Europe from a Motor Car - Russell Richardson

Southward from Orange, the country began to look more like Italy. Olive and mulberry trees were more numerous. The cypress trees, so often seen in Italian cemeteries, gave an impression of solemnity, almost of melancholy, to the country. At times they fringed the highway or stood alone upon the horizon like a distant steeple against a crimson sunset.

The twilight was full of a brooding, dreamy silence as of communion with the past. This is the atmosphere of Provençe, an atmosphere of "old, forgotten, far-off things and battles long ago." If one is interested in wonderful ruins that suggest the might of Rome's empire, then let him go to Provençe, that part of southern France where the Romans founded their provincia, and where they built great cities. We found the hotels rather dreary. The towns were quiet. Many of them, like Pierrelatte, looked so poor. The streets were dirty and littered. One notices these things at first, and then forgets them, the air is so clear, the sunshine so dazzling, the horizons so distinct, the stars so bright.

Much of the country is barren and rocky. But the rocks as well as the ruins have a rich, golden brown color from being steeped for centuries in this bright southern sun. The people are romantic, impractical, happy in their poverty, singing amid grinding routine. They have their own dialect, which is very musical. Even the names of their towns and cities are full of music, for example, Montélimar, Avignon, Carcassonne. The country, with its Roman ruins, its bright sun, its rich color, its laughter, and song, is like another Italy. Nowhere except in that land do we come so close to the great things of Roman antiquity.

We reached the Grand Hôtel in Avignon at nightfall, but dined outside that we might the better observe the life of the people. The sweet voice of an Italian street singer made it easy for us to imagine ourselves under the skies of Florence or Naples. Avignon is the most Italian looking city in France.

The Palace of the Popes at Avignon Page 91

The following morning was devoted to rambling. Sometime we must spend a week in this interesting walled city on the Rhone, where the popes lived between 1305 and 1377 in the huge palace that resembles a fortress. If there were nothing to Avignon but its high mediæval walls and watch towers, the place would be worth a long pilgrimage. These gray ramparts, apparently new, were actually built in the fourteenth century. What a picture they gave us of stormy feudal times, when even the Church was compelled to seek safety behind strong walls!

The Palais des Papes is a colossal structure. We have forgotten what pope it was who was besieged here for years by a French army, and then escaped by the postern; it does not matter. The palace walls looked high and thick enough to defy all attack. The scenes of vice and profligacy during this period must have rivaled the court life of an ancient Roman emperor. There was one pope, John XXII, who in eighteen years amassed a fortune of eighteen million gold florins in specie, not to mention the trifling sum of seven millions in plate and jewels. Perhaps it was just as well for the popes of that time that the walls of their fortress towers were high and thick.