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, breast-
high, 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 description
of Les Baux.
I am unable to give any coherent account of the
place, for the simple reason that it is a mere con-
fusion 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 with-
drawal, of a population. It is not an extinguished,
but a deserted city; more deserted far than even
Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, where I found so
much entertainment in the grass-grown 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 Constan-
tinople, - 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 thirty-six hundred souls.
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