Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
France -- Description and travel; Netherlands -- Description and travel
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 thirty-six hundred souls. Yet its lords (who,
however, as I have said, were able to present a long list of subject
towns, most of them, tho a few are renowned, unknown to fame) were
seneschals and captains-general 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 to-day 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 Provençal 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 to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race,
with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this
one, the traveler, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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