Jules
Canonge speaks with almost hyperbolical admiration. A brisk shower,
lasting some ten minutes, led us to take refuge in a cavity, of mysterious
origin, where the melancholy baker presently discovered us, having had the
bonne pensee of coming up for us with an umbrella which certainly
belonged, in former ages, to one of the Stephanettes or Berangeres
commemorated by M. Canonge. His oven, I am afraid, was cold so long as our
visit lasted.
When the rain was over we wandered down to the little disencumbered space
before the inn, through a small labyrinth of obliterated things. They took
the form of narrow, precipitous streets, bordered by empty houses, with
gaping windows and absent doors, through which we had glimpses of
sculptured chimney-pieces and fragments of stately arch and vault. Some of
the houses are still inhabited; but most of them are open to the air and
weather. Some of them have completely collapsed; others present to the
street a front which enables one to judge of the physiognomy of Les Baux
in the days of its importance. This importance had pretty well passed away
in the early part of the sixteenth century, when the place ceased to be an
independent principality, It became--by request of one of its lords,
Bernardin des Baux, a great captain of his time--part of the appanage of
the kings of France, by whom it was placed under the protection of Arles,
which had formerly occupied with regard to it a different position.
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