CHAPTER IVPETRARCH AND LAURA

STREET AT UZÈS.By E. M. Synge.

It is of far less imposing aspect than Uzès and is approached by a long, ascending road, which is continuous with the broad main street of the town, whence other streets climb the hill, wandering into little platforms and nooks and picturesque corners such as only a hill town in the Midi can produce. There are ancient buildings at every turn, and above the rest, beyond the gateway leading up to the windy limestonedowns, stands the tall ruined tower of Barbentane, which has a romantic story attached to it. Mistral writes of it:

"The Bishop of Avignon ...Has built a tower at Barbentane,Sea-wind it spurns, and tramontane,And round it demons rage in vain.He'll exorciseThe walls that riseWith turrets squareFrom rocks so bare.Its front looks to the setting sun,And over the windows one by one—Lest demon ever through them may pass—He carves his mitre over the glass."[2]

"The Bishop of Avignon ...

Has built a tower at Barbentane,

Sea-wind it spurns, and tramontane,

And round it demons rage in vain.

He'll exorcise

The walls that rise

With turrets square

From rocks so bare.

Its front looks to the setting sun,

And over the windows one by one—

Lest demon ever through them may pass—

He carves his mitre over the glass."[2]

To this demon-proof stronghold the Bishop appoints a warder, who—as is the way of warders—has a charming daughter, Mourrette. Mourrette has a lover who is determined to scale the walls of the fortress and carry off the damsel or die in the attempt. Unfortunately, he dies in the attempt.

"So true, so brave, he ne'er will stopTill he grasp her hand at the turret top.Alas! a branch breaks—with a hideous shock,Her lover is dashed on the hungry rock."

"So true, so brave, he ne'er will stop

Till he grasp her hand at the turret top.

Alas! a branch breaks—with a hideous shock,

Her lover is dashed on the hungry rock."

Tragedy as usual! If all had gone well, the story in all likelihood would never have reached us. We may, perhaps, conclude that life is not quite so dark as history and literature might lead us to believe.

The author of "Un voyage en France" writes:—

"Les cultures enveloppent jusqu'au Rhone le petit massif sur lequel se dresse la haute Tour de Barbentane," and these "cultures"—corn, almond-trees, vines, olives—givean aspect of richness and prosperity to the great valley.

GATEWAY, BARBENTANE.By E. M. Synge.

On the opposite side of it stands an ancient but still inhabited castle belonging to the Comte des Essars (or some similar name), situated upon a sudden height or cliff and approached by a steep and shady avenue which leads to a modern garden of evergreen shrubs, all very carefully grouped and tended. At the highest point appears the great square castle, with its round tower at each corner, and crenellated walls.

The caretaker admits the visitor to a large courtyard and thence to the suites of sombre old rooms with their dark ceilings, stately mantelpieces and rich, ancient furniture, all spell-bound as if waiting for the life that has gone away. The owners only come there for about a month in the time of the grape-harvest, but the evidence of their presence in little personal belongings, such as racks full of pipes, carved sticks, riding whips, photographs, and so forth, emphasises pathetically the silence of the house, which is speckless and in perfect order, ready at any moment for habitation.

The place is well worth a visit, not merely for its rather sad charm, but because it helps the imagination to reconstruct the life and aspect of the feudal castle; for such edifices as this are generally seen in ruins, emptied of all their splendours. Here rises before one's eye the scene of mediæval romance almost precisely as in the days of the troubadours and their fascinating ladies.

It seemed a pity that our friend the critic had left Avignon without having seen this place where the little touches of the modern (especially that prosaic garden of well-groomed evergreens) would have cheered his soul and proved to him that Provence could, after all, produce something that was not either tumble-down or peeling off.

Such is the contradictoriness of human nature, that webegan to regard with regret the certainty that he would not be at thetable d'hôtethat night to record his disappointments. It was quite interesting to watch the process by which he would throw an atmosphere of spiritual deathliness—a sort of moral incandescent gaslight—over the fascinating things of this despised country.

We realised that, in spite of his powers of disenchantment, we had found a sort of satisfaction (like the satisfaction of a discord in music) in the bleakness of our friend's outlook upon life and things.

