CHAPTER XXIIITHE SORCERESS OF THE ALPILLES

LES BAUX FROM THE ROAD TO ST. REMY, SHOWING PLATFORM IN FRONT OF CHURCH OF ST. VINCENT.By E. M. Synge.

We had visited her place of burial in the church behind us; a sad, silent spot that might have supplied a text for many a solemn sermon.

Mouldering walls and an empty grave. But they breathed forth no solemnities to us, or at least no gloomy ones. Rather they whispered of the mystery and power of life and passion; of things potent, creative, immortal.

Nor could we believe that the vivid consciousness of self and soul in that being to whom we sent our thoughts could be less enduring than the mere echo of her words and deeds in a universe where not a breath in the air or a tremor of the ether can ever be truly lost.

It was impossible not to speculate further regarding the real self of the woman as distinct from the self which reflected the world of the twelfth century. What that world expected of her we know, and so we know a very large part of the reality, for the emotions of most of us are the product of this eternal outside suggestion.

But there is sometimes—perhaps always—deep down in the being, a hidden spot that acknowledges no such dictation; and here would spring up yearnings and criticisms, revolts and despairs, while the wife of the feudal seigneur punctually and uncomplainingly fulfilled the demands of her position.

Did she ever, even for a moment, see the grim reality of that position, or was it hidden from her eyes by tradition, habit, by the little palliatives and privileges which her power as a woman and a beautiful woman, would win for her at this auspicious moment of new-born homage for her sex?

It is not at all unlikely that some inkling of the strange situation would drift across the consciousness now and again, for it is just at the moment when a burden grows a little less overwhelming that the bearer begins to cryout against its oppression. Before then he has no breath with which to cry!

Personal trouble and the sting of unhappy love might have stirred momentary feelings that would link our heroine of the golden hair with her sisters of future generations. It is unthinkable that such feelings were never in the hearts of women, in some form or other, in the days of their darkest captivity.

Perhaps, as she watched the troubadour riding forth into the world, she rebelled against her task of eternal waiting and submitting; against the all-extensive claims made upon her as part and parcel of her husband's estate and dignity: for her position in this respect was made clear enough when he threateningly commended to her vigilance the duty of safeguarding his name and the "honour" of his house on pain of punishment such as only a mediæval seigneur could devise.

Called to account for every act and word, admonished like a child—and often in the tone used to the hounds after a bad day's sport—not the most secret emotion of her heart legitimately her own—body and soul the property of her lord and his all-important family: her life was one long reminder of the humiliating facts. Was she tired of being warder of her own prison? Even the hounds were not that! Was she sick of this strange stewardship of herself as the property of another? Must she remain for ever shut away from ambitions, passions, hopes? Was she never to know what love and loyalty as between free human souls meant? Was she never—fool, fool that she was——?

Some interruption occurred here, and Alazais ceased to soliloquise.

Barbara said that there was really no need to address as "fool, fool" the entirely sensible-looking nun whoemerged from the church of St. Vincent, with her Mass-book in her hand.

The apparition of a creature of flesh and blood in this strange place was almost startling, and it brought back considerations of time and place and other delusive modes of human thought. There was dinner to be considered—delusive but necessary as delusions are;—in short, the hour of departure had struck.

We turned slowly, reluctantly from the parapet, thinking of Raimbaut de Vacqueiras as he rode away to his new destiny, his wanderings from court to court, his ardent love-affairs at Montferrat, his joys and great sorrows, till at last wearied with misunderstandings, disappointments, and saddened with the restless trouble of his life, he joined the Crusades and died fighting against the Saracens.

The home of Alazais looked more shadowy and mournful than ever as we passed it on our downward way.

"De la solitaire demeureUne ombre lourde d'heure en heure,Se détache sur le gazon,Et cet ombre, couchée et morteEst la seule chose qui sorteTout le jour de cette maison."

"De la solitaire demeure

Une ombre lourde d'heure en heure,

Se détache sur le gazon,

Et cet ombre, couchée et morte

Est la seule chose qui sorte

Tout le jour de cette maison."

