The retreat of the glacial cold ushered in the "Epoque Magdalenienne," when life became comparatively easy, though the climate of Provence was still "colder than that of St. Petersburg." The Magdaleniens had arrived at sculpturing rough figures on the rocks, and from those records it is concluded that they were gay, jovial, and inclined to pleasantry; the sort of person apparently who makes a dinner-party go well. Strange dinner-parties they must have had in their wild nooks and caverns in the mountains of Provence!
Gradually from these mysterious days we emerge upon centuries less absolutely hidden from our curiosity: the time of the invasion of the Ligurians, Iberians, Celts, and other races, from about the fifteenth century b.c. to 600 b.c. This brings us almost back to the light of day, with the rather startling consciousness that the ancient Ligurians, who represented to the imagination the beginning of all things Provençal, suddenly appear as modern innovations.
A long stretch of time had still to pass, filled with a hundred half-fabulous events, before the Roman Conquest brought the country within the domain of actual history.
And during all those ages what language was being used and developed by the multitudes of races that passed like phantoms across the country, phantoms to our imagination, yet each race, each individual, driven to wild and eager deeds and desires by the strange life-force, the "will to live," that sets the whole extraordinary pageant of things in motion?
From the "modulated cries" of the men who lived in holes in the earth—not yet in the comparatively elegant cave-dwellings—to the exquisite language of the troubadours, what has been the course of its growth? No one knows. The only real guide that remains is the language itself, a confusing phonographic record of the whole troublous existence of the country of its birth.
The nearer a language is to its origin the more it is complicated. Ingenious and subtle grammatical forms prove an ancient tongue.[25]
The natural progress is from synthesis to decomposition; and this decomposing force is nothing more nor less than the natural laziness of the human being, one of the most tremendous forces of the universe!
"All dialects originate from this germ of decomposition, in opposition to the antique synthetic principle of the language," says M. Fauriel.
Thence progress can be studied by following backwards a language to its source, that is to its more complex form. But for long stretches of time no specimens of written language existed. Most of the popular songs and stories were transmitted orally, and so there is only a document here and there to reveal the slow development.
The influence of Rome as a civiliser was so enormous that it acted as a break on the new movement which was destined in time to create the world we call modern. That new world which the Barbarians were to bring into being was postponed in the making by the very excellence of the institutions that it gradually superseded.