It made one, perhaps not very relevantly, think of Madame de Sévigné's phrase:—

"Toujours soutenue de l'ignorance capable de Madame de B——"

"Ignorance capable!" We positively missed it!

"Solea lontana in sonno consolarmeCon quella dolce angelica sua vistaMadonna; or mi spaventa e mi contrista;Né diduol,né di témaposso aitarme:Ché spesso nel suo volto veder parmeVera pietà con grave dolor mista;Ed udir cose, onde'l cor fede acquista,Ché digioja e dispeme si disarme.Non ti sovèn di quell' ultima sera,Dic' ella, ch'i lasciai gli occhi tuoi molli,E sforzata dal tempo me n' andai?I' non te'l potei dir all or, né volli:Or te'l dico per cosa esperta e vera;Non sperar di vedermi in terra mai."Francesco Petrarca(Sonnetto CCXI.)

"Solea lontana in sonno consolarmeCon quella dolce angelica sua vistaMadonna; or mi spaventa e mi contrista;Né diduol,né di témaposso aitarme:

"Solea lontana in sonno consolarme

Con quella dolce angelica sua vista

Madonna; or mi spaventa e mi contrista;

Né diduol,né di témaposso aitarme:

Ché spesso nel suo volto veder parmeVera pietà con grave dolor mista;Ed udir cose, onde'l cor fede acquista,Ché digioja e dispeme si disarme.

Ché spesso nel suo volto veder parme

Vera pietà con grave dolor mista;

Ed udir cose, onde'l cor fede acquista,

Ché digioja e dispeme si disarme.

Non ti sovèn di quell' ultima sera,Dic' ella, ch'i lasciai gli occhi tuoi molli,E sforzata dal tempo me n' andai?

Non ti sovèn di quell' ultima sera,

Dic' ella, ch'i lasciai gli occhi tuoi molli,

E sforzata dal tempo me n' andai?

I' non te'l potei dir all or, né volli:Or te'l dico per cosa esperta e vera;Non sperar di vedermi in terra mai."

I' non te'l potei dir all or, né volli:

Or te'l dico per cosa esperta e vera;

Non sperar di vedermi in terra mai."

Francesco Petrarca(Sonnetto CCXI.)

CHAPTER IV

PETRARCH AND LAURA

How well one understands why it is that the South has produced so much art and so little philosophy! We found ourselves spending hours basking in this delicious sun, while we idly wondered how often the beautiful Laura crossed the square, exactly how she looked, and spoke, and smiled; above all, how she felt: the real truth about that mysterious romance. The customs of the day, the universal habit of love-making as part of the necessary accomplishments of a gentleman, make it difficult to recognise the genuine love-story when one finds it.

Barbara was much interested in these immortal lovers, much more so than in Rienzi's tower or old churches; and we managed to glean a good deal of desultory information on the subject, which brought us to the conclusion that Laura was a real person and Petrarch's a real passion. The fact that in his prose writings he scarcely ever alludes to his beloved one seemed to us to support our views. He did not care to talk to all the world of what he felt so deeply. Sonnets were more impersonal. In his favourite copy of Virgil he records his first meeting with Laura, and her death twenty-one years later. Barbara considered this conclusive.

"Laura, who was distinguished by her own virtues and widely celebrated by my songs, first appeared to my eyes in early manhood in the year of our Lord 1327, upon the sixth day of April, at the first hour in the Church of St. Clara at Avignon." In the same minute way he records her death while he was at Verona, "ignorant of his fate."

"I have experienced," he adds, "a certain satisfaction in writing this bitter record of a cruel event, especially in this place where it will often come under my eyes, for so I may be led to reflect that life can afford me no farther pleasures."

He appears all through his career to have been struggling between his love for this unattainable lady and the monastic view of life as inculcated by St. Augustine. No wonder his was a tempest-tossed and melancholy soul! Among his published works the imaginary dialogue between himself and the saint lays bare the curious combat of a nature essentially modern in its instincts, while intellectually under the dominion of mediæval theories. His sentiment was noble in character: a noble love for a noble woman; but the pitiless saint will not accept that as an excuse for the soul's enslavement. The monitor does his utmost to prove that it is a chain utterly unworthy of a rational being, whose thoughts should be fixed on things eternal. It does not occur to Petrarch to make high claim for the sentiment itself, still less to number it among eternal things, as probably it would have occurred to a mind of that idealistic type had he lived a few hundred years later. But his feeling and his mental outlook are evidently not at one. He feels ahead of his thought by many centuries, and never all his life does he succeed in harmonising the two parts of his being, and that is probably why he was always unsatisfied, sad at heart even at his gayest; unable tofully enjoy the savour of life in spite of his extraordinary fulness of opportunity and his ardent nature.

