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All the houses about Montpellier are better than near Aix, and we even saw some neat country seats, a circumstance almost unknown in all the parts of France where we have hitherto been. The olive trees are here much larger and finer than in Provence; but the country, although covered with olives, vines, and wheat, is flat, ugly, and insipid.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and clearer?
He looked at the refined illustrations of South American capitals and of picturesque corners in Provence, and at the smooth or the rugged portraits of great statesmen and great bridges; all just as true to reality as the brilliant letterpress; and he tried to slip into the rectified and softened world offered by the magazine. He did not criticise the presentment.
The latter, which was carried into England by the Normans, and is the origin of the present French, may be called the French Romane; and the former the Provencal, or Provencial Romane, because it was spoken by the people of Provence and Languedoc, southern provinces of France. These dialects were soon distinguished by very opposite characters.
The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of "Now!" from Mr. Dane. It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous buttresses.
Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524, twenty days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared with his army in front of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pescara joyously exclaimed, "We were vanquished; a little while and we shall be vanquishers."
Its colour was magnificent, and the whole spectacle more like a corner of Switzerland than a nook in Provence. The protrusions of the mountain shut it in, and you penetrate to the bottom of the recess which they form. The Sorgues rushes and rushes; it is almost like Niagara after the jump of the cataract.
A like story was invented, and even a ballad was current, making Queen Eleanor of Provence confess that Edmund Crouchback, not Edward I., was the rightful heir, but that he was set aside on account of his deformity; and Lancaster, as Edmund's son, was on the watch to profit by the King's unpopularity.
"It seems to me," he said, "that the time is approaching for us to go to the Assembly. Their royal highnesses Count de Provence and Count d'Artois will accompany me. I commission the Duke de Liancourt to go before us to the Salle des Menus, and to announce to the Assembly, directly after the opening of the session, that we shall appear there at once in person."
There had been rumours of hostile movement from the South, from Provence and Roussillon; of a juncture of Prince John, known to be in Gascony, with the Queen's brother of Navarre. Nothing was known certainly, but Richard judged that John might be tempted out. It was a bright cold day, cloudless, with a most bitter north-east wind singing in the bents.
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