At length we rejoined the Sorgues and entered a little
green valley running up into the mountain. The narrowness of the entrance
entirely shut out the wind, and, except the rolling of the waters over
their pebbly bed, all was still and lonely and beautiful. The sides of the
dell were covered with olive trees, and a narrow strip of emerald meadow
lay at the bottom.
It grew more hidden and sequestered as we approached the little village of
Vaucluse. Here the mountain towers far above, and precipices of gray rock
many hundred feet high hang over the narrowing glen. On a crag over the
village are the remains of a castle; the slope below this, now rugged and
stony, was once graced by the cottage and garden of Petrarch. All traces
of them have long since vanished, but a simple column bearing the
inscription. "A Petrarque" stands beside the Sorgues.
We ascended into the defile by a path among the rocks, overshadowed by
olives and wild fig-trees, to the celebrated fountains of Vaucluse. The
glen seems as if stuck into the mountain's depths by one blow of the
enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested in
its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming fulness
gives birth to the Sorgues.
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