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Updated: June 4, 2025
The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to a pilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the mediæval Pompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking.
Montmajour, however, is very impressive and interesting; the only trouble with it is that, unless you have stopped and retumed to Arles, you see it in memory over the head of Les Baux, which is a much more absorbing picture. The monastery was demolished during the Revolution, and it injures a little the effect of the very much more ancient fragments that are connected with it.
'Let Rambaude des Baux, cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly meant, but at this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good piece, for she is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it well who knows so well to husband her own weal. But the poets were not always adverse to the house of Baux.
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.
When at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and nature are confounded in one ruin.
I have nothing but my memory to consult a memory which is fairly good in regard to a general impression, but is terribly infirm in the matter of details and items. We knew in advance, my companion and I, that Les Baux was a pearl of picturesqueness; for had we not read as much in the handbook of Murray, who has the testimony of an English nobleman as to its attractions?
I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d'Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the "Fairy Grotto," or the "Gorge of Hell," near by.
In the fulness of their prosperity they restricted the number of their dependent towns, or places baussenques, to seventy-nine, because these numbers in combination were thought to be of good omen to their house. Beral des Baux, Seigneur of Marseilles, was one day starting on a journey with his whole force to Avignon.
Blurred gusts of song and laughter would come to them at times from the hall where Guillaume de Baux drank with his courtiers, and these would break the tranquil flow of speech. Then, unvexedly, the gentle voice of the speaker, were it his or hers, would resume. She said: "They laugh. We are not merry." "No," he replied; "I am not often merry.
The ruins of Les Baux remain quite indistinguish- able, even when you are directly beneath them, at the foot of the charming little Alpilles, which mass themselves with a kind of delicate ruggedness.
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