Raymond Thuilier

There are wild places in the world which seem to respond to civilization with a disdain that, at the same time, enhances both the elegance of what man does to them and their own savagery. Such a place is Les Baux. It is like a tame panther held on a silken leash, tame only for as long as it chooses to acquiesce in the game of being a pet.

To an inelastic imagination, there can be no less likely spót for the flowering of courtly love. Yet it was here, in the thirteenth century, that the millenium of the hopeless passion began. And, on reflection, the very ferocity of the place—fierce columns of rocks, sudden cliffs, arid hillsides—perhaps gave an edge to the sentimentality, so that the concept of courtly love could survive to colour our loves even today.