"And midst the thymeThey drink from golden bowlAnd circle round in goblin farandole."Mistral.

"And midst the thymeThey drink from golden bowlAnd circle round in goblin farandole."

"And midst the thyme

They drink from golden bowl

And circle round in goblin farandole."

Mistral.

AT LES BAUX.By E. M. Synge.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SORCERESS OF THE ALPILLES

Music in a dead city!

We stopped abruptly. Out of the deepening stillness there grew slowly, solemnly, the muffled, mournful trembling of an organ issuing from the closed doors of the church on the platform. The sound swelled, ebbed, fell into low troubled mutterings, then swelled again; never was any strain more plaintive, solitary shadowed: all in subdued undertone, but heart-breaking.

Surely a human soul despairing and unable to find expression!

In this wild scene it was unearthly in its intensity of mournfulness. Looking back we saw the figure of a nun crossing the space from the house of the Porcelets to enter the church, and as the doors opened, the soundpoured out in fuller volume, but always in that strange, tense undertone.

The city seemed to be steeped in melancholy, as if a grey mist of grief had fallen upon it.

We commenced our homeward journey on foot, making a little circuit to visit the "Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne" in the gorge below, leaving our vehicle to follow.

La Reine Jeanne was the famous and beautiful Queen Joan of Naples, heiress of Provence, whose father on his death-bed counselled her to hand the country over to the Pope, then at Avignon. He in his turn bestowed it on the Count of Anjou, and thus Provence came to belong to that powerful family.

The Queen is said to have often visited Les Baux, and to have held Courts of Love and various revelries in the now weed-grown enclosure where the Pavilion sadly stands in the corner of what was once a garden; a fine, highly-bred little piece of architecture well fitted for its purpose.

On our way to rejoin our trap we were overtaken by two wayfarers: a young man and woman somewhat poorly clad and carrying bundles. They were looking about them intelligently as if interested in the scene.

The man's bundle was evidently a musical instrument, and as they came nearer we heard snatches of song, sometimes gay, sometimes sad. The man pointed to Les Baux as if astonished at its extraordinary aspect, and the woman stood looking up at it curiously. Sometimes they left the road to explore some of the clefts and rock passages, and among the bare walls of limestone and the narrow galleries, their songs—with which they had doubtless delighted Marseilles audiences—reverberated most fantastically. Evidently they were strolling minstrels tramping the country, and were now probably on theirway to St. Remy, Tarascon, and Beaucaire, and on to Avignon and the cities of Languedoc; modern troubadours following the ancient calling in the ancient country.

But ah, if Raimbaut de Vacqueiras had seen his successors!

It was a touching little scene: the two footsore troubadours—jongleurs, perhaps, one ought to call them—passing wondering but unconscious below the city where once their forefathers of the craft were welcomed and honoured guests.

If the passes of the Alpilles were as desolate as a moon landscape in the full blaze of a Provençal midday, what were they in the grey of evening? The human spirit is not fashioned to endure the aspect of these abysmal regions of nature.

Masses of rock rising out of unknown deeps of shadow take on the aspect of some lawless architecture, the handiwork of an alien race: fantastic earth-born peoples raising mad palaces half sublime, half grotesque:—

"great plinths, majestic porticoes."

colonnades whose capitals are sculptured by the wind spirits: strange half-finished cathedrals with pinnacles and fretwork, flocks of gargoyles wrought by goblin sculptors.

There was one sublime insane cathedral looming crazily through the dusk, with an encumberment of caricatures of saints and angels, grinning faces, half defined, half suggested—it seemed like some great Temple of Evil.

From the Gorge of Hell, high up among the recesses of the hills, opens the Witch's Grotto amidst "tortured shapes which rise up, sink down, stretch into great entablatures and gardens in the air."

This is the dreaded domain of Tavèn, the famous sorceress of the Alpilles. She plays an important part in Mistral's epic poemMireille(orMirèio, in the original Provençal).

