The genuine Provencal does not shrink from violence. Old inhabitants still tell tales of the savage brigandage of the Esterel, of the horrors of the _Terreur blanche_. Mild manners and social amenities have never been characteristic of fair Provence. Even now the peasant cannot disentangle his thoughts without a volley of oaths--harmless indeed, for the most part (except those which are borrowed from the _franciots_), but in sound terrific. Yet if it be true that the character of a nation is asserted in its songs, it must be owned that the songs of Provence speak favourably for the Provencal people. They say that they are a people who have a steady and abiding sympathy with honest men and virtuous women. They say further that rough and ruthless though they may be when their blood is stirred, yet have they a pitiful heart. The Provencal singer is slow to utterly condemn; he grasps the saving inconsistencies of human nature; he makes the murderer lay his victim "souto lou flour dou jaussemin:" under the white jessamine flower, cherished beyond all flowers in Provence, which has a strange passion for white things--white horses, white dogs, white sheep, white doves, and the fair white hand of woman. Many songs deal directly with almsgivings, the ritual of pity. To no part of the Bible is there more frequent reference than to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; no neocatholic legend has been more gladly accepted than the story in which some tattered beggar proves to be Christ--a story, by the by, that holds in it the essence of the Christian faith. If a Greek saw a beautiful unknown youth playing his pipe beside some babbling stream, he believed him to be a god; the Christian of the early ages recognised Christ in each mendicant in loathsome rags, in each leper succoured at the risk of mortal infection.