Fontaine de Vaucluse is an idyllic little town for daytrippers under plane trees at the base of abrupt cliffs in an enclosed valley (“vallis clausa”) . In the 14th century the Italian poet Petrarch retired here at age 33 to pine for his lady love, married to another; though she died of the plague, he never got over her. Collecting water from all over the Vaucluse plateau, the source of the river Sorgue is here as a resurgent spring. Some decades ago Jacques Cousteau plumbed its depths to 315 meters and still did not touch the bottom. Guidebooks say the river “springs full blown from the mountainside” but no more. Something has shifted deep within the earth and, though the sapphire blue pool is still visible within the mouth of a cave, the river appears some hundred meters or so further down its rocky bed, just suddenly there bubbling among boulders between tangled banks. It tumbles over little falls and flows past the big mossy wheel still turning five times a minute at the paper mill that’s been beating pulp since the 16th century. Clear and cold, the river rushes over a dam with a kayak course arranged, then widens and calms a bit as it embraces water plants and spreads into a garden park with sweet colorful blooms and old plane trees where the painters have set up their easels.

Maurice with his talented instructor Janice Keep reading