Aix-en-Provence

“ Perhaps, if I had n't known that Aix-en-Provence was the home of the troubadours, and that its springs had been loved by the Romans before the days of Christianity, I might not have thought it more charming than many another ancient sleepy town of France; but it is impossible to disentangle one's imagination and sentiment from one's eyesight; therefore, Aix seemed an exquisite place to me.
Now that I knew how knight-errantry in some of its branches was likely to affect Mr. Dane's pocket, I resolved that nothing should tempt me to encourage him in the pursuit. ”

“ Having resumed our journey, we reached Aix at an early hour on the following day, and passed an hour very pleasantly in walking over the town and neighbourhood.
Aix, the capital of Provence, is very pleasantly situated in a valley, surrounded by hills, which give it an air of recluseness, and romantic retirement, without being so close as to prevent the due circulation of air. It is surrounded by a wall, but which, from long neglect, originating perhaps in its inutility, has become dilapidated, and interests only as an ancient ruin. ”

“ Pushing southeast from Saint Remy, one comes, through a broadening landscape, to the old town of Salon, where Nostradamus is buried, and thence, by a winding road among the hills, to the wide valley where Aix-en-Provence lies encircled in mountains. ”

“ I should have liked to make a stay at Trets, and to explore this country. There is so much [95] to see in connection with the battle—the ruins of the church on Mont Victoire, the ruins of the trophy on the field itself, the traces of the fortifications on the Pain de Munition, and perhaps the very hill slope of slippery marl upon which the Romans first bore back the attacking enemy. But I wanted to get on to Aix, the first large Provençal city in my itinerary, and thence to Arles and Nîmes and the rest of the beautiful places that are like a cluster of jewels in the country's diadem. ”

“ If the Romanesque of Saint-Sauveur is far surpassed at Arles and Digne and Sisteron, nowhere in Provence has Gothic richer details; and if the noblest of Provençal creations must be sought in other little cities, the lover of architectural comparisons, of details, of the many lesser things rather than of the harmony of a single whole, will linger long in Aix. ”

“ Madame is old and knows many things, amongst them, that "Monsieur would visit the Cathedral, it is ancient and very curious, and is to be found far up by the first turn to the left."
Modern Aix holds some thirty thousand people, and to the great outer world is but little known. One hears much of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Aix-les-Bains, but little of Aix in Provence, yet to my thinking it is more interesting than either of the others, certainly than Aix-les-Bains, though the German city with its memories of Charlemagne holds its own for interest intense and abiding. ”

“ From Aix to the Mediterranean the south-eastern highway passes through a land of ever-increasing loveliness. East of Aix the bare-peaked mountain of Sainte Victoire dominates the fertile valley for long miles. Then the hermit-haunted range of the Sainte Baume unfolds its wooded flanks to the south, the highway skirting them as it gradually mounts to the plateau where the town of Saint Maximin in clusters about its unfinished Dominican church—a remarkable example of northern Gothic strayed into the classic confines of Provence. ”

“ Vive le Comte de Provence!”
For three days great rejoicings were held in Aix, and the good old times of Raimond Beranger and King René seemed to be revived. Banquets and fêtes were given in the palace in honour of the new Comte de 'rovence. Jousts and floral games were held in a plain outside the walls, at which the fair dames of Aix assisted. Troubadours sang their lays; and merry dances were executed by sprightly youths and dark-eyed damsels. In all the neighbouring villages there was revelry and rejoicing—
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth. ”

“ They generally reaped as they had sown; feared, hated, and often dying deaths as terrible as those which they had inflicted on their victims.
It is thought probable that the Princes of Les Baux were descended from the Visigoths who settled in Arles in the fifth century. There is a vast and ancient work by "Le Sieur de Bouche, Docteur en Theologie," printed at Aix-en-Provence in the 17th century. In the section treating of the Visigothic Kingdoms the author gives an account of their King Euric and the events in Provence of the year 475. ”

