The rivers Durance, Isère, and Drôme drain the region into the more ample basin of the Rhône, and the first of the three--for sheer beauty and romantic picturesqueness--will perhaps rank first in all the world.
The chief associations of the Rhône valley with the Church are centred around Lyon, Vienne, Avignon, and Arles. The associations of history--a splendid and a varied past--stand foremost at Orange, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles. It is not possible to deal here with the many _pays et pagi_ of the basin of the Rhône.
Of all, Provence--that golden land--stands foremost and compels attention. One might praise it _ad infinitum_ in all its splendid attributes and its glorious past, but one could not then do it justice; better far that one should sum it up in two words--"Mistral's world."
The popes and the troubadours combined to cast a glamour over the "fair land of Provence" which is irresistible. Here were architectural monuments, arches, bridges, aqueducts, and arenas as great and as splendid as the world has ever known. Aix-en-Provence, in King René's time, was the gayest capital of Europe, and the influence of its arts and literature spread to all parts.
To the south came first the Visigoths, then the conflicting and repelling Ostrogoths; between them soon to supplant the Gallo-Roman cultivation which had here grown so vigorously.
It was as late as the sixth century when the Ostrogoths held the brilliant sunlit city of Arles; when follows a history--applicable as well to most of all southern France--of many dreary centuries of discordant races, of varying religious faiths, and adherence now to one lord and master, and then to another.
Monuments of various eras remain; so numerously that one can rebuild for themselves much that has disappeared for ever: palaces as at Avignon, castles as at Tarascon and Beaucaire, and walled cities as at Aigues-Morte. What limitless suggestion is in the thought of the assembled throngs who peopled the tiers of the arenas and theatres of Arles and Nîmes in days gone by. The sensation is mostly to be derived, however, from thought and conjecture. The painful and nullifying "_spectacles_" and "_courses des taureaux_," which periodically hold forth to-day in these noble arenas, are mere travesties on their splendid functions of the past. Much more satisfying--and withal more artistic--are the theatrical representations in that magnificent outdoor theatre at Orange; where so recently as the autumn of 1903 was given a grand representation of dramatic art, with Madame Bernhardt, Coquelin, and others of the galaxy which grace the French stage to-day, taking part therein.