The colour of the landscape in Provence is as vivid as the history of its people.
A writer speaks of "la couleur violente, presque exaspérée, des montagnes."
There is no country that can be less conveyed to the imagination by an enumeration of topographical facts. The more exact the description the less we arrive at the land that Mistral sees and loves.
Of this poet, characteristically Provençal, Lamartine is reported to have said—
"I bring you glad tidings, a great epic poet is born among us. The West produces no more such poets, but from the nature of the South they will spring forth. It is from the sun alone that power flows."
It is from the sun that life flows, is the irresistible conclusion that one comes to under the skies of the Midi.
Science has insisted upon the fact, and no one seriously disputes it, but not to dispute and to actually accept are two very different conditions of mind. Legend, proverb, history, song, all seem to tell of a life more intense, more "vibrant," as their great poet describes the Provençals—in the troubadour country than elsewhere; unless indeed one goes still farther into the regions of the sun and falls under the kindred spell of Italy.
In England archæology seems cold and dead. In the South it conjures up visions of a teeming life; generation after generation of peoples, race after race, civilisation after civilisation.
Paradox as it seems, the multitude of dead or ruined or vanished cities that have lined the coast from the Pyrenees to the Var strangely enhances this sense of vitality and persistence of human activities.
But one records and records, and yet one has not Provence. One has but her mountains and contours, her blue sky, and perhaps her wild wind—but there is always something beyond.