To this maiden and her lover Vincent, who visited her cavern which stretches for long distances underground, Tavèn gives extraordinary experiences. They have come to her for aid in their love affair which Mireille's father, a wealthy farmer on the outskirts of the Crau, violently opposes. Vincent has been treacherously wounded by his rival, an owner of cattle on the Camargue; a brutal but wealthy suitor favoured by the father.

The sorceress is found at the bottom of the grotto amid a "cloud of dreams," with a sprig of broom-grass in her hand, which is called the devil's wheat. Above her head is a raven perched on a beam, and beside him a milk-white hen; also (for magical reasons) a sieve tied to the wall.

She leaps down a deep crevice, and her clients follow her. She directs them to gird round their brows the leaves of the mandrake, the gruesome plant of human contours that shrieks aloud when its roots are torn out of the ground.

Tavèn tells them that it is the blest plant of her master-in-magic Nostradamus. The astrologer and magician lived at St. Remy, and so was within easy reach of his famous pupil.

Then the witch urges further descent into the depths, crying,

"Children, all regions exquisite and brightAre but through woeful purgatory neared"—

"Children, all regions exquisite and bright

Are but through woeful purgatory neared"—

a saying suggesting an idea of philosophic significance.

Indeed, the whole fantastic story seems to have more meaning in it than is ostensibly claimed, and contains many hints of the deeper reaches of experience.

LES BAUX FROM LEVEL OF THE TOWN.By E. M. Synge.

As Tavèn and her charges penetrate further into these wilds, a blast of wind and a "pack of elves shriek through the crypt," which is full of wailing.

Tavèn warns her scared visitors to keep on their "charmed crowns," and to be undismayed by the huge apparition that they see in the dusk: la Lavandière, "whose throne is on Ventoux," where she makes rain and lightning.

The whole dark factory of Evil is shown to the adventurers. They are told how, on the last three days of February and the first three of March, the tombs all open and the tapers kindle, and

"the drowsy deadIn ghastly order bend their knees to pray."

"the drowsy dead

In ghastly order bend their knees to pray."

A phantom priest performs mass and the church bells ring themselves of their own accord.

But one can hear the bells of Les Baux ringing thus on wild March days and nights!

In the Grotto, Tavèn looses the "swarms of ill," and they rush forth and hold a sort of Carnival, with wizards from Varigoule, in the Luberon range, and ghouls from Fanfarigoule on the Crau.

And in the midst of this appalling Desert of Stones, where the wild thyme makes here and there a fragrant carpet, this mad company dances the farandole.

It was with a pleasant human sense of comfort and cheer that we found ourselves once more driving throughthe streets of St. Remy. Quieter now than ever these little streets in the dusk, so that we could almost hear the falling of the great yellow leaves of the plane-trees, softly, occasionally, in the avenues. Quite from the other end of the tiny town we could catch the rumble of the homing omnibus, bringing its last freight of passengers from the station, or more likely returning empty, to earn its rest in the outhouse behind the hotel—happy, simple omnibus, without a care in the world!

We were thankful to wash off the dust of the day, and with it half our fatigue, and to hasten down to thesalle à manger, pleasantly tired with the long hours in the open air, the long stream of strong impressions. And how hungry we were! Impressions seem to need a large amount of sustenance.

I think the waiter must be accustomed to famished visitors returning from Les Baux, for he simply flew as we appeared, dashed the menu down on the table, murmuring, "Tout de suite, Mesdames," and was scurrying back the next minute with two small tureens of smoking soup. Never did soup taste so good or so comforting!

Life indeed has its contrasts! We thought of Les Baux among the abysses of the Alpilles under the shroud of night, with a light or two from the Chevelure d'Or and the few neighbouring houses twinkling mysteriously on the height, and perhaps that strange music stealing into the darkness of the valley—while out on the Crau—

"Si Mesdames désirent du vin blanc ou du vin rouge?"

