The later middle ages somewhat dimmed the ancient glories of the Romanesque school of monumental architecture—though it was by no means pure, as the wonderfully preserved and dainty Greek structures at Nîmes and Vienne plainly show—and the roofs of theatres and arenas fell in and walls crumbled through the stress of time and weather.
In spite of all the decay that has set in, and which still goes on, a short journey across Provence wonderfully recalls other days. The traveller who visits Orange, and goes down the valley of the Rhône, by Avignon, St. Rémy, Arles, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles, will be an ill-informed person indeed if he cannot construct history for himself anew when once he is in the midst of this multiplicity of ancient shrines.
Day by day things are changing, and even old Provence is fast coming under the influences of electric railroads and twentieth-century ideas of progress which bid fair to change even the face of nature: Marseilles is to have a direct communication with the Rhône and the markets of the north by means of a canal cut through the mountains of the Estaque, and a great port is to be made of the Étang de Berre (perhaps), and trees are to be planted on the bare hills which encircle the Crau, with the idea of reclaiming the pebbly, sandy plain.
No doubt the deforestation of the hillsides has had something to do, in ages past, with the bareness of the lower river-bottom of the Rhône which now separates Arles from the sea. Almost its whole course below Arles is through a treeless, barren plain; but, certainly, there is no reflection of its unproductiveness in the lives of the inhabitants. There is no evidence in Arles or Nîmes, even to-day—when we know their splendour has considerably faded—of a poverty or dulness due to the bareness of the neighbouring country.
Irrigation will accomplish much in making a wilderness blossom like the rose, and when the time and necessity for it really comes there is no doubt but that the paternal French government will take matters into its own hands and turn the Crau and the Camargue into something more than a grazing-ground for live-stock. Even now one need not feel that there is any “appalling cloud of decadence” hanging over old Provence as some travellers have claimed.
The very best proof one could wish, that Provence is not a poor impoverished land, is that the best of everything is grown right in her own boundaries,—the olive, the vine, the apricot, the peach, and vegetables of the finest quality. The mutton and beef of the Crau, the Camargue, and the hillsides of the coast ranges are most excellent, and the fish supply of the Mediterranean is varied and abundant; loup, turbot, thon, mackerel, sardines, and even sole,—which is supposed to be the exclusive specialty of England and Normandy,—with langouste and coquillages at all times. No cook will quarrel with the supply of his market, if he lives anywhere south of Lyons; and Provence, of all the ancient gouvernements of France, is the land above all others where all are good cooks,—a statement which is not original with the author of this book, but which has come down since the days of the old régime, when Provence was recognized as “la patrie des grands maîtres de cuisine.”
“It was September, and it was Provence,” are the opening words of Daudet’s “Port Tarascon.” What more significant words could be uttered to awaken the memories of that fair land in the minds of any who had previously threaded its highways and byways? From the days of Petrarch writers of many schools have sung its praises, and the literature of the subject is vast and varied, from that of the old geographers to the last lays of Mistral, the present deity of Provençal letters.
“It was September, and it was Provence”