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THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE shows, outside its church, some interesting traces of former activity and importance. A stout old Dominican monastery extends its long row of ogival windows near the church, and here and there a vigorous bit of ancient masonry juts from the streets—notably in the sprawling arcades of the Jewish quarter, and where certain fragments of wall attest that the mountain village was once a strongly defended mediæval town.

Beyond Saint Maximin the route nationale bears away between the mountains to Nice; but at Brignoles—a city of old renown, the winter residence of the Counts of Provence—one may turn southward, by Roquebrussanne and the Chartreuse of Montrieux (where Petrarch's brother was abbot), to the radiant valley of the Gapeau, where the stream-side is already white with cherry-blossoms, and so at length come out, at Hyères, on the full glory of the Mediterranean spring.

One's first feeling is that nothing else matches it—that no work of man, no accumulated appeal of history, can contend a moment against this joy of the eye so prodigally poured out. The stretch of coast from Toulon to Saint Tropez, so [ 131 ]