第73章

I am unable to give any coherent account of the place,for the simple reason that it is a mere confusion of ruin.It has not been preserved in lava like Pompeii,and its streets and houses,its ramparts and castle,have become fragmentary,not through the sudden destruction,but through the gradual withdrawal,of a population.It is not an extinguished,but a deserted city;more deserted far than even Carcassonne and AiguesMortes,where I found so much entertainment in the grassgrown element.It is of very small extent,and even in the days of its greatness,when its lords entitled themselves counts of Cephalonia and Neophantis,kings of Arles and Vienne,princes of Achaia,and emperors of Constantinople,even at this flourishing period,when,as M.

Jules Canonge remarks,"they were able to depress the balance in which the fate of peoples and kings is weighed,"the plucky little city contained at the most no more than thirtysix hundred souls.Yet its lords (who,however,as I have said,were able to present a long list of subject towns,most of them,though a few are renowned,unknown to fame)were seneschals and captainsgeneral of Piedmont and Lombardy,grand admirals of the kingdom of Naples,and its ladies were sought in marriage by half the first princes in Europe.A considerable part of the little narrative of M.Canonge is taken up with the great alliances of the House of Baux,whose fortunes,matrimonial and other,he traces from the eleventh century down to the sixteenth.The empty shells of a considerable number of old houses,many of which must have been superb,the lines of certain steep little streets,the foundations of a castle,and ever so many splendid views,are all that remains today of these great titles.To such a list I may add a dozen very polite and sympathetic people,who emerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at the two foreigners who had driven over from Arles,and whose horses were being baited at the modest inn.The resources of this establishment we did not venture otherwise to test,in spite of the seductive fact that the sign over the door was in the Provencal tongue.This little group included the baker,a rather melancholy young man,in high boots and a cloak,with whom and his companions we had a good deal of conversation.The Baussenques of today struck me as a very mild and agreeable race,with a good deal of the natural amenity which,on occasions like this one,the traveller,who is,waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared,observes in the charming people who lend themselves to conversation in the hilltowns of Tuscany.The spot where our entertainers at Les Baux congregated was naturally the most inhabited portion of the town;as I say,there were at least a dozen human figures within sight.Presently we wandered away from them,scaled the higher places,seated ourselves among the ruins of the castle,and looked down from the cliff overhanging that portion of the road which I have mentioned as approaching Les Baux from behind.Iwas unable to trace the configuration of the castle as plainly as the writers who have described it in the guidebooks,and I am ashamed to say that I did not even perceive the three great figures of stone (the three Marys,as they are called;the two Marys of Scripture,with Martha),which constitute one of the curiosities of the place,and of which M.Jules Canonge speaks with almost hyperbolical admiration.A brisk shower,lasting some ten minutes,led us to take refuge in a cavity,of mysterious origin,where the melancholy baker presently discovered us,having had the bonne pensee of coming up for us with an umbrella which certainly belonged,in former ages,to one of the Stephanettes or Berangeres commemorated by M.Canonge.

His oven,I am afraid,was cold so long as our visit lasted.When the rain was over we wandered down to the little disencumbered space before the inn,through a small labyrinth of obliterated things.They took the form of narrow,precipitous streets,bordered by empty houses,with gaping windows and absent doors,through which we had glimpses of sculptured chimneypieces and fragments of stately arch and vault.

Some of the houses are still inhabited;but most of them are open to the air and weather.Some of them have completely collapsed;others present to the street a front which enables one to judge of the physiognomy of Les Baux in the days of its importance.This importance had pretty well passed away in the early part of the sixteenth century,when the place ceased to be an independent principality.It became by bequest of one of its lords,Bernardin des Baux,a great captain of his time part of the appanage of the kings of France,by whom it was placed under the protection of Arles,which had formerly occupied with regard to it a different position.I know not whether the Arlesians neglected their trust;but the extinction of the sturdy little stronghold is too complete not to have begun long ago.Its memories are buried under its ponderous stones.As we drove away from it in the gloaming,my friend and I agreed that the two or three hours we had spent there were among the happiest impressions of a pair of tourists very curious in the picturesque.We almost forgot that we were bound to regret that the shortened day left us no time to drive five miles further,above a pass in the little mountains it had beckoned to us in the morning,when we came in sight of it,almost irresistibly to see the Roman arch and mausoleum of Saint Remy.To compass this larger excursion (including the visit to Les Baux)you must start from Arles very early in the morning;but I can imagine no more delightful day.