VALE AND SOURCE OF THE SORGUE, VAUCLUSE.By E. M. Synge.

As for the theory that Laura was merely a symbol forLaurea, the crown of poetic fame, it is not easy to accept the view in face of a letter of Petrarch to his friend, Giacomo Colonna, in which he speaks of this supposition: "Would that your humorous suggestion were true; would to God it were all a pretence and not a madness!"

His defence of this passion, in the "Segreto," is described by a writer of to-day as "purely modern."

"Petrarch was modern enough to grasp, and even defend against the perversions of monasticism and the current of theological speculation, one of the noblest of man's attributes."

In the singular dialogue between the poet and the saint, the poet, while making a brave stand for the unconquerable sentiment, finally allows the saint to have the best of the argument.

Barbara flatly refused to listen to the theory that Petrarch and Laura never exchanged so much as a word in their lives, but it is believed by many. The poet is said to have worshipped the lady at a distance across the golden shadows of the Church of St. Clara at Avignon, where she used to come for the celebration of Mass. Her family—if to the family of de Noves she really belonged—owned a château in the neighbourhood. She married into the house of De Sades (or so runs the story) and she was a niece of the famous Fanette, who was President of the renowned Court of Love at the Château of Romanin in the Alpilles: those strange little limestone mountains that we saw to the south as we looked over the country from the Rocher du Dom.

Some writers, on the other hand, speak of a passionatehistory, clandestine meetings, tragedy and despair. But of this there is not a hint in the poet's own writings. Nothing certain seems to be known about the matter, and it is even regarded as entirely fabulous by some sceptics who would banish from history all its charming stories, the mere fact of a romantic flavour seeming to them to prove a legend untrue. As if real life were constructed on such dull and unimaginative lines!

If, however, the story of Petrarch and Laura be well founded, he must have been the very prince of lovers, for his love was well-nigh untiring, although seemingly hopeless, uncheered by even an occasional meeting; and it remained in his heart obstinately and irrevocably, in spite of the most persistent efforts of his intellect and his religious sense to oust it; in spite of a life among the Courts of Europe the most brilliant and varied that can be imagined.

Petrarch possessed also the genius of friendship, and had swarms of friends. When Pope Clement VI., one of the number, lay dying in his fortress palace, the poet sent a message: "Remember the epitaph of the Roman Emperor Hadrian: 'Turba Medicorum Perii.'" And he wrote a letter to the Pope in the same strain: "What makes me really tremble is to see your bed surrounded with physicians who never agree."...

One likes to picture him in these old halls and to know that he possessed the genial faculty of making people feel the happier for his presence. Yet it is recorded that "deep remorse and profound melancholy afflicted the poet's soul."

Perhaps his hopeless love may have clouded his spirit, for this does happen in exceptional natures; or is it that, in truth, there are untold agonies, late or soon, in the hearts of all who have the power to move and to delight?

Certain it is that Petrarch possessed an immense attraction for almost every type of mind and character. He must indeed have been a man of infinite charm. He was the friend of kings, scholars, Popes, princes, soldiers, statesmen. He ardently championed the cause of Rienzi, and of the Emperor Charles IV.; for the idea of keeping up the succession of the Holy Roman Empire appealed powerfully to his imagination, and when that monarch gave up his campaign before he had made good his imperial claims on Italy, Petrarch wrote bitterly reproaching him for abandoning so sacred a heritage.

In Avignon, among hosts of devoted friends, were the Princes of the House of Colonna; and the friendship was not destroyed even when Petrarch sided warmly with Rienzi against the turbulent nobles of Rome, among whom the Colonna were pre-eminent.

