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Updated: June 23, 2025
Petrarch is also conscious of the beauty of rock scenery, and is perfectly able to distinguish the picturesqueness from the utility of nature. During his stay among the woods of Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid aside. But the deepest impression of all was made upon him by the ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon.
We also visited Nimes, Orange, and Montelimart, giving a whole day to each place. It was already very hot in the south, and the perfume of the acacias in full bloom everywhere was almost more than we could bear, especially at Montelimart. At Orange, after seeing the noble Roman remains, we partly ascended the hill to see the Ventoux range of mountains; then went on to Valence for the night.
And what were the Aubrac hills which traversed his native country; what was the Ventoux even, that famous Alp, "beside the peaks which rise about the gulf of Ajaccio, always crowned with clouds and whitened with snow, even when the soil of the plains is scorching and rings like a fired brick?"
Last year, intending to make a study of this insect and finding my efforts to hunt it fruitless, I was obliged to have recourse to the good offices of a forest-ranger, who sent me a pair of couples from the Lagarde plateau, that bleak district where the beech-tree begins its escalade of the Ventoux. Now and then freakish fortune takes it into her head to smile upon the persevering.
Beyond in a northerly direction the vast grandiose outline of Mont Ventoux shows an opaline hue, its deep violet tints being subdued in the paling afternoon light.
To-day the château of Trinquelague is no more, but the chapel still stands erect on the summit of Mont Ventoux, in a grove of green oaks. The wind beats its disjointed portal; the grass creeps across its threshold; the birds have built in the angles of the altar and in the embrasures of the high windows, whence the colored panes have long ago vanished.
The year 1855 saw the first appearance, in the "Annales des sciences naturelles," of the famous memoir which marked the beginning of his fame: the history, which might well be called marvellous and incredible, of the great Cerceris, a giant wasp and "the finest of the Hymenoptera which hunt for booty at the foot of Mont Ventoux."
At the Meteorological Observatory on the Puy de Dome the light had been observed between one and two o'clock in the morning; at Mont Ventoux in Provence it had been seen between two and three o'clock; at Nice it had been noticed between three and four o'clock; while at the Semnoz Alps between Annecy, Le Bourget, and Le Leman, it had been detected just as the zenith was paling with the dawn.
During his stay among the woods of Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid aside. But the deep- est impression of all was made upon him by the ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon.
Then he would hasten to Carpentras, happy to hold the key to the meadows, and wander across country and along the sunken lanes, collecting his beautiful insects, breathing the free air, the scent of the vines and olives, and gazing upon Mont Ventoux, close at hand, whose silver summit would now be hidden in the clouds and now would glitter in the rays of the sun.
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