While the northern and western portions of France, including even that muddy _Lutetia Parisorum_ which has become the modern Paris, were for but a short time, comparatively, under Roman rule, there was a portion of France, between the Rhone and the Swiss Alps, which was so distinctively and peculiarly a part of the great empire that it was called _Provincia_, "the Province," or, as we know it, Provence. It was in this beautiful land, the French Riviera, that the Roman legions established their first posts, long before there was a Roman Empire. Here they found a civilization ready to their hands, for in the centre of their new Provincia was the famous port of Massillia--Marseilles--established long before by Greeks and Phoenicians. To the present day one finds at Aries, at Mimes, at Avignon, titanic ruins bearing witness to the Roman civilization. It was a fertile country, glowing with rich fruits and flowers, and favored with a climate which has made it famous since the days of Rome. While the north of France was hopelessly barbarized by Teutonic inroads and long years of barbaric warfare, the civilization of Provence was rather checked than destroyed. Marseilles was still a port, and the commerce of the east, of the Mediterranean, of Rome, came through Marseilles, not only for Gaul but for Britain. The influence of this constant intercourse, no less than the large infusion of Latin or Hellenic blood, kept the people of Provence from relapsing into the primitive state of the people further to the north. They were, moreover, a gay and pleasure-loving people by nature, and probably always less savage and rough than the Franks. We may remember that even at the beginning of our story the court of the pious King Robert, according to the monkish chronicles, was hopelessly corrupted by the attendants of his Provençal bride, Constance, with their scandalously fashioned costumes and their ungodly minstrelsy. The rich clothing, the minstrelsy, the more gracious manners, were always characteristic of the southerners, from the very first moment we hear of them until the end.