But in spite of his popularity in the Papal city, Petrarch heartily detested this Gallic Babylon, as he called it, and loved to retire from its splendours to Vaucluse, not far off, where he tried to regain serenity in the silence of that strangely romantic spot. A sad-looking little house is still pointed out as the home of the poet; with a shady, wild garden running down to the waters of the Sorgue as they rush foaming from the narrow vale, whose stupendous cliffs are as gloomy and hope-destroying as St. Augustine himself!—St. Augustine as represented in the "Segreto" at any rate.

Here, in his beloved retreat, the poet seems to have perpetually tormented himself with reflections about the vanity of life and the folly of human affections, as if the stern figure of his monitor were indeed still shadowing his spirit. But the saint, for all his arguments, cannot conquer the poet's nature, or free him from what he calls the adamantine chains that bind him to Love and Fame.

"These charm while they destroy," he makes the saint declare.

"What have I done to you?" Petrarch exclaims, "that you should deprive me of my most splendid preoccupations and condemn to eternal darkness the brightest part of my soul?"

It is in the grip of his splendid preoccupations that one sees him oftenest.

Petrarch's parents were forced to leave Florence, where his father was a notary, by the same revolution that exiled Dante, and after some wanderings they fixed themselves at Avignon, sending the poet to study jurisprudence at Montpellier, close at hand. It was on his return to the Papal city, after the death of his parents, that he saw Laura for the first time.

Judging by the sonnets, he met her fairly often afterwards in Avignon, but never with any hope of a return for his passion.

A glance, a word of greeting at most, were all his reward, but out of these he appears to have woven a sort of painful joy. His was an unquiet spirit. One feels it as almost a relief to read of his death and of his peaceful tomb at Arqua in the Euganæan hills above a clear and beautiful river. "It stands on the little square before the church where the peasants congregate at Mass-time—open to the skies, girdled by the hills and within hearing of the vocal stream."

It is a pathetic picture that is left in the mind at the last, as the poet writes from the sweet solitude of his garden at Parma, whither he had retired towards the end of his days, drawn, doubtless, to his native land, for which he had always a profound attachment.

"I pass my life in the church or in my garden," he says. The words are so simple and quiet, and yet they are infinitely pathetic. When one remembers what acentre of emotion and longing and sorrow the human heart must be from its very nature, and what a stormy, ambitious, loving and suffering spirit Petrarch's had always been, the quietness of those words and the picture they call up is more touching and significant than a hundred homilies. One knows a little now what sort of thoughts used to pass through the poet's mind, as he bent his steps towards the great painted chambers where his entry brought to all quick nerves a touch of sunshine and a wave of harmony.

Barbara gave a little laugh as we ascended the broad whitewashed staircase, once rich with colour, that led to the endless galleries of this leviathan of a palace.

"I wonder what our friend would say to this!" she exclaimed.

"Not a rag of ornament," I quoted sadly.

"Not Gothic or anything," Barbara complained.

"Wait a minute," I warned, as we entered a vast room with a vaulted ceiling, which revealed by one small corner of the huge expanse the magnificent canopy of rich frescoes that had once overhung the assemblies of the Popes. "If it is not Gothic, at least it's—anything!" I cried, with enthusiasm. And truly anything and everything that is sumptuous, mellow, exquisite in wealth and modulation of colour this great hall, with its painted vaultings, must have been. But the splendour had been desecrated by some Vandal, careless of his country's pride. Instead of leaving the great audience chamber to tell its own eloquent tale, the unpardonable one had cut it up into a couple of rooms—lofty indeed even then—by dividing its height, and now the dinners of the troops are cooked irreverently below, while the men spend their leisure in the vaulted upper half of the Hall of theFrescoes; painted, perhaps, by Giotto, if the faint tradition may be believed.[3]

The hall is filled with carpenters' benches, turning-lathes, tools which lie scattered among wood shavings, glue-pots, and various disorderly properties.

Through the enormous window at the end of this haunted chamber of history there is a dazzling view of the plain of the Rhone and the circle of mountains enclosing it, Mont Ventoux, richly blue, rising magnificently in the centre of the amphitheatre.

We thought of Petrarch's famous ascent of the mountain, and of his reflections on the vanity of all things when at last, after a hard scramble, he reached the summit.

"No doubt he was tired," said the practical Barbara.

