The Christmas Kalends of Provence | Page 2

his affected youth.
In the rear of these oddly coupled structures is a farm-house with a
dependent rambling collection of farm-buildings; the whole enclosing a
large open court to which access is had by a vaulted passage-way, that
on occasion may be closed by a double set of ancient iron-clamped
doors. As the few exterior windows of the farm-house are grated
heavily, and as from each of the rear corners of the square there
projects a crusty tourelle from which a raking fire could be kept up
along the walls, the place has quite the air of a testy little fortress--and a
fortress it was meant to be when it was built three hundred years and
more ago (the date, 1561, is carved on the keystone of the arched
entrance) in the time of the religious wars.
But now the iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the
court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the
varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and
ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a

melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic
thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back
and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above
the farm-house and the farm well.
[Illustration: AT THE WELL]
This well--enclosed in a stone well-house surmounted by a very ancient
crucifix--is in the centre of the court-yard, and it also is the centre of a
little domestic world. To its kerb come the farm animals three times
daily; while as frequently, though less regularly, most of the members
of the two households come there too; and there do the
humans--notably, I have observed, if they be of different sexes--find it
convenient to rest for a while together and take a dish of friendly talk.
From the low-toned chattering and the soft laughter that I have heard
now and then of an evening I have inferred that these nominally chance
encounters are not confined wholly to the day.
By simple machinery (of which the motive-power is an aged patient
horse, who is started and left then to his own devices; and who works
quite honestly, save that now and then he stops in his round and
indulges himself in a little doze) the well-water is raised continuously
into a long stone trough. Thence the overflow is led away to irrigate the
garden of the Château: an old-fashioned garden, on a slope declining
southward and westward, abounding in balustraded terraces and stone
benches stiffly ornate, and having here and there stone nymphs and
goddesses over which in summer climbing roses kindly (and discreetly)
throw a blushing veil.
The dependent estate is a large one: lying partly on the flanks of the
Alpilles, and extending far outward from the base of the range over the
level region where the Rhône valley widens and merges into the valley
of the Durance. On its highest slopes are straggling rows of almond
trees, which in the early spring time belt the grey mountains with a
broad girdle of delicate pink blossoms; a little lower are terraced
olive-orchards, a pale shimmering green the year round--the olive
continuously casting and renewing its leaves; and the lowest level, the
wide fertile plain, is given over to vineyards and wheat-fields and fields

of vegetables (grown for the Paris market), broken by plantations of
fruit-trees and by the long lines of green-black cypress which run due
east and west across the landscape and shield the tender growing things
from the north wind, the mistral.
The Château stands, as I have said, well up on the mountain-side; and
on the very spot (I must observe that I am here quoting its owner)
where was the camp in which Marius lay with his legions until the time
was ripe for him to strike the blow that secured Southern Gaul to Rome.
This matter of Marius is a ticklish subject to touch on with the Vidame:
since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm
in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of
the Roman general was variously elsewhere--and all of them, I regret to
add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's
views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the mere
mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend--who in matters
not antiquarian has a sweetness of nature rarely equalled--into a
veritable fuming rage.
But even the antiquaries are agreed that, long before the coming of the
Romans, many earlier races successively made on this mountain
promontory overlooking the Rhône delta their fortified home: for here,
as on scores of other defensible heights throughout Provence, the
merest scratching of the soil