Chapter XXIV: Across the Ages

"Pas de chantar m'es pres talens,
Farai un vers don sui dolens,
Non serai mais obediens
De Peigtau ni de Lemozi.

Ieu m'en anarai en eyssilh;
Laissarai en guerra mon filh,
E gran paor et en parilh;
E faran li mal siey vozi."

("A desire to sing has seized me,
And I shall sing of that which afflicts me;
I shall no longer be obeyed
By either Poitou or Limousin.

I shall depart into exile;
I shall leave my son behind me in war,
In great fear and peril,
At the mercy of those who wish him ill.")

By WILLIAM IX. COUNT OF POICTIERS
(THE "FIRST TROUBADOUR"). Born 1071.

There is a vast work on Provence by le Sieur Honoré de Bouche, Docteur en Theologie, A.P.D.S.I., printed at Aix, by Charles David, "printer to the King, the clergy and the town," MDCLXIV. It is bound in ancient brown leather;--two majestic volumes which have to be propped up against something substantial or laid upon a family dining-table in order to be read in any sort of security. Less serious treatment, such as an attempt to balance the tomes on the knee between the arms of a chair, however solid, always results in a temporary eclipse of the student. The difficulties of acquiring erudition in this case are physical as well as intellectual. But the dangers of the road are worth braving even if one does come off with an aching head and some few marks of conflict.

The author, as beseems a doctor in theology, begins the history of his country from the creation of the world, and goes steadily on with a really terrible staying power till the reign of Louis XIV., where he is forced to stop, having arrived at his own times. The height of the volumes is such that the reader has the sensation (and almost the necessity) of alternately stretching and collapsing like a telescope in order to read a page from top to bottom; and this movement seems to emphasise the sense given by the narrative of journeying through the centuries in company with the whole brilliant procession of Counts and Kings, rulers and high sovereigns of Provence.

Roman governors, Pagan Emperors, Christian Emperors, Burgundian and Visigoth Kings, Ostogoths and Franks, Merovingians, Carlovingians, Kings of Arles and Burgundy, Kings of Arles "high sovereigns"; Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire; Counts Proprietary and Hereditary of Arles and Provence, Counts of Anjou of the 1st Race of the House of France, Counts of Anjou of the 2nd Race, in the direct line of St. Louis; and finally, from Louis XI. onwards--Kings of France: the long pageant streams by in ordered magnificence, picturesque in setting, rich in colour and attire, with splendid names and sad, splendid destinies.

The Sieur de Bouche heads his first book in the following full-blooded manner:--

PROVENCE.

"Sous ses premiers et plus anciens maitres depuis la création
du monde jusqu'a á ce qu'elle ait este soumise à la domination
des Romains durant l'espace de 3,927 ans."

This is a mere preliminary, a slight introduction to the body of the work.

The next Book treats of the country under the Romans during 591 years, from 125 B.C. to 466 A.D. This period is divided into three sections.

I. Provence under the Republic.
II. Provence under the Pagan Emperors.
III. Provence under the Christian Emperors

until the arrival of the Burgundians and Visigoths.

Then comes Provence under the first barbarian kings, Burgundian and Visigoth.

The period of the Frankish kings is again divided into Sections (and let no one who has not tackled le Sieur Honoré think lightly of a Section!)

The first Section gives 127 years of Carlovingians till 879, when we enter upon the important era of the Kings of Arles and Burgundy, and the beginning of Provence as an independent territory.

Here again we have three Sections:--

Kings of Arles of the 1st Race,
Kings of Arles of the 2nd Race,
Kings of Arles of the 3rd Race,

the latter also being Kings of Burgundy.