“ In France I always reckon that a town of less than fifty thousand people is likely to retain untouched its medieval character, or at any rate its atmosphere of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Exceptions of course occur—I make one in the case of Aix-en-Provence, which seems to have been mostly rebuilt, though in very delightful fashion, as late as the eighteenth century. ”

“ For this reason, and because the main gateway from the north leads directly past their doors, that wonderful group of Provençal cities and towns, beginning with Arles and ending with Aix-en-Provence, have been included in this book, although they are in no sense “resorts,” and are not even popular “tourist points,” except with the French themselves.
Particularly are the byways of Old Provence unknown to the average English and American traveller; the wonderful Pays d’Arles, with St. Rémy and Les Baux; the Crau; that fascinating region around the Étang de Berre ”

“ This journey and short absence served but to raise to enthusiasm the favour with which he was regarded by the population of Provence. Deputations of the bourgeoisie of Marseilles and Aix met him on his return, with all the manifestations of affection and joy which the people of the south render so cordial and demonstrative. The road he traversed was strewn with flowers; fireworks were let off; a crowd of 50,000 persons assembled round his carriage, while cries of "Vive Mirabeau!" rent the air. No noble dared show himself in the streets. ”

“ Aix, the capital of Provence, is a large city, watered by the small river Are. It was a Roman colony, said to be founded by Caius Sextus Calvinus, above a century before the birth of Christ. From the source of mineral water here found, added to the consul's name, it was called Aquae Sextiae. It was here that Marius, the conqueror of the Teutones, fixed his headquarters, and embellished the place with temples, aqueducts, and thermae, of which, however, nothing now remains. The city, as it now stands, is well built, though the streets in general are narrow, and kept in a very dirty condition. ”

“ Conquered by the Saracens, re-conquered by Charlemagne, this interesting old place boasts of one of the most romantic histories in the annals of French towns, and its vicissitudes were commemorated in Provençal song. Marseilles, Toulouse, Carcassonne, were all famous cities of the Langue d’Oc; but perhaps the favourite haunt of the wandering troubadours was Aix, the ancient capital of Provence, where the richest rewards of jewels, money, arms, &c., besides unbounded hospitality, were sure to follow the exhibition of their skill. ”

“ Aix, which during the middle ages was the capital of the county of Provence, did not reach its zenith until after the 12th century, when, under the houses of Aragon and Anjou, it became an artistic centre and seat of learning. With the rest of Provence, it passed to the crown of France in 1487, and in 1501 Louis XII. established there the parlement of Provence which existed till 1789. In the 17th and 18th centuries the town was the seat of the intendance of Provence. ”

“ Aix lies in a green basin of hills, at a little distance from the river Are, clustered about the hot springs that rise at the junction of the porphyry and the limestone. They were certainly hotter when Aix was founded by Caius Sextius Calvinus, B.C. 123, to serve as a protection to the Greeks of Marseilles against the attacks of the Salyes. Roman colonists were planted there, consequently in race distinct from the Massalliotes. ”

“ Aix is the chief city of Provence, being a Parliament and Presidential town, with other royal Courts and Metropolitan jurisdiction. It is well [Pg 79] built, the houses very high, and the streets ample. The Cathedral, St. Savior's, is a noble pile adorned with innumerable figures; especially that of St. Michael; the Baptisterie, the Palace, the Court, built in a most spacious piazza, are very fair. The Duke of Guise's house is worth seeing, being furnished with many antiquities in and about it. The Jesuits have here a royal College, and the City is a University. ”

“ The theory of the existence of a national French school, analogous to the post-revolutionary school of painting, is, of course, untenable, for France, as a nation, can scarcely be said to have existed, in the wider sense of the term, before the end of Louis XI.’s reign. When that monarch came to the throne Paris and North France had been sorely exhausted by the century of the English wars; Burgundy was an independent state; Provence, with its capital Aix, and Avignon were independent counties, ruled by the Counts of Provence and the Pope. ”

