Yet its lords (who, however, as I have said,
were able to present a long list of subject towns, most of them, tho a few
are renowned, unknown to fame) were seneschals and captains-general of
Piedmont and Lombardy, grand admirals of the kingdom of Naples, and its
ladies were sought in marriage by half the first princes in Europe.
A considerable part of the little narrative of M. Canonge is taken up with
the great alliances of the House of Baux, whose fortunes, matrimonial and
other, he traces from the eleventh century down to the sixteenth. The
empty shells of a considerable number of old houses, many of which must
have been superb, the lines of certain steep little streets, the
foundations of a castle, and ever so many splendid views, are all that
remains to-day of these great titles.
To such a list I may add a dozen very polite and sympathetic people, who
emerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at the
two foreigners who had driven over from Arles, and whose horses were being
baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment we did not
venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact that the sign
over the door was in the Provencal tongue.
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