It was just what she would have said about one of her own brothers with a similar excuse for pessimism.

Perhaps if Petrarch had had a Barbara to look after him he would not have made so many reflections about the vanity of things. She would have treated him as a charming child, whose fitful moods have to be allowed for and soothed. It is indeed a rare man whom women do not feel called upon to treat more or less in that way! However, Petrarch has the support of a modern very different from himself when he complains of the disillusions of mountain climbing. Nietzsche remarks the same thing, but he accounts for it by the fact that the whole charm and spell of the country has come from the mountain which draws one to it irresistibly, but once we are there, the sorceress is no longer visible, and so the charm disappears.

It was in this fortress-palace that the Anti-Pope Benedict XIII. (Pierre de Luna) withstood the attacks of Charles V., whose religious sentiments, outraged by the schism in the Church, prompted him to send one of his generals to drive the pretender from his stronghold. The siege continued for months, and ruined many houses in Avignon and killed many of the people. At last, when the place was stormed the Pope took refuge in the tower and finally escaped out of a secret door.

MILL IN VALE OF THE SORGUE AT VAUCLUSE.By E. M. Synge.

We lingered for some minutes at the great window in the Hall of the Frescoes studying the landscape, and trying to find out the direction of Petrarch's romantic Vale of the Sorgue and the site of the Castle of Romanin and Les Baux in the Alpilles. Near to the window to our left, as a stern foreground to thatradiant picture of Provence, stands Rienzi's tower, bare and bald indeed. And there the last of the Tribunes passed days of one knows not what anguish in his dark little prison, while the sunlight beat and beat without upon its ruthless walls. There is a touching story, showing the honour in which the troubadour's profession was held in those days: that the people of Avignon interceded for the condemned patriot, pleading for his life on the ground that he too was a singer of songs. One is relieved to remember that at least he did not end his days in this miserable dungeon, but met his death in the streets of Rome, at the foot of the Capitol itself.

Alexandre Dumas says of this palace: "We find some sparks of art shining like gold ornaments in dark armour! These are paintings which belong to the hard style which marks the transition from Cimabue to Raphael. They are thought to be by Giotto or Giottino, and certainly if they are not by these masters they belong to their age and school. These paintings ornament a tower which was probably the ordinary abode of the Pope, and a chapel which was used as a tribunal of the Inquisition."

The young woman who showed us over the Palace with sustained hauteur, told us that it was the custom to execute papal prisoners by throwing them from the top of Rienzi's tower. This was the only subject that seemed to interest our guide, a young lady of very modern type, and aggressively "equal." In case we should have any doubt on the matter she adopted an abrupt gait and an extremely noisy and resolved manner of inserting the keys in the locks of the various doors through which she admitted the sightseers. Barbara and I would fain have hung back among the strange little passages hidden in the thickness of the inner walls, ominous little mole-corridors suggestive of plot and passion such as a Court of mediæval Popes could well beimagined to harbour. But our guide fretted impatiently at the exit, eager to hurry us out, and she would scarcely vouchsafe an answer to the meekest of questions. In fact, by the time she had given us a very much foreshortened view of the Palace (I am convinced that she did us out of more than half of the appointed round), most of us felt more or less trampled upon—her equality was such!

It is perhaps a paradox, but it is none the less true that one does not fully realise the character of a scene till one has left it.

Under the shadow of that terrible building we were held by a spell, wandering bewildered from dusky corridor to darker chamber, scarcely able to take count of our own impressions. They were so strong and they came so fast.

But once out again in the sunshine, we found that the images grouped themselves into gloomy pictures, and all the crime and all the splendid misery of that wonderful stage of mediæval drama seemed to crowd before the mind's eye, re-peopling the melancholy place with brilliant figures, filling it with voices and all the indescribable sound and murmur of a stirring centre of human life.

"The Ligurians—subdued finally by Augustus ... had constituted the first nationality ... of Provence. Perhaps Asiatic in origin, they extended, with the Celts and the Iberians ... from the Pyrenees to the Alps, along the littoral ... at the epoch assigned for the founding of Marseilles, 590 or 600b.c."The Ligurians extended from the seventh or eighth centuryb.c.from the Pyrenees to the Arno along the Mediterranean shores."The Ibero-Ligurians have left memories of three tribes, the Bebrykes, the Sordes, and the Elesykes...."In spite of the successive influences of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, in spite of the mixture of the neighbouring Celts and the Roman colonists, the type of the Ligurians has perpetuated itself across the centuries."Paul Mariéton.

