‘In August, 1886, a venture was made at Orange the like of which has rarely been made in France in modern times: a new French play demanding positive and strong recognition, the magnificent “Empereur d’Arles,” by the Avignon poet Alexis Mouzin, was given its first presentation in the Orange Theatre--in the provinces--instead of first being produced on the Paris stage. In direct defiance of the modern French canons of centralization, the great audience was brought together not to ratify opinions formulated by Parisian critics, but to express its own opinion at first hand. Silvain, of the Comédie Française, was the _Maximien_; Madame Caristie-Martel, of the Odéon (a granddaughter of Caristie, the architect who saved the theatre from ruin), was the _Minervine_. The support was strong. The stately tragedy--vividly contrasting the tyranny and darkness of pagan Rome with the spirit of light and freedom arising in Christian Gaul--was in perfect keeping with its stately frame. The play went on in a whirl of enthusiastic approval to a triumphant end. There was no question of ratifying the opinion of Parisian critics: those Southerners formed and delivered an opinion of their own. In other words, the defiance of conventions was an artistic victory, a decentralizing success’ (Thomas A. Janvier). Thus the theatre of the second century, having come in comparative safety through the great gulf of time separating the present from the Roman civilization, is now given a new term of active existence, making, with the amphitheatres of Nîmes and Arles and the roadway of the Pont du Gard, the fourth Roman structure in France still in use for its original purpose. The _Church of Notre Dame_ was formerly a cathedral, and was first built by Liberius, Prefect of the Gauls. On the ruins of that building the present church was erected, about the twelfth century, or soon afterwards. It is small and has neither transepts nor triforia. Orange became the capital of a small principality in the eleventh century, and in 1531, on the death of Philibert of Châlons, the little State was inherited by Count Réné of Nassau-Dillenburg, who, being childless, nominated his cousin William I. Stadtholder of the United Netherlands as his successor. All the Stadtholders who followed, including William III., held the title ‘Prince of Orange,’ and in 1688, during the Irish Revolution, the English Protestant party, under the leadership of William of Orange, became known as Orangemen. By the Treaty of Utrecht, made in 1713, Louis XIV. united the principality to the crown of France, but both the Kings of Prussia and of the Netherlands have held on tenaciously to the empty title. THE ROAD TO MONTÉLIMAR