d the little waterside town the next morning soon after
sunrise, _en auto_. Others came by rail, on foot, on horseback, or by
the slow-going _roulotte_, or caravan; pilgrims from all corners of
the earth, the peasant folk of Provence, the Arlesiens and
Arlesiennes, and the dwellers of the great Camargue plain.

The picture is quite as "Mireio" saw it in the poem: the vision of
the lone sentinel church by the sea, which rises above the dunes of
the Camargue to-day, as it did in the olden time.

"'It looms at last in the distance dim,
She sees it grow on the horizon's rim,
The Saintes' white tower across the billowy plain,
Like vessel homeward bound upon the main."

On the dunes of the Camargue, between the blue of the sky and the
blue of the Mediterranean waves, sits the gaunt, grim bourg of
fisherfolk and herders of the cattle and sheep of the neighbouring
plain. The lone fortress-church rises tall and severe in its
outlines, and the whole may be likened to nothing as much as a desert
mirage that one sees in his imagination.

At the foot of the crenelated, battlemented walls of the church are
the white, pink, and blue walled houses of the huddling population,
and the dory-like boats of the fishers.

Officially the town is known as Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer, but the
_reliques_ of the three Marys, who fled from Judea in company with
Sts. Lazare, Maxim, and Trophime, and other followers, including
their servant Sara, have given it the popular name of "Les Saintes."

The exiles, barely escaping death by drowning, came to shore here,
and, thankful for being saved from death, thereupon celebrated the
first mass to be said in France, the saints Maxim and Lazare
officiating.

Maxim, Lazare, Sidoine, Marthe, and Madeleine immediately set out to
spread the Word throughout Provence in the true missionary spirit,
but the others, the three Marys, St. Trophime, and Sara, remained
behind to do what good they might among the fishers.

The pilgrimage to this _basilique_ of "Les Saintes" has ever been one
of great devotion. In 1347 the Bishops of Paris and of Coutances, in
Normandy, accorded their communicants many and varied indulgences for
having made "_la feste S. Mari Cleophee qui est le XXVe Mai, et la
feste S. Marie Salome, XXIIe Octobre, festeront, O l'histoire d'elles
prescherent, liront ou escouteront attentilment et devotement._"

In the fourteenth century three thousand or more souls drew a
livelihood from the industr