"The Ligurians extended from the seventh or eighth centuryb.c.from the Pyrenees to the Arno along the Mediterranean shores.

"The Ibero-Ligurians have left memories of three tribes, the Bebrykes, the Sordes, and the Elesykes....

"In spite of the successive influences of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, in spite of the mixture of the neighbouring Celts and the Roman colonists, the type of the Ligurians has perpetuated itself across the centuries."

Paul Mariéton.

CHAPTER V

THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS

The rivers of Provence are strangely fascinating; perhaps because they so dominate and ensoul the country, and because of their tumultuous flowing. The really fascinating thing for the living is life!

The river Asse is so impetuous that a proverb has grown up about it: "l'Asse; fou qui la passe."

"And fleet Durance ...Rugged in gait as wild of appetite...."

"And fleet Durance ...

Rugged in gait as wild of appetite...."

The Rhone has a little wind all to herself; the west wind that is calledlou rosau, the Provençal name for the river beingla Rose.

The Rhone and the Durance are very different in character, though it would take some telling to make the distinction clear. Both are swift and strong, but the Durance is always a wild mountain creature, clear and singing, while the Rhone is more humanised, more experienced, more profound in the still passion of its flowing.

Its calm is perfect, its storm tremendous.Rohan le taureauis a name well deserved when the mistral descends from the mountains, waking the "majesticmusic" of the river; impetuous, stormy, but always with that mysterious under-note of calm that seems to belong to all great things. Even the stern St. Jerome called the persuasive Hilarius "the Rhone of eloquence," because nothing could resist the seductive power of his language.

"His waves like herded cows that roar and bound" is one of Mistral's many descriptions of the river which has inspired poet after poet and traveller after traveller with a sense of its splendid power and beauty.

It is to the rivers, those patient builders, that the Gulf of Lyons owes its curious formation which is of extraordinary interest to the geologist as well as to the historian and the artist.

It was when the glacial epoch of the world was just over and the great glaciers were breaking up along the valleys that lead down to the Mediterranean that the present contours of the Gulf of Lyons began to form. It is the old story of river-borne material forming deltas and bars, but in this case, perhaps because of the great number of rivers—(the Tech, the Aude, the Olbe, the Hérault, the Vidourle, the Durance, and above all the Rhone)—there has arisen a sort of twin-coast; a double shore enclosing a complicated series of lagoons orétangsproducing a labyrinth of land and lake; "ephemeral isles," and wandering waterways, long stretches of sand-dunes—shores that fly before the wind—great swamps and deserts such as the Rhone-enclosed island of the Camargue and the plain of the Crau. In its desolate way, this coast of many changes and fortunes is one of the most interesting features of the country.

On the outer beach break the waves of the Mediterranean; the inner is bathed by the smooth waters of the great chain of lagoons, blue, lonely, strangely bright and still.

ON THE DURANCE.By E. M. Synge.

This lake system in the early centuries was the scene of active navigation and commerce, and on its shores were brilliant cities. A canal orgrauconnected the lagoons with the sea, and these avenues in the prosperous days were kept carefully open so that the sea could enter and keep the water fresh and moving, and so perfectly wholesome.

Gradually, as one by one the great ports fell into decay, the canals were neglected and the lakes became stagnant, silting up and so developing into poisonous morasses, till the whole dismal regions in the Middle Ages became a place of death.

AIGUES MORTES FROM THE CAMARGUE.By E. M. Synge.

Let any traveller cross the Camargue on some calm afternoon in winter, leaving the wonderful dark walls and towers of Aigues Mortes behind him on the marshy plain, and he will probably be disinclined to admit that any important changes can have taken place since those unhappy days. Nevertheless vast improvements have been made, at any rate as regards hygienic conditions; and though still dangerous in the hot season, these swampy spaces cannot rival the old appalling death-roll which in certain times of the year would summon so manyvictims from the marsh-encircled towns that there were not sufficient hands left to bury them.