Thus sharply roused, we make a random choice, (Barbara accused me of having replied "du Crau, s'il vous plait,") and the waiter placed on the table a bottle of good Provençal wine which tasted like distilled sunshine, which indeed it was, just tempered with a breeze from Mont Ventoux.

After the meal we were conducted once more to the parlour, where the same little party was collected, all interested to hear what we thought of Les Baux.

We expressed ourselves with warmth.

"Oui c'est belle," observed Madame, giving a hitch to her work to bring it more under her fingers, "Voilà une petite excursion ex-cess-ive-ment in-ter-ess-ante."

A desire to laugh became insistent, not at Madame, but at the whole situation. But that was out of the question. Had I been allowed to cry it would have done almost as well, but that would have created still more consternation, so I played up to Madame and said—

"En effet, c'est une excursion la plus charmante que nous avons fait en Provence," and happily no one seemed to see how ridiculous the observation was.

We returned to the subject of St. Remy, of which Madame knew a good deal—learnt, as she told us, from some esteemed and instructive American clients.

Of Nostradamus and the troubadours and the Counts of Provence her information was not exhaustive; though she had some anecdotes and a personal feeling about the Good King René who has made himself loved and remembered by his countrymen for four centuries by his goodness and the quality that we well call charm—recognising in it an element of natural sorcery.

St. Remy must have been a bright little city in the days of the Counts; the scene of many gay and knightly doings.

And there were doings neither gay nor knightly in one grim old house covered with demoniac gargoyles where Nostradamus worked through the clear Provençal nights.

Doubtless it was in this narrow ancient street in that gloomy, haunted house that Tavèn the witch came to learn the mysteries of the art of magic. Perhaps it washere that the philosopher on his side learnt many things from his pupil, as wise teachers are apt to do.

One can but wonder how far the legend was founded on fact and what actual part the Enchantress of the Alpilles played in the life of the great astrologer.

Barbara, who had a good healthy appetite for romance, hoped it was a love affair—which was startling indeed!

Nostradamus in love seemed a most profane idea, and it took one some time to recover from the suggestion. And it was almost as much a comedown for Tavèn. It removed so much of her ghoulishness.

We consulted our hostess. Madame knitted her brows. She had heard about "ce Monsieur là," from the instructive Americans who came to St. Remy for a visit of three days and stayed three years—an extravagant American sort of thing to do!

"Mais jamais avait on remarqué que Monsieur Nostradamus était amoureux de la sorcière des Alpilles; jamais, jamais!"

OLD HOUSE, ST. REMY.By E. M. Synge.

It sounded much more feasible in French and I began almost to tolerate the preposterous theory.

"Néanmoins cela se peut," added Madame, who knew something of life and that even magicians were human.

We were shown various relics and gifts of the American clients and listened to many anecdotes, all testifying to a most happy and unusual relationship, savouring of olden days, between the hosts and guests of an inn. But as a matter of fact, the American, the most modern of all men, is curiously apt to bring about something of old-time relationships, something of the cordiality and freedom, the simple humanness that very old civilisations may tend to weaken.

From talking of her clients, our hostess came to talking of their friends among the Félibres and of Mistral'sMireille, the modern epic of Provence. It breathes the very spirit of the country.

It is the Homeric character of the life that has inspired the poet; he saw in it a grandeur that we have been taught to imagine belongs only to the times of the ancients; probably because those times have been shown to us through the eyes of genius. But the Provence of to-day has also its seer who reveals its qualities of grandeur: the poet of Maillane.

After our visit to Les Baux we lost no time in reading the translation of the cantos inMireilletelling of the descent into the Witch's Grotto. Vincent and Mireille are there introduced to the Thirteenth Cavern, where they find domesticated on the hearth seven black cats and two dragons quietly emitting jets of blue flame without the slightest signs of arrogance, but simply as part of the day's work. Tavèn makes a brew in her cauldron and heals the wound which Vincent's rival had inflicted. Then they return to their homes, solaced for the time. But tragedy awaits them. The father's opposition is brought to a head when Vincent formally proposes for Mireille, and her parents are so angry and so resolved to marry her to the wealthy cattle-owner of the Camargue, that one dark night she runs away from her home, directing her stepsto the church of the Saintes Maries, to seek aid by her prayers. We find her in the last canto a desolate, fragile figure crossing the Crau. She arrives at last in the island of the Camargue, and reaches, dying, the white church where the three holy women float down through the roof in answer to her prayers.

