United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We walked along the Sorgues which is quite as beautiful and worthy to be sung as the Clitumnus to the end of the village to take the road to Vaucluse. Beside its banks stands the "Hotel de Petrarque et Laure." Alas that names of the most romantic and impassioned lovers of all history should be desecrated to a sign-post to allure gormandizing tourists!
I was the only passenger; every one else was at Avignon watching the Rhone. I lost no time in perceiving that I could not have come to Vaucluse at a better moment. The Sorgues was almost as full as the Rhone, and of a colour much more romantic.
In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted, not so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive, and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues.
All traces of them have long since vanished, but a simple column, bearing the inscription; "À PETRARQUE," stands beside the Sorgues. We ascended into the defile by a path among the rocks, overshadowed by olive and wild fig trees, to the celebrated fountains of Vaucluse.
If the deluging showers of yesterday had failed to damp my enthusiasm, the meridian heat of Vaucluse shrivelled it up. My companion, with her angelic-faced little cicerone, perseveringly went on. This rock-shut valley, watered by the Sorgues, a tiny thread of water and verdure amid towering walls of bare, sun-baked rock, has lost much of its poetry and romance.
There is not so much evil in man as men would have us believe; and it is a happy comfort to know and feel this. Leaving our little inn before day break next morning, we crossed the Sorgues, grown muddy since its infancy at Vaucluse, like many a young soul, whose mountain purity goes out into the soiling world and becomes sullied forever.
The glen seems as if stuck into the mountain's depths by one blow of the enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested in its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming fulness gives birth to the Sorgues. We climbed up over the mossy rocks and sat down in the grotto beside the dark, still pool. It was the most absolute solitude.
I was the only passenger; every one else was at Avignon, watching the Rhone. I lost no time in perceiving that I could not have come to Vaucluse at a better moment. The Sorgues was almost as full as the Rhone, and of a color much more romantic.
This little town is so named because it is situated on an island formed by the crystal Sorgues, which flows from the fountains of Vaucluse. It is a very picturesque and pretty place. Great mill-wheels, turning slowly and constantly, stand at intervals in the stream, whose grassy banks are now as green as in springtime.
All traces of them have long since vanished, but a simple column bearing the inscription. "A Petrarque" stands beside the Sorgues. We ascended into the defile by a path among the rocks, overshadowed by olives and wild fig-trees, to the celebrated fountains of Vaucluse.