At Aigues Mortes the people used to say that the fever held its spring assizes, and there were out of 1,500 inhabitants never less than five or six deaths per day.

Aigues Mortes is but one of the Dead Cities of the coast; some of these are still existing in that sadly pensive way in which once active and famous centres survive their time of glory; while others are ruined or have altogether disappeared.

The series begins at Port Vendre (Portus Veneris), following the coast eastward past Narbonne, Aigues Mortes, Marseilles (the most famous of all, with its Phocæan colonists) to Olba, whose site every traveller passes on his dusty way to the Riviera.

Many of these ancient cities are now inland, but formerly they were still on the shore; as, for instance, Rousillon (the ancient Roscino), Narbonne, and Illiberis. This last is so ancient that Pomponius Mela and Pliny are quoted as having referred to it as "once a great and glorious city." In their day it was reduced to a small village. Its name is thought to be Iberic or Basque, and signifies a new town (Illi beris).

One seems never able to get back far enough to arrive at the beginning of Illiberis, for the city that was already decayed in Pliny's time had a predecessor called Pyrene, named after the daughter of the king of the mysterious Ligurian race of Bebrykes. Pyrene had for a lover no less a person than Hercules, and she gave her name to the capital of the Bebryke Kingdom and to the great chain of mountains that dominate it.

These vast masses of the Pyrenees seem to be the only fixed thing in this region of deltas; this strange, lone land, which rises and flees in a mist before one's eyes, gathering now here, now there in restless dunes, encroachingon the sea at this point, falling back at that; always wandering and wild; shifting, drifting against the walls of ancient cities; stirring, shivering in forgotten corners, by forsaken ways and shrines; silting up round old wrecks or ruins of years ago, till an island or a mount is born out of the waste; giving way before the rush of some swollen current, as it breaks forth into a fresh channel with bright, victorious waves bearing new fortunes to whole regions along the coast.

Among the many races that have populated this shore, besides the great and far-reaching Ligurians and Iberians, there were the agricultural Volscians in the fifth century and the Sordares or Sordi, another traditional half-fabulous people who belonged chiefly to the country about Rousillon, the ancient Roscino.

The whole coast was haunted by the Phœnicians from the earliest times; and the Volscians held a large part of the region for centuries, cultivating the land in quiet bucolic fashion. Narbonne, Agatha (Agde), Brescon, Forum Dimitti (Frontigen), St. Gilles, Maguelonne, Aigues Mortes, were among these old cities or ruins, of which Narbonne alone is of much importance to-day.

When they were flourishing, the country was more or less covered with vegetation; and of a dream-like loveliness these twin-shores must have been with their fair cities dotting the green shores; towers and palaces repeating themselves in the stillness of the lagoons; gliding ships richly laden threading the waterways, passing and repassing; a fresh little wind coming in from the sea, and the vast blue of those waters stretching forth to the edge of the world!

The most ancient of the dead cities, those whose origin recedes far back before the Roman occupation,are generally a few miles inland, and mark the old line of the coast.

Narbonne, the famous capital of Gallia, was, like all the Celtic cities, sombre and severe in aspect, with mortarless walls of enormous blocks of stone. The people of Marseilles who traded with Narbonne "found no charm in these marshy solitudes beaten by all the winds in the midst of the indefinite and shallow lagoons, which rendered almost unapproachable the grey walled town whose sadness contrasted strikingly with the magnificence of the elegant Massilia."

Since then the Romans have occupied Narbonne, the Visigoths and Saracens have devastated it. This, the first Roman colony in Gaul, was civilised and Romanised by Fabius Maximus, a bold undertaking in the newly conquered country inhabited by wild Ligurians and Celts. But the Roman genius for government and colonisation produced its usual brilliant results. Theatres, amphitheatres, baths, temples and palaces sprang up in the Celtic city which the traders from Marseilles had thought so gloomy, and for many a long day Narbonne was the most important of flourishing ports in Gaul always excepting Marseilles the immortal.

At Narbonne have been found "monumental stones" with small caps carved upon them. When a Roman left in his will that certain of his slaves should be liberated, a cap was carved upon their tombs, and so it has become "the cap of liberty," the symbol of a freedom greater than the freest Roman ever dreamt of.

