Page:A Motor-Flight Through France.djvu/211

THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE eighteenth century; then one passes on to abstract enjoyment of their colour-scheme and balance of line, to a delighted perception of the way in which they are kept from being (as tapestries later became) mere imitations of painting, and remain imprisoned—yet so free!—in that fanciful textile world which has its own flora and fauna, its own laws of colour and perspective, and its own more-than-Shakespearian anachronisms in costume and architecture.

From Aix to the Mediterranean the southeastern highway passes through a land of ever-increasing loveliness. East of Aix the bare-peaked mountain of Sainte Victoire dominates the fertile valley for long miles. Then the hermit-haunted range of the Sainte Baume unfolds its wooded flanks to the south, the highway skirting them as it gradually mounts to the plateau where the town of Saint Maximin clusters about its unfinished Dominican church—a remarkable example of northern Gothic strayed into the classic confines of Provence.

Saint Maximin owes its existence—or that part of it contingent on possessing so important a church—to the ownership of the bones of Saint [ 129 ]