"We are Baux' guardian saints," they cry, bidding her take comfort.

And they go on to tell her that she would not fear death if she knew how small her little world appears from their high dwellings: "how ripening hopes are washed away with tears," while hatred and cruelty breed sorrow where love should shed peace over all the world.

However, before they understood all these things, they had, like Mireille, to drain bitter cups to the dregs. They tell her of their hopeless wanderings; how they were delivered over to the mercy of the waves and landed in Provence where their task was to convert the people to Christianity; how St. Martha was impelled to go to Tarascon to lure the Tarasque from its wicked ways; and how she afterwards went to Avignon, "striking the rock with her virginal discourse," and willing the waves of faith to pour from it, whence long afterwards "Good Gregory drank, and Holy Clement filled his cup with life."

Just at the last, when Mireille is dying under the care of the Saints, her distracted father and Vincent, broken-hearted, arrive, but only just in time to see her pass peacefully away into the silence.

From the windows of our rooms one can see above the trees the fantastic summits of the Alpilles. They are clear against a "jewel-enamelled sky."

The roses are exhaling their fragrance in the dark garden just below; now and then the omnibus horses peacefully move in their stalls, perhaps going over again in their dreams the happy homeward journey after the last train.

It is not yet late, but St. Remy has gone to its rest; only the stars are awake and watching.

The sweet night air comes in quietly at the window which has been unbolted and thrown open—not without giant efforts, for French precautions against the dangerous element are thorough and hard to circumvent.

The whole scene—black trees, mountains, stars—shows through a mist of oncoming sleep and has the appearance of some unearthly vision. The whole riddle of the universe seems to be out there in the darkness; the answer is there too, just behind the veil; only just behind——

One—two—three—four——eleven o'clock! The big church in the Market Place strikes the hour with that particularly solemn note of a clock striking in a sleeping town.

"Hour for rest, hour for rest," it seems to admonish the wakeful few.

Over all things Night and Peace spread wide their wings——

"Pas de chantar m'es pres talens,Farai un vers don sui dolens,Non serai mais obediensDe Peigtau ni de Lemozi.Ieu m'en anarai en eyssilh;Laissarai en guerra mon filh,E gran paor et en parilh;E faran li mal siey vozi."("A desire to sing has seized me,And I shall sing of that which afflicts me;I shall no longer be obeyedBy either Poitou or Limousin.I shall depart into exile;I shall leave my son behind me in war,In great fear and peril,At the mercy of those who wish him ill.")ByWilliam IX. Count of Poictiers(The "First Troubadour"). Born 1071.

"Pas de chantar m'es pres talens,Farai un vers don sui dolens,Non serai mais obediensDe Peigtau ni de Lemozi.

"Pas de chantar m'es pres talens,

Farai un vers don sui dolens,

Non serai mais obediens

De Peigtau ni de Lemozi.

Ieu m'en anarai en eyssilh;Laissarai en guerra mon filh,E gran paor et en parilh;E faran li mal siey vozi."

Ieu m'en anarai en eyssilh;

Laissarai en guerra mon filh,

E gran paor et en parilh;

E faran li mal siey vozi."

("A desire to sing has seized me,And I shall sing of that which afflicts me;I shall no longer be obeyedBy either Poitou or Limousin.

("A desire to sing has seized me,

And I shall sing of that which afflicts me;

I shall no longer be obeyed

By either Poitou or Limousin.

I shall depart into exile;I shall leave my son behind me in war,In great fear and peril,At the mercy of those who wish him ill.")

