Tea at Trianon: The Salt Marshes of the Camargue

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 4, 2013

The Salt Marshes of the Camargue

Author Leah Marie Brown reports.

I spent the morning exploring Aigues-Mortes, a medieval walled city with a wren of cobblestoned streets. I poked around the shops selling colorful jars filled with sea salt, handmade market baskets, Provençal fabric, and locally produced soaps and candles. I sat at a cafe, sipped a drink, and inhaled the sea air. I sampled the delicious lemon cookies and chocolate covered almonds at La Cure Gourmande.

Finally, it was time to drive to Salins du Midi for my tour of the salt marshes. Throughout the day, the downy clouds that had filled the sky in the morning had darkened to an ominous shade of gray. By the time we pulled into the Salins du Midi parking lot, fat, solitary raindrops plopped onto our windshield. I worried that our tour would be hampered by the weather, that the photographs I intended on taking would be lost to the dying light. (Read entire post.)