378 CHAPTER LIH. 



" The Troubadour judged by present-day com- 

 mercial standards seems a being ill-fitted to deserve 

 the plaudits of posterity ; yet the debt we owe to 

 these wandering minstrels of Provence is indeed 

 incalculable. For they kept alive in ages of turmoil, 

 brutality, and lust those ideals of romance and of 

 beauty by which nations are made great." 



But we must not forget that this ancient language 

 has other and nobler titles to distinction than the 

 serenades of minstrels ; it was used for the hymns and 

 services of the Albigenses, and became in a manner 

 identified with this cruelly persecuted faith. In 

 France, as in England, language followed the for- 

 tunes of the people who spoke it. The struggles of 

 Wessex with Mercia and Northumbria caused two of 

 the three English dialects to disappear. Similarly, 

 the decay of the Langue d'Oc is due to the rivalry 

 between the northern and southern provinces of 

 France, which ended in the sanguinary defeat of the 

 Albigenses and their subjugation to the spiritual 

 despotism of Kome. From this date the Langue 

 d'Oc gradually sank. 



As Dante called Italian the language of " si," the 

 word for "yes," so the southern French took the name 

 of the Langue d'Oc from the Latin " hoc," used for 

 "yes"; and the northern dialect that of Langue 

 d'Oil from the Latin " illud." 



The three great pilgrimage resorts for the Nice 

 district are Laghet, Utelle. and the Madonna di 

 Fenestra. Laghet is just behind Turbie, near the 

 head of a valley which opens into the Paillon. The 

 peasants flock to Laghet from a great distance, even 

 from beyond Mentone. Utelle is north of Nice, on 



