The clocks of St. Rémy and the panetières which hang on the wall and hold the household supply of bread open to the drying influences of the air, and yet away from rats and mice, are the chief and most distinctive house-furnishings of the homes of the countryside. For the rest the Provençal peasant is as likely to buy himself a wickerwork chair, or a German or American sewing-machine, with which to decorate his home, as anything else. One thing he will not have foreign to his environment, and that is his cooking utensils. His “batterie de cuisine” may not be as ample as that of the great hotels, but every one knows that the casseroles of commerce, whether one sees them in San Francisco, Buenos Ayres, or Soho, are a Provençal production, and that there is a certain little town, not many hundred miles from St. Rémy, which is devoted almost exclusively to the making of this all-useful cooking utensil.
A Panetière
The panetières, like the clocks, have a great fascination for the tourist, and the desire to possess one has been known to have been so great as to warrant an offer of two hundred and fifty francs for an article which the present proprietor probably bought for twenty not many months before.
St. Rémy’s next-door neighbour, just across the ridge of the Alpines, is Les Baux.
Every traveller in Provence who may have heard of Les Baux has had a desire to know more of it based on a personal acquaintance.
To-day it is nothing but a scrappy, tumble-down ruin of a once proud city of four thousand inhabitants. Its foundation dates back to the fifth century, and five hundred years later its seigneurs possessed the rights over more than sixty neighbouring towns. It was only saved in recent years from total destruction by the foresight of the French government, which has stepped in and passed a decree that henceforth it is to rank as one of those “monuments historiques” over which it has spread its guardian wing.
Les Baux of the present day is nothing but a squalid hamlet, and from the sternness of the topography round about one wonders how its present small population gains its livelihood, unless it be that they live on goat’s milk and goat’s meat, each of them a little strong for a general diet. As a picture paradise for artists, however, Les Baux is the peer of anything of its class in all France; but that indeed is another story.
The historical and architectural attractions of Les Baux are many, though, without exception, they are in a ruinous state. The Château des Baux was founded on the site of an oppidum gaulois in the fifth century, and in successive centuries was enlarged, modified, and aggrandized for its seigneurs, who bore successively the titles of Prince d’Orange, Comte de Provence, Roi d’Arles et de Vienne, and Empereur de Constantinople.