There were also found in the burial-places of children little rude clay toys representing pigs and horses.

More striking and unexpected than these discoveries, however, were those of several tombs said to have been found in the city with inscriptions proving that some Pagans at least believed in immortality, for the survivorsspeak of looking forward joyfully to reunion in another life with their lost ones.

The towns of Agde and Brescon, or Blascon, follow next in the chain of dead cities, both situated on volcanic islands at the mouth of the Hérault. If the speculations of etymologists have brought them to a correct conclusion, the name of Blascon proves the Phœnicians to have known something of geology. For Blascon is thought to be derived from the Pnician rootbalangon, to devour with fire; so that these ubiquitous traders must have recognised volcanic soil when they saw it.

Agde (Agatha Tyche—Good Fortune—from the happy position of its port, nautically considered) was a Greek colony from Marseilles carrying with it the cult of Hellas. A temple to Diana of Ephesus was erected on the coast, this goddess being the tutelar deity of the mother city. A few columns of the temple are said still to remain.

Agde was called the Black Town by Marco Polo; and by many a luckless traveller in the Middle Ages, a Cavern of Thieves.

Across the whole of this district between the cities, great roads used to run; the Domitian Way being founded on a primitive Ligurian or Celtic road, and extending from Carthagena through Gallia Narbonensis as far as the Rhone.

The Aurelian Way was another of these routes running further westward, but as to its exact course, no profane outsider may dare to pronounce. It is a subject that destroys all peace in antiquarian circles.

It has been remarked[4]that all names on a certain line of route, ending at Béziers in Languedoc, are Celtic,while all south of that route are Latin. Among the first we find Ugernum (Beaucaire), Nemausus (Nimes), Ambrossus (Ambrusian), Sostatio (Castelnau), Cessero (St. Thibery), Riterræ (Béziers).[5]The second or Latin names comprise Franque Vaux (Francavallis), Aigues Mortes (Acquæ Mortuæ), Saint Gilles (Fanum Sancti Ægidii), Vauvert (Vallis Viridis), Villeneuve (Villa Nova), Mirevaux (Mira Vallis), and so forth.

From their names, therefore, one may judge whether these towns were built before or after the Roman occupation, and thence whether the district was above water at that time, or at least whether it was possible for human habitation. It appears that this historical theory tallies precisely with the geology of the district, and that the whole country—even including the Alpilles, whose peaks formed islands at the beginning of our era—was covered with the sea. Mont Majour, near Arles—where is now a magnificent ruined castle characteristic of the country—the Montagnette de Tarascon, a curious little limestone height among whose recesses is perched a strange old monastery, and one or two other places, form the sole exceptions.

The old beach far inland can be traced easily by the line of sand-dunes often covered with Parasol Pines and white poplars. This line, therefore, marks the scene of some of the great changes and events of French history.

On the coast between sea and lagoon lies Maguelonne, a dead city indeed, but one of the most romantic spots in the South of France. Its fortress-church, gloomily shrouded by a grove of pines, stands on the lonely island, listening, one might fancy, to the incessant beat of thewaters on the deserted shores—sole remnant of a great city.

Aigues Mortes with its wonderful walls untouched since they were built by Philip le Hardi; St. Gilles, in the Camargue (famous for its exquisite church), built perhaps on the site of the Greek city Heraclea, which had disappeared even in Philip's time; Arles, "the Gallic Rome," the residence of Roman Emperors and the capital of a later kingdom—these, too, belong to the astonishing list which might lengthen itself almost indefinitely.

Each town, moreover, is the scene of geological changes, of racial, social, and historical romance which would take a lifetime to learn and volumes to relate.

It is a strange, sad story—if truly the decadence of what we call prosperous cities and the desolation of brilliant sights be sad.

"Scarcely two thousand years," says Lenthéric, "have sufficed to convert these lagoons, formerly navigable, into sheets of pestilential water, to annihilate this immemorial vegetation, to transform into arid steppes this gracious archipelago of luxuriant wooded isles, and to outline this coast with a desolating dryness and an implacable monotony."

But at least it is peaceful: at least it is free from the fret and fume and tragedy of human life!

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