ABOUT the beginning of the thirteenth century there lived at Eze two troubadours, Blacas and Blacasette by name, father and son. They were Catalans by birth; but the family had settled in Provence and the two singers found themselves in the suite of Raymond Berenger, the Count of Provence. How it was that they came to Eze and how long they resided there is not known. Durandy states that the Blacas were owners of the manor of Eze and in describing the sack of the town in 1543 he speaks of the castle as “the castle of the Blacas.”[28] Certain it is that they were both men of position and were both much esteemed. Blacas, his biographer asserts, was admired more for “the nobleness of his manners” than for the merit of his poems.[29] The two of them wrote and dreamed of love and of fair women, of gardens and green fields. They formed for themselves a little literary circle, as if they were living in Old Chelsea, held Courts of Love and meetings with their poet friends in which they competed with one another. Indeed the first known poem of Blacas (written before 1190) was a tanzon with the troubadour Peyrols. A tanzon, it may be explained, was a competition in verse, the rhymers concerned contributing alternate couplets.
For those who are curious as to the kind of poetry that rippled over the walls of Eze I append a verse by Blacas translated into the French of a later period from the Proven?al in which it was written.
“Le doix et beau temps me plait,
?Et la gaie saison
?Et le chant des oiseaux;
?Et si j’etais autant aimé
?Que je suis amoureux,
?Me ferait grande courtoisie,
?Ma belle douce amie.
?Mais puisque nul bien ne me fait
?Hélas! eh donc que deviendrai-je?
?Tant j’attendrai en aimant
?Jusqu’à ce que je meure en suppliant,
?Puisqu’elle le veut ainsi.”
 
EZE: THE MAIN GATE.
The scene of the treachery of Gaspard de Ca?s.
The picture of a troubadour writing little love ditties in this most woeful place is as anomalous, and indeed as incongruous, as the picture of a lady manicuring her hands during the crisis of a shipwreck. The sound of these songs as they floated—like a scented breeze—down the lanes of the putrid town must have been interrupted, now and then, by the shriek of a strangled man in a cellar or the shout of the trembling watchman on the castle roof.
The two troubadours loved war. Blacasette penned enthusiastic verses about it. He thought it an excellent pursuit, a measure much to be desired, a thing of which it was impossible to have too much. Had he lived at the present day he would probably have modified his views. He was, however, no mere dreamer. He carried his theories into practice and took to fighting when he could. He was engaged in the war which, in 1228, Raymond Berenger waged agains............