I shall depart into exile;

I shall leave my son behind me in war,

In great fear and peril,

At the mercy of those who wish him ill.")

ByWilliam IX. Count of Poictiers(The "First Troubadour"). Born 1071.

CHAPTER XXVII

ACROSS THE AGES

There is a vast work on Provence by le Sieur Honoré de Bouche, Docteur en Theologie, A.P.D.S.I., printed at Aix, by Charles David, "printer to the King, the clergy and the town," MDCLXIV. It is bound in ancient brown leather;—two majestic volumes which have to be propped up against something substantial or laid upon a family dining-table in order to be read in any sort of security. Less serious treatment, such as an attempt to balance the tomes on the knee between the arms of a chair, however solid, always results in a temporary eclipse of the student. The difficulties of acquiring erudition in this case are physical as well as intellectual. But the dangers of the road are worth braving even if one does come off with an aching head and some few marks of conflict.

The author, as beseems a doctor in theology, begins the history of his country from the creation of the world, and goes steadily on with a really terrible staying power till the reign of Louis XIV., where he is forced to stop, having arrived at his own times. The height of the volumes is such that the reader has the sensation (and almost the necessity) of alternately stretching and collapsing like a telescope in order to read a page fromtop to bottom; and this movement seems to emphasise the sense given by the narrative of journeying through the centuries in company with the whole brilliant procession of Counts and Kings, rulers and high sovereigns of Provence.

Roman governors, Pagan Emperors, Christian Emperors, Burgundian and Visigoth Kings, Ostogoths and Franks, Merovingians, Carlovingians, Kings of Arles and Burgundy, Kings of Arles "high sovereigns"; Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire; Counts Proprietary and Hereditary of Arles and Provence, Counts of Anjou of the 1st Race of the House of France, Counts of Anjou of the 2nd Race, in the direct line of St. Louis; and finally, from Louis XI. onwards—Kings of France: the long pageant streams by in ordered magnificence, picturesque in setting, rich in colour and attire, with splendid names and sad, splendid destinies.

The Sieur de Bouche heads his first book in the following full-blooded manner:—

Provence."Sous ses premiers et plus anciens maitres depuis la création du monde jusqu'a á ce qu'elle ait este soumise à la domination des Romains durant l'espace de 3,927 ans."

Provence.

"Sous ses premiers et plus anciens maitres depuis la création du monde jusqu'a á ce qu'elle ait este soumise à la domination des Romains durant l'espace de 3,927 ans."

This is a mere preliminary, a slight introduction to the body of the work.

The next Book treats of the country under the Romans during 591 years, from 125b.c.to 466a.d.This period is divided into three sections.

until the arrival of the Burgundians and Visigoths.

Then comes Provence under the first barbarian kings, Burgundian and Visigoth.

The period of the Frankish kings is again divided into Sections (and let no one who has not tackled le Sieur Honoré think lightly of a Section!)

THE CHURCH DOOR, SAINTES MARIES.By Joseph Pennell.

The first Section gives 127 years of Carlovingians till 879, when we enter upon the important era of the Kings of Arles and Burgundy, and the beginning of Provence as an independent territory.

Here again we have three Sections:—

the latter also being Kings of Burgundy.

Book III. treats of the "Kings of Arles (without property in Provence or Burgundy)."

Section I.—Kings of Arles, high sovereigns, relatives, and heirs testamentary of Rudolph the last King of Arles and Burgundy.

Section II.—Kings of Arles calling themselves high Sovereigns "en qualité d'Empereurs estimant que ce royaume a esté uny a l'Empire."

There were 254 years of this dispensation, and among these rulers occur the names of the Emperor Lothair II., Frederick Barbarossa, and so forth.

Then comes the division into "Fiefs of the Kingdom of Arles."

All this wide territory constituted the ancient Kingdom of Arles.

