The peasantry in this part of the country seemed very poor, though contented and happy. Many of them were employed on a labour for which their pay must have been very small—picking stones from the fields, and dung from the roads. The dung is dried and burned, and is said to be an healthy fuel to those who use it.
On the following day we dined at Orange, but did not remain long enough to examine the town, which was well worthy of minute attention. Mademoiselle St. Sillery was seized with the symptoms of an indisposition, which happily passed away, but whilst it lasted, left us no inclination for any other employment but to assist and console her, and to press forwards to Avignon, to procure medical assistance. Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing but a mere dizziness resulting from exposure to the sun.
Under these circumstances we reached Avignon on the evening of the fourth day after leaving Lyons; and whether the fear of the physician had any effect, so much is certain, that Mademoiselle seemed to have completed her recovery almost in the same instant in which the battlements of the city saluted her eyes.
[CHAP. XIX.]
Avignon—Situation—Climate—Streets and Houses—Public
Buildings—Palace—Cathedral—Petrarch and Laura—Society
at Avignon—Ladies—Public Walks—Prices of
Provisions—Markets.
When we left Angers, we had ordered our letters to be addressed for us at Avignon. I was daily in expectation of receiving one of a very important nature, and General Armstrong, who was in the habit of a state correspondence with Marseilles, and was allowed for that purpose an extra post, had promised to dispatch it for me to Avignon, as soon as it should reach him. This circumstance delayed us for some days at Avignon; but I believe none of us regretted a delay, which gave us time to see and to survey this celebrated city and its neighbourhood.
The situation of this city is in a plain, equally fertile and beautiful, about fifteen miles in breadth and ten in length. On the south and east it is circled by a chain of mountains. The plain is divided into cultivated fields, in which are grown wheat, barley, saffron, silk, and madder. The cultivation is so clean and exact, as to give the grounds the appearance of a garden. As the French farms are usually on a small scale, they are invariably kept cleaner than those in England and America. Not a weed is suffered to remain on the ground. The French want nothing but a more enlarged knowledge and a greater capital, to rival the English husbandmen. They have the same industry, and take perhaps more pride in the appearance of their fields. This detailed attention greatly improves the face of the country; for miles succeeding miles it has the air of a series of parks and gardens. The English mansion is alone wanting to complete the beauty of the scenery. From the high ground in the city nothing can be finer than the prospect over the plain and surrounding country. The Rhone is there seen rolling its animated through meadows covered with olive trees, and at the foot of hills invested with vineyards. The ruined arches of the old bridge carry the imagination back into the ancient history of the town. On the opposite side of the Rhone are the sunny plains of Laguedoc, which, when refreshed by the wind, breathe odours and perfumes from a thousand wild herbs and flowers. Mont Ventoux, in the province of Dauphiny, closes the prospect to the North: its high summit covered with snow, whilst its sides are robed in all the charms of vegetable nature. On the east are the abrupt rocks and precipices of Vaucluse, distant about five leagues, and which complete, as it were, the garden wall around Avignon and its territory.
The climate of Avignon, though so strangely inveighed against by Petrarch, is at once healthy and salubrious. There are certainly very rapid transitions from extreme heat to extreme cold, but from this very circumstance neither the intensity of the heat nor of the cold, is of sufficient duration to be injurious to health or pleasure. The air, except in actual rain, is always dry, and the sky is an etherial Italian blue, scarcely ever obscured by a cloud. When the rains come on they are very violent, but fall at once. The sun then bursts out, and the face of Nature appears more gay, animated and splendid than before. I do not remember, that amongst all the pictures of the great masters, I have ever seen a landscape in which a southern country was represented after one of these showers. Homer has described it with equal force and beauty, in one of his similies: but as the book is not before me, I must refer to the memory of the classic reader.
There is one heavy detraction, however, from the excellence of the Avignonese climate. This is the wind denominated the Vent de Bize. The peculiar situation of Avignon, at the mouth of a long avenue of mountains, gives rise to this wind: it collects in the narrow channel of the mountains, and bursts, as from the mouth of a barrel, on the town and plain. Its violence certainly exceeds what is common in European climates, but it is considered as healthy, and it very rarely does any considerable damage. Augustus Cæsar was so persuaded of its salutary character, that he deified it, as it were, by raising an altar to it under the name of the Circian wind. The winters of Avignon, however, are sometimes rendered by it most distressingly cold. The Rhone is frequently covered with ice sufficiently strong to support loaded carts, and the olive trees sometimes perish to their roots.