The "Provence rose," so celebrated in legend and literature, can hardly be dismissed without a word; though, in truth, the casual traveller will hardly know of its existence, unless he may have a sweet recollection of some rural maid, who, with sleeves carefully rolled up, stood before her favourite rose-tree, tenderly examining it, and driving away a buzzing fly or a droning wasp.
These firstlings of the season are tended with great pride. The distinctive "rose of Provence" is smaller, redder, and more elastic and concentric than the centifoliæ of the north, and for this reason, likely, it appears the more charming to the eye of the native of the north, who, if we are to believe the romanticists, is made a child again by the mere contemplation of this lovely flower.
The glory of this rich red "Provence rose" is in dispute between Provence and Provins, the ancient capital of La Brie; but the weight of the argument appears to favour the former.
Below Arles and Nîmes the Rhône broadens out into a many-fingered estuary, and mingles its Alpine flood with the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
The delta has been formed by the activity and energy of the river itself, from the fourth century—when it is known that Arles lay sixteen miles from the sea—till to-day, when it is something like thirty. This ceaseless carrying and filling has resulted in a new coast-line, which not only has changed the topography of the region considerably, but may be supposed to have actually worked to the commercial disadvantage of the country round about.
The annual prolongation of the shores—the reclaimed water-front—is about one hundred and sixty-four feet, hence some considerable gain is accounted for, but whether to the nation or the "squatter" statistics do not say.
The delta of the Rhône has been described by an expansive French writer as: "Something quite separate from the rest of France. It is a wedge of Greece and of the East thrust into Gaul. It came north a hundred (or more) years ago and killed the Monarchy. It caught the value in, and created the great war-song of the Republic."
There is a deal of subtlety in these few lines, and they are given here because of their truth and applicability.
II
ST. ETIENNE DE CHALONS-SUR-SAÔNE
"The cathedral at Chalons," says Philip Gilbert Hamerton,—who knew the entire region of the Saône better perhaps than any other Anglo-Saxon,—"has twin towers, which, in the evening, at a distance, recall Notre Dame (at Paris), and there are domes, too, as in the capital."