It welled up in the soul
and soon dominated all life. The fountain which had been dried up since
the dawn of the Christian era, began to flow again in a small country in
the south of France. The civilising centre had again shifted westwards,
as in the past it had shifted from Asia to Greece, and from Greece to
Rome. In the course of the first thousand years Greece and Asia Minor
had separated themselves from Europe, and founded a distinct culture,
the Byzantine, which exerted no influence on the development of Europe.
But not even Italy, the scene of the older civilisation, was destined to
give birth to the new; maybe the memory of the antique, ante-Christian,
period was too powerful here. Its cradle stood on virgin ground, in
Provence, a country wrested from Celts and Teutons by the Roman eagles,
ploughed by the Roman spirit, preserving in some of its coast towns,
notably in Marsilia, the rich remains of Greek settlements, something of
Moorish influence in race and language, and fusing all these
heterogeneous elements into a splendid whole.
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