Book IV. treats of the Counts Proprietary and Hereditary from 910 until Provence is reunited to the Crown of France (1481). To these the Sieur de Bouche devotes many of his formidable Sections. There are long lines of Bozons and Rothbolds of the 1st Race, and of Raimonds and Raimond Berengers Counts of Catalonia and of Barcellona and Kings of Aragon—beings of a most strange personal appearance if one may judge by the quaint old engravings which head each of the Sieur'sBooks of Chapters. They stare out of their medallions with a grotesque expression of royal blankness combined with a dull, obscure form of indignation which speaks ill for the "agréments" of the post of ruler of Provence in the later Middle Ages. The complication of names and races and titles is almost hopeless at this period. Even our dauntless author says wearily, "nous sortons d'un lieu fort nuageux pour entrer dans un plus tenebreux."

There are three different genealogies of the Counts of the 1st Race, and very little seems to be known of the Counts themselves with the exception of William I.

"It was by him and his valliance that this faithless and barbarous nation of Saracens was driven out who for nearly 100 years occupied the famous fortress of Fraxinet la Garde, whence they issued to make plundering expeditions by sea and land; their fort of Fraxinet and all Provence was entirely delivered from this impious and cruel race of robbers...."

Travellers on the Riviera may see the little village of Garde Freinet—as the ancient hornet's nest is now called—peacefully dreaming among the mountains of the Moors, that magnificent range whose name records for ever the long domination of those irrepressible brigands.

The inhabitants to this day are of obvious Saracen type and the grey hill-top villages of this region are living relics of that mysterious race.

As acknowledgment for his great services to his country William I. was presented by the Seigneur Grimaldi of Monaco with the lands contiguous to the fief of St. Tropez.

So uncertain seem to be the records of the dynasties of Provence that the author has to prove the existence of one of the Counts (Count Bertrand) by means of a document in which he "restores, restitutes, and gives" the Church of Notre Dame des Rats (qui est l'Eglise desTrois Maries en la Camargue) "to the Church of Saint Etienne and Saint Trophime of Arles."

The Catalan Counts of Provence: that is the 2nd Race of Proprietary Counts who were also Counts of Catalonia and Barcelona, give the same difficulty to their historians, who do not agree among themselves. They seem to have become confused by the multiplicity of the names of Raimond Berenger and of Ildefons and Alphonse—"qu'a moins d'avoir le filet d'Ariadne il est impossible de sortir de ce Labyrinthe."

Among these confusing Counts, Raimond Berenger I. stands out for his great virtues; and particularly, says the theologian, "for his great piety towards the Catholic religion and for the great pains he took for the destruction and conversion of the Moors to the Christian faith": "destruction and conversion" being apparently regarded as part of the same pious process.

He is followed by a procession of Raimond Berengers and Berenger Raimonds under whose reign were waged wars with the House of Les Baux alternating with conventions and agreements: long documents in Latin which the Counts of Provence and the Princes of Les Baux would meet in pomp to sign at Arles or at Tarascon.

About this date, late in the twelfth century, was held the great Council at Albi which condemned the Albigenses, so called from that incident.

The placing of the remains of St. Martha in a beautiful church at Tarascon where these had been hidden from the Saracens and the Goths and Vandals, is noted as an important event during the period.

Wars against the Vaudois and Albigenses are spoken of in the reign of Raimond Berenger V., and it is curious to see the account of these hideous persecutions given by a doctor of the Church. The Pope, one would suppose,had been an angel of patience, wearied out at last by the aggressions and crimes of a set of unmanageable criminals.

"Voyant que le douceur exasperait le mal il se resolut de venir aux remèdes violants et extremes;" a resolution which his Holiness thoroughly carried out.

In all these vast volumes there is not one word of the unspeakable deeds of the Church during those awful wars.

The Counts of Provence were ardently orthodox and fought against Raimond, Count of Toulouse, the sole friend of the Albigenses (as we have already seen).

The troubles of this noble and tolerant race came to an end on the accession of St. Louis by the absorption of the County of Toulouse in the Crown of France, the brother of the king marrying the daughter of the Count, and as they had no children, the lands of the heiress of Toulouse (by compact) were ceded to the throne. Soon after this, Provence also came under the government of the House of France, for the brother of St. Louis, Charles, Count of Anjou, married Beatrice of Provence, and their union inaugurated the reign of the first race of Angevins in Provence.

