CHAPTER XXVII
"ARTISTS IN HAPPINESS"
It is doubtful if there is a country in Europe where the spirit of the past is so strong as it is in Provence.
One needs not to dive down for it below the surface; it lives before one's eyes everywhere, every day. That strange cheer and blitheness that seems to belong to the centuries gone by has not yet been beaten down by the care and heaviness of modern life. The mere act of living is still joyful, the zest and charm of simple things still survives among the people. They live without hurry, yet they work to good purpose; far more quickly and efficiently than in England.
They seem to work hard, yet without toil; no doubt because they know also how to play.
This has all to be said with reservations, however, for the modern spirit is stealing into the country; it is like the little edge of the earth's shadow when the moon begins to be eclipsed. But the old is still dominant and will not easily be destroyed.
It is not merely the world of yesterday, of the Middle Ages that lingers, but—as we have seen—the world of the ancients. That is half the secret of the country.
It is this element that underlies and mingles so quaintly with the picturesque side of religious mediævalism. No wonder men and women have passionately tried to recover the charm of that old, fresh, lost world. Perhaps that is why the Renaissance is so endlessly fascinating. It was a wild, brilliant, vain attempt to find happiness and the real goal of human life.
Men may indeed be turned from their natural quest by some harsh faith or blinding habit, but the hunger of the heart never leaves them.