This is one of the pains of the ardent traveller, and it forms a curious analogy with the life-journey itself, in which renunciation after renunciation has to be made, not merely of things far distant and beautiful, but of things beautiful and near, which only need the stretch of the hand to touch, but yet are farther from reach than the Pole-star itself. Among the serious renunciations that had to be made during our Provençal visit must be counted Courthéson, where one of our favourite troubadours, Raimbaut de Vacquciras, spent so many of his early days at the Court of Guilhelm des Baux (of whom more hereafter). Then there was Ventadour—not exactly near, but still within hail—once so brilliant a centre of learning and song; and Salon, the reputed scene of Mary Magdalene's later life. Of this bright little prosperous city, famous for its oil trade, with its dripping fountain and grey donjon, we did catch an early morning glimpse en route for an inexorable train. Rocamadour, full of romantic beauty; Le Puy, strangest of rock-set cities; ill-fated Béziers, of the Albigensian wars; Dragignan, and a hundred others were one and all alluring and unattainable.
ROMAN GATEWAY AT ORANGE (ON THE LYONS ROAD).
By Joseph Pennell.
A few hours between trains permitted a visit to Orange and its great theatre and triumphal arch, which redeem the place from a somewhat featureless commonplace.
LOOKING DOWN THE GRANDE RUE, MARTIGUES.
By Joseph Pennell.
We had to ask our way to the theatre, unluckily of some perfidious inhabitant whose misdirection would have landed us in the suburbs, had not Fortune, in the shape of a dapper youth in the first rosy flush of a dawning moustache, come to the rescue.
In the pursuit of his father's trade as a corn-dealer, he had travelled and learnt English together with a becoming admiration for the British nation, his enlightenment being assisted by an English mother. It seemed strange to think of an Englishwoman settled down in this little French provincial town, but as our guide chattered on, unconsciously revealing the life of the place, it was clear that French provincial human nature is much the same as any other. Heartburning, gossip, jealousies, stupendous proprieties, "convenances" of the most all-shadowing and abstruse kind made up the dreary existence of the inhabitants. Wretched "jeunes filles" unable to cross a street unattended, mothers on the prowl for husbands for the "jeunes filles" (our young friend intimated delicately that he had a perilous time of it among enterprising parents); the men intent on business and the recreations of the café and so forth—it all sounded disheartening enough, and the hopelessness of it seemed to settle on the spirit like a blight.