Romantic Cities of Provence

"Aubouro-te, raço Latino-- Emé toun péu que se desnouso A l'auro santo dou tabour, Tu siès la raço lumenouso Que viéu de joio e d'estrambord; Tu siès la raço apoustoulico Que so...

How the sun does pour down on to the great esplanade before the Palace of the Popes! It is as warm as a June day in England and twice as light. That astounding building towers i...

At the _table d'hôte_ of our hotel, a little group of travellers was clustered at the far end of the long, old-fashioned room--silent, French though they were. My neighbour was...

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 id...

"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...

"Quan vez la landeta mover De joi sas alas contra 'lrai, Que s'oblida e s laissa cazer Per la doussor qu'al cor l'in vai Ailas! qual enueia m'enve, Cui qu'ieu ne vai jauzion! Me...

"Li douz cossire Qem don amors soven Domnam fan dire De vos maint vers plazem Pessan remire Vostre cors car e gen Cui eu dezire Mas qu non faz parven; E sitot me deslei Per vos...

Every one who has travelled in mountain regions has been puzzled by the curious fact that the more peaks his journeyings reveal to him the more there are to reveal. The number o...

One can but turn with emotion and gratitude to the land where it has blossomed into some of its most beautiful forms, where the warm blood of the South took fire and impelled to...

"The name of Arles has raised great discussions.... Some see in it a Greek origin, _Agns_, others regard it as Latin, _Ara lata_ (raised altar), because the Romans there found a...

"At eventide it delighted him much to sit by the blazing fire of fagots on the hearth and tell us tales of the Reign of Terror, when during the Revolution he had dug a pit and h...

"Amo de longo renadivo, Amo jouiouso e fièro a vivo, Qu'endibes dins lou brut dóu Rose e dóu Rousau! Amo di séuvo armouniouso E di calanco souleiouso, De la patrio amo piouso, T...

"Qui donc disait qu'il n'y a ni fraicheur ni ombre en Provence! Il semble y avoir là-bas dans le tortueux lointain de la rivière, un infini de rêverie, un paradis melancolique.....

"How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longing of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care. How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no lon...

And was the truant mother still living? Yes, she had a little property, a little house at Arles where she passed her days. And now and then Tartarin and his sister went to see h...

"The central love-poetry of Provence, the poetry of the Tenson and the Aubade, of Bernard de Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for the few, for the elect and peculiar people...

With the siege of Beaucaire fresh in our minds, Simon de Montfort and Count Raimon VI. of Toulouse became enrolled among the names that jumped to the eyes wherever they occurred...

The name has an aroma of romance, and a sort of tender melancholy which penetrates to the imagination before one knows whether it is a city or a mountain or some gloomy castle i...

Let any one wander alone in that extraordinary desert, and if he have not nerves of steel or a cast-iron imagination he will understand how it earns that reputation. As for disp...

What is the mysterious force in life that always makes it impossible to linger in any place where conditions are entirely congenial? We can stay so easily and with so much gener...

"O princesso di Baus! Ugueto, Sibilo, Blanco-Flour, Bausseto, Que trounavais amount sus li roucas aurin, Cors subre-bèu, amo galoio, Dounant l'amour, largant la joio E la lumier...

In all Provence, perhaps in all Europe, there is no more astonishing relic of mediæval life than that "crater of a feudal volcano" Les Baux,[21] a veritable eagle's nest of a ci...

"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."

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 p...

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,...

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 t...

"Salut, empèri dóu soulèu, que bordo Coume un orle d'argènt lou Rose bléuge! Empèri dóu soulas, de l'alegrìo! Empèri fantasti de la Prouvènço Qu'emé toun noum soulet fas gau au...

In summer there are no flowers in this forsaken region, only the white inflorescence of salt crystals--frozen tears of generations of vanished peoples one might fancy them. And,...

One needs not to dive down for it below the surface; it lives before one's eyes everywhere, every day. That strange cheer and blitheness that seems to belong to the centuries go...