CHAPTER II.
PROVENCE ROSES.
IT was a garden deep in the heart of Provence, Provence the fair, Provence the intoxicating, Provence of the Provencals, neighbor of Languedoc and Dauphiny; that region redolent of the traditions of poet and troubadour, of the court of Love and Beauty, of Blondel and his lion-master, of the dear, prolix, impossible, inconsequent romances that drove Don Quixote mad, but whose flavor, like a drop of attar, has been found sufficient to perfume half the more modern works of fiction.
It was a garden innocent of the chilling and formal science just coming into vogue in France under the auspices of Le Notre, the impress of whose style is still to be seen, not only in the gardens of Versailles, but all over France, and even England; a garden left very much to Nature, who, sweet prodigal, in this her beloved summer land, had pleased herself by heaping together in this little hidden nook a wealth of color and perfume, of riotous bloom, of glowing sunlight and alluring shadow, of food for every sensuous capacity of eye and ear, and that subtlest of senses, the sense of smell, enough in this one garden to gild all Switzerland with a charm her grandeur has never attained.