“ Once at Aix, one would be in the thick of it. Avignon, Nîmes, Arles, and a score of points of interest lie within a few miles of one another. When I reached this rich and crowded corner, the adventure of walking through unknown country would take second place. But at least as long as the weather held I wanted to be on foot, and in the country that lies apart from the main tourist routes.
When I had passed beyond the sphere of the villas with their flowery gardens the road became rather lonely. The fields of blossom became rarer, but there were vines and olives everywhere. ”

“ In 1150, when the Carlovingian empire was dismembered, there was formed the Comté and Marquisat of Provence, with capitals at Avignon and Aix, the small remaining portion becoming known as the Comté d’Orange.
Under the comtes Provence again flourished, and a brilliant civilization was born in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which gave almost a new literature and a new art to those glorious gems of the French Crown. The school of Romanesque church-building of Provence, of which the most entrancing examples are still to be seen at Aix, Arles, St. ”

“ Speaking merely at hazard on the subject, I should doubt whether any place in the south of France is better adapted for the cure of pulmonary complaints than Aix. It stands on the side of a rising ground, facing a delightfully well-watered and fertile valley to the south-west, and sheltered from the piercing winds, so [204] prevalent in Provence at some seasons, by a mountainous barrier which rises to the north and north-east. ”

“ Aix was the capital in Provence of the art-loving Anjou princes of the Capetian line. Under them in 1476 was begun St. Sauveur’s beautifully restrained Flamboyant Gothic façade and tower. In the nave is a stone reredos of 1470 called the Tarasque, from the dragon of St. Martha represented in it, and under King René’s inspiration was made the splendid triptych of the Burning Bush by the French primitif, Nicolas Froment, born in Avignon, but impregnated with the Flemish spirit of Van Eyck. King René kneels in one panel, and his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, in the other ”

“ Thus, in ordinary speech, a citizen of Beziers, Toulouse, or even Bordeaux was as much a Provençal as one from Aries or Aix.
Among the other influences to which Provence owed part of its culture one must not forget that of Spain. At the time of which we write a large part of the richest lands in Spain was in the possession of a race more cultured, more intellectual, more refined, despite their warlike nature, than any race with which western Europe had yet come in contact. ”

“ Miss Plumptre mentions a singular allegorical picture in the Hotel de Ville, or Guildhall, of the city of Aix. It represented [971, 972] the three orders of the state—the nobles, the clergy, and the tiers-état—in their relative situations before the revolution. In the middle is a peasant, with the implements of his profession about him, the scythe, the reaping-hook, the pioche, which is a sort of pick-axe used in Provence to turn up the ground in steep parts where a plough cannot be used, a spade, a vessel for wine, &c. ”

“ This city enjoyed the most ample privileges: the citizens felt their freedom, and made their princes respect it,—at the same time that the wealth which they had acquired rendered the taxes more productive, and permitted the court of the Counts to display a magnificence unknown to other sovereigns. Raymond Berenger, and his successor, brought into Provence at once the spirit of liberty and chivalry, the taste of elegance and the arts, and the sciences of the Arabs. ”

“ So ended the revolution of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Aix-la-Chapelle is still a venerable old city, especially when seen from a distance, [227] and its very name is connected with imperial ideas; Charlemagne and his chivalry, Kings, Emperors and Popes, wars, congresses and treaties, all of which have, at one time or another, been associated with its name. But it has now few objects of great interest within itself—its interest is with the past. ”

“ I cannot but think that "Les Saintes," as it is commonly called, must be now at the very nadir of its poverty. It is right on the edge of the Mediterranean, and beautiful firm sands backed by sand dunes stretch away from it on either side. It is on a little line of railway from Arles; and by far the nearest possible watering-place to that city, and even to Avignon. In fact, Le Grau du Roi, near Aigues-Mortes, would be its only rival for the central cities of Provence. ”