The ambition of these two brought about the fierce dramatic struggle of Conrad and Manfred and Conradin and the Sicilian Vespers, which ended by making Charles of Anjou and Provence also King of Naples and Sicily.

It interests lovers of Provence to know that only one Frenchman escaped the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, a Provençal of the great name of Porcelet (whose sombre old house still stands intact at Les Baux) and he was spared because of the great benevolence and nobility of his character.

One of the great events in the history of the country is the transference of the Papal Court to Avignon.Philip le Bel successfully intrigued to place on the Papal throne as Clement V. a Frenchman living in France: Le Gotto, Archbishop of Bordeaux. Having quarrelled with Boniface VIII., Philip desired to have the management of the Papacy in his own hands. Avignon goes back to the Stone Age, so its claims to antiquity were as great as those of Rome herself.

"In the air was ever a clashing of bells, mingling with the sound of fife and drum; the people danced for joy, danced day and night on the famous bridge, while the fresh air blew about them and the rapid river flowed beneath. Such was Avignon, says tradition in the days of the Popes."

But to return to the Angevin rulers of Provence. The most famous of these were "la Reine Jeanne" (Queen of Naples and Sicily and Countess of Provence) and the good King René: both of them beloved and admired by the Provençals to this day: Queen Jeanne because of her wonderful beauty and grace, and King René for his goodness, his charm, hisbonhomie, his genius.

There are accounts of the coming of the brilliant Queen to Avignon in order to obtain a dispensation from the Pope to marry Louis of Taranto. "Ravishingly beautiful, she arrived with great pomp, with a retinue on the Rhone," met doubtless by the Cardinals in their scarlet robes, and proceeding amongst the acclaiming people to the palace.

Froissart, in an account of a later interview, makes the Queen tell his Holiness that her father, son of Robert the Good of the first Angevin Counts of Provence, had advised her on his death-bed, if she had no heirs to yield all her territory to whomsoever should be Pope. "In truth, Holy Father, after his decease, with the consent of the nobles of Sicily and Naples, I weddedAndrew of Hungary—he died, a young man, at Aix-en-Provence...."

LA LICE, ARLES.By Joseph Pennell.

(As the Queen had had him murdered and thrown out of a window at Aversa, her account of his death lacked completeness.) She then casually mentions her next husband, Prince of Taranto, and in the same sentence alludesen passantto his successor, James, King of Majorca.

"Holy Father," she adds demurely, "I then married the Lord Otho of Brunswick."

The Sieur de Bouche, always methodical, arranges Queen Jeanne's husbands in a list according to priority (not alphabetical).

It is as difficult to arrive at the real story of this famous lady as at that of Mary Queen of Scots. Both were renowned for beauty, but both must have possessed a quality of charm less easy to define or they could not have exerted so powerful a hold on the imagination of their contemporaries. Both were accused, if not convicted, of great crimes, and both came to a tragic end; Queen Jeanne dying in prison in her own kingdom of Naples.

King René, the kind, merry, artistic, unpractical monarch, who is said to have been able to do all things except govern a kingdom, is remembered with real love by his people. There is a romance attached to his name. His first marriage was merely one of State policy and during his wife's lifetime he is said to have loved Jeanne de la Val, to whom he gave the "celebrated and illustrious barony of Baux," in 1458.

On the death of the Queen Isabel, he married the lady of his heart, and there appears good reason to believe that this love-match was a deeply happy one, King and Queen though the lovers were.

René the Good seems to have been made of thatsort of fibre that radiates happiness as the sun radiates warmth.

During this reign the town of Orange gave birth to an institution which seems curiously out of keeping with the spirit of the time and place, viz., the Provençal Parliament, the creation of Count William of Orange.

It was regarded popularly as one of the scourges of the country,

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