IMPRESSIONS OF THE MIDI

IMPERCEPTIBLY yet surely we are losing the art of travelling leisurely. In place of sauntering through a country unconscious of time and careless of direction, we hurry to reach the appointed end of a journey. Of the many English men and women who flit through Marseilles in the course of the year, few break off to visit the more unfrequented districts in the neighbourhood. To these travellers the Paris-Marseilles railway is no more than a corridor of passage, Provence and Gascony, two of the fairest provinces of France, no more than empty names. Humbler people follow the example. As midsummer approaches wealthy corporations struggle for the patronage of holiday-makers, tempting them by alluring suggestions of foreign travel into new experiences. But the programmes do not always promise adventure; their victims are deposited at some Mediterranean port after a brief sea voyage and then presented with a through ticket home by rail. They would gain in health and mind were they to retain their liberty on landing.

To tour in perfect comfort no doubt a motor car is desirable. Yet he who, for economy's sake, decides to travel by train, has not always the worst of the exchange. From the windows of his compartment he can see almost as much of the countryside as he desires, and from his fellow-passengers he may learn, if the fancy seizes him, something of their lives and thoughts. Above all, he need not curtail his luggage. At the cost of a few francs he can carry with him almost an entire wardrobe. Thus he is spared miserable anxiety about his supply of linen, and his wife about that of her hats. And when conditions require the extravagance, he can always hire a private car, or if still intent upon strict economy may book seats in a public charabanc. But if he chooses the second alternative, let him be prepared for exciting moments. The driver may believe that a special Providence watches over his own safety, but the passengers behind feel no such certainty about their own. It is difficult to place complete confidence in a driver who ignores alike notices of concealed turnings and instructions to reduce speed. There is, in fact, a spice of adventure about a drive in a public touring car in France.

Leaving Marseilles one evening, we travelled to Arles. If Arles cannot boast, like Avignon, of having sheltered popes, she may claim to have entertained Roman emperors. To-day the town is fallen from her ancient high estate, and the great no longer extend to Arles their patronage. Unfrequented streets and shuttered windows tell a story of decay. Over the Place du Forumname suggestive of crowds and tumult-silence now reigns unbroken save for the clatter of a hotel omnibus over the cobbled roadway. In Arles the dreamer may find a congenial restingplace: Oblitusque suorum obliviscendus in illis.'

But the more energetic visitor also can find attractions. The ruined theatre, Roman in design and in construction, is one of them. Happily destruction has stayed its hand, so that sufficient of the building remains to suggest how graceful must have been the whole. Time has injured neither the massive benches and the solid foundations of the auditorium nor the outline of the stage, though of the slender columns which guard the latter only two are standing. For centuries Arlésien audiences filled this theatre; but of the plays which moved them to tears and laughter no record, alas! exists. The neighbouring amphitheatre has escaped more lightly, and throughout the summer months bullfights are held within its classic walls. Local interest in the contests seems declining, and report declares that the participants have lost their cunning. They do not kill the bull as cleanly as before. The ancient church of St. Trophinus, built upon the ruins of the Prætorium, and its cloisters, half Gothic and half Norman, are worth inspection. In St. Trophinus, as indeed throughout Catholic France, the devout record on tablets fixed to the walls their gratitude to God for some special act of benevolence. Thus everywhere the eye falls upon familiar words of thanksgiving for protection afforded during the Great War. The tablets give no names, but initials partially disclose the identity of the donors.

Strangely enough, the people of Arles appear to set less store upon traces of Roman occupation than upon the museum bequeathed to the town by Mistral, poet-singer of Provence. Mistral strove to preserve not only the art, but also the language, of his province, and strangers visiting the museum must guess at the sense of the explanatory notices suspended over exhibits. Happily the dialect is not difficult to understand. No one, for example, can mistake the meaning of ' Regardas ben e touques ren,' an admonition which hangs in every room. One phase of postwar administration is common now to all State and municipal museums and institutions: their doorkeepers and guards are men mutilated or incapacitated by the agency of war from following other occupation. As far as lies within her power,

France is determined that the victims of the battlefield shall not have to beg for bread.

From Arles I passed to Nîmes, a prosperous town of boulevards and other amenities of modern civilisation. Here also Imperial Rome has bequeathed legacies of her occupation. Les Arènes, a superb amphitheatre, La Maison Carrée, a temple in almost perfect preservation, and La Chapelle de Diane, an exquisite little shrine, mark her affection for the town. Shops and cafés approaching too closely to the two first impair their imposing proportions, but the chapel has a setting of wood and hill worthy of its patron goddess. From Nîmes one may visit comfortably the Pont du Gard, fragment of a gigantic aqueduct, Aigues Mortes, a battlemented town where St. Louis embarked for the Holy Land, Bezières, Tarascon, and many other places of historical association. The people of Tarascon speak proudly of the castle which dominates the town. But the stranger is less interested. Absorbed in anxiety to discover whether Tartarin and his companions still live, he cannot waste time upon mediæval fortresses, and it is hard to believe that these romantic figures, sportsmen in heart if not in deed, existed only in the imagination of their creator.

From Tarascon to Montpellier the railway runs through a smiling countryside. North and south, as far as the eye can reach, are vine fields. Their cultivation is not for the indolent or the ignorant; it is a laborious and scientific occupation. Throughout the world Nature wars against the agriculturist, and nowhere more fiercely than in this region. No sooner is one insect pest exterminated than a second takes its place. But no trial discomfits the farmer of the Midi. He ploughs deep, he does not overcrop, and he sprinkles scrupulously each tender plant with an antidote. The clumsy disinfecting apparatus slung across the shoulders is a heavy burden, and explains how the labourer, when he joins the army, makes light of his equipment. There are other interesting points about agriculture in Provence. Oxen only are harnessed to the plough. Not indeed until well west of Montpellier, when vine cultivation gives place to mixed farming, does the horse replace the ox. Here and there also the waterwheel is seen at work, a legacy of Saracenic invaders.

