THE PYRENEES TO PROVENCE
ventional lines of its day, without showing a hint
of new forms. But that very absence of imagina-
tive suggestion makes it Roman and imperial to
the core.
Ahead of us, all the way from Avignon to
Orange, the Mont Ventoux lifted into the pure
light its denuded flanks and wrinkled silvery-
lilac summit. But at Orange we turned about
its base, and bore away north-eastward through
a broken country rimmed with hills, passing by
Tulette, the seat of a Cluniac foundation—of
which the great Rovere, Julius IL, was Prince
and Prior—and by Valréas, which under the
Popes of Avignon became the capital of the
Haut Comtat, the French papal dominion in
France.
Like too many old towns in this part of France,
Valréas, once a strongly fortified place, has suf-
fered its castle to fall in ruins, and swept away
its towers and ramparts to make room for boule-
vards, as though eager to efface all traces of its
long crowded past. But one such trace—nearer
at hand and of more intimate connotations—re-
mains in the Hôtel de Simiane, now the hôtel de
ville, but formerly the house of that Marquis de
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