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World War I, many young men from “the provinces” heard French for the first time when they were conscripted into the army, for pockets of local languages and dialects still thrived in such areas as Provence, Brittany, and Alsace. The first words these men learned may have been “Ready . . . aim . . . fire!” but learn French they did. The
langues d’oc
today survive mainly as a regional dialect of French and in the form of these redundant street signs, a display of local pride, as well as in the name of a region—the Languedoc—that Peter Mayle made famous (some would say ruined as a result of its ensuing popularity) in his book
A Year in Provence
. Well, nothing can ruin our week in Provence. With new bikes, better directions, and much better weather, Anne and I set off on the short ride from Avignon to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, once home to Vincent van Gogh. Saint-Rémy is your typical Provençal town, with narrow, winding streets; restaurants with outdoor seating ideal for people watching; fountains; a nice little church; and a street market.
    What drew Vincent van Gogh here from Arles in 1889, however, was its asylum. While not wrestling his demons, Van Gogh was allowed outside the grounds, where he painted, in a single year, some of his best-known works:
Th
e
Starry Night,
Bedroom in Arles,
and
Th
e Sower,
to name a few. Van Gogh’s Saint-Rémy period is characterized by the broad, energized, almost manic swirls of cypresses and, most famously, the stars of
Th
e
Starry Night.
It is a starry night, and Anne and I can’t resist. After dinner we walk to the edge of town and look up. “Nope, same stars as at home,” I say to Anne. “It was all in his mind.” His poor, tortured, brilliant mind. But thank God for that mind.
    While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh also painted
Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background.
It is a hallucinatory, even frightening painting, the olive trees twisting in agony toward the sky, reflecting the tormented state of the painter, the Alpilles Mountains roiling in the background like a stormy sea. Those menacing mountains, clearly visible in the starlight, lay between us and our next destination, the city most associated with Van Gogh: Arles.
    Taking a slow but steady approach, Anne and I climb
les Alpilles
without too much difficulty, the scenery being so utterly beautiful we forget how hard we’re working. The mountains, protected as a national park, covered with olive trees and almond groves, and breathing an intoxicating herbal scent I can’t place, seem not to have changed much since Van Gogh’s time. We pause at the summit to gaze at Arles, looking angular and Cézanney (and far) in the distance. Then with a push we are whooshing down the mountain, whooping with joy as we careen through switchbacks and lean into turns, flying past other bicyclists huffing and puffing their way up the mountain, descending toward the timeless city of Arles.
    By late afternoon, we are watching the sun set from atop the Roman amphitheater. But it doesn’t just set; in French it literally goes to bed.
Le soleil se couche.
As if you were saying your son is going to bed (
mon fils se couche
). In the morning, both your sun and your son
se lèvent
. In between, there is not just twilight, but the time
entre chien et loup—
between the dog and the wolf—the time when the light is so dim you can’t distinguish a dog from a wolf, although this poetic idiom is also used to describe one who is between the familiar and the unknown, the comfortable and the dangerous, between the domestic and the wild.
    That’s how I often feel while in France, especially when our visit to Provence is cut short by a national strike (
la grève
) called for the day we are to return by train to Paris. Two million—not twenty thousand or even two hundred thousand, but
two million
—French workers and students take to the streets, protesting President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposed raising of the retirement age—to