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Yet he had brought back with him one precious trophy the praise of Lamartine; and when, in the course of a year or two , Mirèio came to be published at Avignon, it bore, as it still bears, this heart-felt dedication to Lamartine: "To thee I dedicate Mirèio; it is my heart and my soul; it is the flower of my years; it is a bunch of grapes from Crau with all its leaves a rustic's offering."
Peire Vidal, with the majority of the troubadours, shows himself a vigorous supporter of Alfonso. Referring to this same expedition of 1183 he asserted "Had I but a speedy horse, the king might sleep in peace at Balaguer: I would keep Provence and Montpelier in such order that robbers and freebooters should no longer plunder Venaissin and Crau.
The ladies of Les Baux and the troubadours Fouquet William de Cabestaing The morality of the loves of the troubadours The Porcelets Story of a siege Les Baux a place of refuge for the citizens of Arles Glanum Liviae Its Roman remains In the train Jaeger garments. From east to west runs the chain of Les Alpines, for just twenty miles, separating the Durance from the plain of the Great Crau.
This district borders on the desert of the Crau, a vast plain of stones reaching to the mouth of the Rhone and almost entirely uninhabited. We caught occasional glimpses of its sealike waste between the summits of the hills. At length, after threading a high ascent, we saw the valley of the Durance suddenly below us.
One may say that the Great Crau is a complete mineralogical collection of all the rocks that form the chain of the Alps, whence flow the Rhone and its tributaries. The aspect of the Crau is infinitely desolate, but it is no longer as barren as it was formerly. It is in fact, undergoing gradual but sure transformation.
The low sandy regions at the mouth of the Rhone, denuded of all vegetation, and the great stony plain of the Crau, heated by the direct rays of the sun, rarify the air over the surface of the soil, and this rises, to be at once replaced by the cold air from the Alps and Cevennes; the air off the snow pours down with headlong violence to occupy the vacuum formed by the heated ascending column of air off the plain, sweeping the valley of the Rhone, and reaching its maximum of intensity between Avignon and the sea, where it meets, and is blunted in its force by the equable atmosphere that covers the surface of the Mediterranean.
Vincent, a young basket-maker, loves the fair Mireille, who is the daughter of a rich farmer named Raymond. Raymond will have nothing to say to so humble a suitor, and favours the pretensions of Ourrias, a herdsman. While making a pilgrimage to a church in the desert of Crau, Mireille has a sunstroke, and her life is despaired of.
With lithe, catlike softness, the youth Crau had followed them up the hillside, padding noiselessly in the shadows of the pines and olives. Crouching behind a tree, he felt in his breast-pocket and drew out a small package which he quietly unwrapped from its foldings. Then he waited his moment with every muscle tensed for action. The night wind was chill.
"Then you moved to Nîmes, staying for shame's sake at different houses. Hers was the Hotel de Provence, and yours was the Villa Clémentine. You went lovemaking with this woman in the moonlight, up to a quiet place on the hillside, and there you nearly got what was coming to you from a peasant called Crau.
I am writing this, now, I should say, a full eighteen months after the words that end my last chapter. Since writing the words "until my arrival", which I see end that paragraph, I have seen again for a glimpse, from a swift train, Beaucaire with the beautiful white tower, Tarascon with the square castle, the great Rhone, the immense stretches of the Crau.
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