Carcassonne consists of two separate towns situated on opposite banks of the River Aude: La Cité and La Ville Basse. La Cité has known many masters. Romans, Visigoths and Saracens in turn have occupied it, until finally St. Louis seized the fortress for France. So solidly built are the walls that they would withstand an infantry attack to-day. The trace is circular, an outer line of ramparts protecting a formidable enceinte. Scattered along the walls are fifty-two towers, armed with galleries and other

defences of the type which found favour with medieval military engineers. So little effect has the passage of centuries produced upon the fortifications that traces of the builders are easily distinguishable. In the heart of the enceinte rises the cathedral of St. Nazaire, a fine conception of early ecclesiastical architecture and remarkable for a Gothic nave and a Norman transept. Louis did not allow his saintship to interfere with military considerations. Having possessed himself of the fortress, he required the inhabitants to evacuate La Cité. During the Great War the civilian mind became accustomed to harsh orders of this type; in the Middle Ages such instances were rarer. One wonders how the good people of Carcassonne accepted their dispossession. If some resented it, others must have thankfully departed from a place where existence was always uncomfortable and often perilous. Few men and women would voluntarily select a fortress as their home. In any case the expulsés from La Cité set to work with a will to make a new town. To prove that misfortune had not robbed them of their trust in God, they built two handsome churches. Their descendants have inherited the same spirit, as a striking memorial to the memory of the fallen in the war, 1914-18, shows. In Southern France artistic tributes to the victims of the battlefield are not very frequent. Usually the production of a local sculptor, only the grandeur of the theme saves them from exciting ridicule. Simplicity is rarely achieved, and allegorical designs are so burdened with detail that they give little clue to the tragedy which they are intended to recall. The plain cross of stone in our own villages seems more dignified testimony to the sacrifice of manhood. Nor is it possible to speak highly of all inscriptions at the base of the memorials. They rarely rise above the commonplace, and there seems also something careless in the omission of the ranks and units of the fallen.

Toulouse was not always the tranquil and pleasure-loving town she has become to-day. Blest, or cursed, with a large student population, she flung herself hotly into the religious struggles of the Middle Ages. But first and foremost Toulouse was a centre of learning, and neither Papist nor Protestant fervour could arrest for long her thirst for knowledge. In the teaching of law her professors were unrivalled; in architecture, as the noble churches of St. Sernin and Notre Dame la Daurade bear witness, her builders were pre-eminent. To-day that passion is slaked, and the people of Toulouse court pleasure rather than study. The many restaurants and cafés, crowded at all hours of the day and night, leave little doubt upon that point. Living is both cheap and good, though as much perhaps may be said of most towns in the Midi. Hotels and inns, even in unfrequented districts, provide very fair accommodation. For the general improvement

in the standard of comfort visitors must thank the Automobile Touring Club of France. This body preaches the sound doctrine that cleanliness comes next to godliness. In the lavatories of all hotels is pinned a request that the user shall leave the place as he would desire to find it. Thus one old reproach levelled against the French by the Anglo-Saxon race has been removed. Everywhere a foreigner will find provincial cooking tolerable, beds comfortable and service willing and good.

With the depreciated franc an Englishman can tour cheaply in France; and notwithstanding a recent increase in the cost of living and the imposition of fresh State and municipal taxes upon foreigners,1 he still holds the advantage. And he will continue to do so until the population recognises the financial danger overhanging France. For the moment it is difficult to name another European country which appears on the surface to be more thriving and more prosperous. There is no unemployment, no labour trouble, and no destitution. Throughout my stay I did not meet a genuine tramp, nor was I once asked for alms. Men, women and children are well clothed and look well fed. Altogether Southern France presents every appearance of great prosperity.

As the stranger approaches the Pyrenees Lourdes becomes an irresistible magnet. So powerful is the attraction that few have the patience or inclination to linger in its neighbourhood. Certainly there is no romance of modern times to equal that of Lourdes, no story which affects the imagination more than the revelation of Bernadette Soubirois, a simple peasant girl. Her version is best told by the artless inscription engraved on the rock of the miraculous grotto:

L'an de grâce 1858 dans le creux du rocher où on voit la statue la Sainte Vierge apparait à Bernadette dix-huit fois. La Sainte Vierge dit à l'enfant le 18 Février: 'Voulez-vous me faire le grâce de venir pendant quinze jours? Je ne promets pas de vous rendre heureuse dans ce monde, mais dans l'autre. Je désire qu'il vienne du monde.' La Vierge dit pendant la quinzaine: 'Vous prierez pour les pêcheurs; vous baiserez la terre pour les pêcheurs-pénitence, pénitence, pénitence. Allez dire aux prêtres de faire batir ici une chapelle. Je veux qu'on vienne en procession. Allez boire à la fontaine et vous y laver. Allez manger de cette herbe qui est là.' Le 25 Mars la Vierge dit : Je suis immaculée Conception.'

Bernadette never tasted the joy of joining the worshippers at the grotto. Within a few weeks of her vision she entered a religious foundation, where she died twenty years later. Few at first believed in her story; the child's parents and the local clergy openly doubted its truth. But as the news of the revelation spread people flocked to visit the shrine, and emperors and princes followed in their train. Later the Bishop of Tarles held an exhaustive

1 At Pau I paid between the two as much as 17 per cent. on my hotel bill.