ciently clear impression of the little superannuated temple, with
its four apses and its perceptible odour of antiquity--the odour of the
eleventh century.

The ruins of Les Baux remain quite indistinguishable even when you are
directly beneath them, at the foot of the charming little Alpilles,
which mass themselves with a kind of delicate ruggedness. Rock and ruin
have been so welded together by the confusions of time that as you
approach it from behind--that is, from the direction of Arles--the place
presents simply a general air of cragginess. Nothing can be prettier
than the crags of Provence; they are beautifully modelled, as painters
say, and they have a delightful silvery colour. The road winds round the
foot of the hills on the top of which Les Baux is planted, and passes
into another valley, from which the approach to the town is many degrees
less precipitous and may be comfortably made in a carriage. Of course
the deeply inquiring traveller will alight as promptly as possible, for
the pleasure of climbing into this queerest of cities on foot is not the
least part of the entertainment of going there. Then you appreciate its
extraordinary position, its picturesqueness, its steepness, its
desolation and decay. It hangs--that is, what remains of it--to the
slanting summit of the mountain. Nothing would be more natural than for
the whole place to roll down into the valley. A part of it has done
so--for it is not unjust to suppose that in the process of decay the
crumbled particles have sought the lower level, while the remainder
still clings to its magnificent perch.

If I called Les Baux a city, just above, it was not that I was
stretching a point in favour of the small spot which to-day contains but
a few dozen inhabitants. The history of the place is as extraordinary as
its situation. It was not only a city, but a state; not only a state,
but an empire; and on the crest of its little mountain called itself
sovereign of a territory, or at least of scattered towns and counties,
with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation. The lords
of Les Baux, in a word, were great feudal proprietors; and there was a
time during which the island of Sardinia, to say nothing of places
nearer home, such as Arles and Marseilles, paid them homage. The
chronicle of this old Provencal house has been written, in a style
somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the
little book--a modest pamphlet--a