St. Remy, once the country seat of the Counts of Provence, has no walls of stone, but four-square leafy ramparts of plane-trees. From the door of the Hôtel de Provence one may turn to the right or left and blindly follow the avenues round the little town till one returns to one's starting-point, where probably a brown-eyed youth will still be grinding coffee beside the footpath. There are almost no sounds in St. Remy, for there are no vehicles except the hotel omnibus which trundles to and from the station, marking the lapse of time.
The visitors all, or nearly all, come with the same intent: to negotiate with the growers of seeds, and, at the proper season, they arrive in great numbers from every part of the world, including America the ever-enterprising.
Pinks and carnations and lilies, and purple acres of pansies with their texture of velvet; flowers and flowers in multitudes, blooming and budding and blushing—this is the sweet merchandise of St. Remy en Provence.
The hotel has the homely, spacious character of old-established inns in country towns. One feels a sense of comfort as one enters, and the courteous greeting of the landlord and his wife confirms one's satisfaction. The long, dark-papered salle-à-manger has a broad streak of sunshine across the polished floor from an open window which gives on to the regions at the back of the hotel. The waiter hastens to shut this, but desists with a shrug and a smile at our remonstrance. If we like to sit in draughts and endanger our lives, after all it is our own affair. He feels with Madame de Sévigné, "Mais ce sont des Anglais!"
The window allows one to pass out into a nondescript territory where boots are cleaned, firewood is stacked, and the omnibus is regularly put to bed and tucked in after its day's work.
To the left, a magnificent plane-tree spreads golden foliage far and wide, brimming up to our bedroom windows just overhead. And a little further from the house, on this side of a sombre row of cypresses, with an ethereal view to the left of palest mountain peaks—a Provençal rose garden!
"But gather, gather, Mesdames," invites our kind host, "gather as many as you will." He smiles at our amazed delight, and waves a hospitable hand towards the masses of blossom, radiantly fresh and fair.
Roses of Provence!
The sun draws out the fragrance and shines through the petals till they gleam like gemmed enamel. We linger entranced.
In the narrow path we are elbow high in roses. And everything seems to stand still and wait in the hot sun. Nothing moves on. There is only a tiny floating back and forwards of a thread of cobweb between rose and rose; and very slowly now and again a broad swathe of plane-foliage heaves up and down on a little swell of air which the tree has all to itself in the shade-dappled precincts that it rules.