第72章

There are other things,of which I have but a confused memory:a great fortified keep;a queer little primitive chapel,hollowed out of the rock,beneath these later structures,and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Trophimus,who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls.Then there is a strange,small church,of the dimmest antiquity,standing at a distance from the other buildings.Iremember that after we had let ourselves down a good many steepish places to visit crypts and confessionals,we walked across a field to this archaic cruciform edifice,and went thence to a point further down the road,where our carriage was awaiting us.The chapel of the Holy Cross,as it is called,is classed among the historic monuments of France;and I read in a queer,rambling,illwritten book which I picked up at Avignon,and in which the author,M.Louis de Lainbel,has buried a great deal of curious information on the subject of Provence,under a style inspiring little confidence,that the "delicieuse chapelle de SainteCroix"is a "veritable bijou artistique."He speaks of "a piece of lace in stone,"which runs from one end of the building to the other,but of which I am obliged to confess that I have no recollection.I retain,however,a sufficiently clear impression of the little superannuated temple,with its four apses and its perceptible odor of antiquity,the odor of the eleventh century.

The ruins of Les Baux remain quite indistinguishable,even when you are directly beneath them,at the foot of the charming little Alpilles,which mass themselves with a kind of delicate ruggedness.Rock and ruin have been so welded together by the confusions of time,that as you approach it from behind that is,from the direction of Arles the place presents simply a general air of cragginess.Nothing can be prettier than the crags of Provence;they are beautifully modelled,as painters say,and they have a delightful silvery color.The road winds round the foot of the hills on the top of which Lea Baux is planted,and passes into another valley,from which the approach to the town is many degrees less precipitous,and may be comfortably made in a carriage.

Of course the deeply inquiring traveller will alight as promptly as possible;for the pleasure of climbing into this queerest of cities on foot is not the least part of the entertainment of going there.Then you appreciate its extraordinary position,its picturesqueness,its steepness,its desolation and decay.It hangs that is,what remains of it to the slanting summit of the mountain.Nothing would be more natural than for the whole place to roll down into the valley.A part of it has done so for it is not unjust to suppose that in the process of decay the crumbled particles have sought the lower level;while the remainder still clings to its magnificent perch.

If I called Les Baux a city,just,above,it was not that I was stretching a point in favor of the small spot which today contains but a few dozen inhabitants.The history of the plate is as extraordinary as its situation.It was not only a city,but a state;not only a state,but an empire;and on the crest of its little mountain called itself sovereign of a territory,or at least of scattered towns and counties,with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation.The lords of Les Baux,in a word,were great feudal proprietors;and therewas a time during which the island of Sardinia,to say nothing of places nearer home,such as Arles and Marseilles,paid them homage.The chronicle of this old Provencal house has been written,in a style somewhat unctuous and flowery,by M.Jules Canonge.I purchased the little book a modest pamphlet at the establishment of the good sisters,just beside the church,in one of the highest parts of Les Baux.The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques,whom I heard piping their lessons,while I waited in the cold parloir for one of the ladies to come and speak to me.Nothing could have been more perfect than the manner of this excellent woman when she arrived;yet her small religious house seemed a very outoftheway corner of the world.It was spotlessly neat,and the rooms looked as if they had lately been papered and painted:in this respect,at the mediaeval Pompeii,they were rather a discord.

They were,at any rate,the newest,freshest thing at Les Baux.I remember going round to the church,after I had left the good sisters,and to a little quiet terrace,which stands in front of it,ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall,breasthigh,over which you look down steep hillsides,off into the air and all about the neighbouring country.

I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture.The church was small and brown and dark,with a certain rustic richness.All this,however,is no general deion of Les Baux.