from some commanding tower. There were two cafés, and I penetrated one of them in search of dinner and a bed. Militarism was being celebrated with much consumption of fluid, and much singing and shouting, and the place was very dirty, and had that air of hard discomfort and newness which is the peculiar property of French buvettes of the poorer sort. I was not sorry to be told that it was impossible for me to have a bed there. I think I could have got one by pressing for it, but I did not press. The romance of Berre was oozing out fast, and I still had in me the four miles or so that would take me to Contes, in the valley below.

The revellers here were all men of middle age, or at any rate long past the age at which the new three years' service could affect them personally, but their enthusiasm for it was very great. One of them, who had detached himself from the rest while I had been making my enquiries and was reeling down the road waving a branch of mimosa and singing loudly, showed me the way to Contes; for I already knew better than to follow the road, which always approaches these high-perched villages in an over-deliberate fashion for pedestrians. He was very amiable about it, and I rather feared that he would offer to go with me. But he only came a little way, to where he could point me out a mule-track, and during our walk together I understood him to be persuading me, and possibly himself, that he was on the eve of gaining much military glory. But he was bald and pot-bellied, and I think that he was only touched by that noble and unselfish enthusiasm which takes patriotic men when there is question of other people doing their duty.

Dusk was falling, and I went down stony paths between olive gardens, which are very peaceful and mysterious in twilight. I met some of the inhabitants of Berre mounting slowly to their little town after their day's work. Most of the women carried cut olive boughs on their heads, and some of the men drove asses laden with them. It was the time of pruning, and olive leaves are very acceptable to most animals as food. By and bye I had the track to myself, and sometimes lost it, but I did not much mind. I could see the lights of Contes below me, and whenever I found myself on a path that seemed to lead aside from them I took a straight line over the terraces till I found a more suitable one. I was rather tired, but rest and refreshment were not far off, and it was soothing to the spirit to walk in this odorous dusk, and in such quietness.

It was quite dark by the time I came to Contes, and I was quite ready for my dinner. But I did not reach it for some time yet. When I had gone down long, steep, paved paths between walls to what seemed to be the heart of the town I had to go down much farther still until I thought I should never come to the end of things. But at last, there was the bottom of the hill, and an hotel, no less, with a garden in front of it.

I sat down in the café, since, although a room was promised me, there was no suggestion of taking me to it, and at the moment I had no wish to mount stairs even for the sake of a wash. There are certain habits of civilization that are very easily dropped. One comes to the end of a day's march, and one's first desire is for rest, one's second for food and drink; and in these little inns this sequence of desire seems to be well understood. It seemed quite natural to exchange my heavy dusty boots for a pair of slippers out of my pack, sitting by the table, to pass at once to the consumption of wine, and as soon as might be to the consumption of food, without any further preparation.