ALAIS
Descent from La Bastide—Viaduct of the Luech—Coal-beds—The
town of Alais—Rochebelle—Ancient oppidum—Hermitage—The last
hermit—Sidonius Apollinaris—The Citadel—Family quarrels—The
Cambis family—A ghost story—Making polemical use of a
ghost—Huguenots take Alais—Murders—The Bishopric—The
Cathedral—Silk culture—Introduction of the mulberry and the worm
to Europe—Silk husbandry in France—Favoured by Henry IV.—Olivier
de Serre—Colbert—The Magnanerie—Silk-weaving introduced into
England—A disaster that proved a blessing—Transformations of the
caterpillar—Florian—The faults of an Englishman.
When the train, after quitting La Bastide, has passed through a tunnel
at the highest point of the pass, you rush out of a northern clime,
with northern vegetation, into a climate with tree, shrub, and flower
wholly southern. The Allier and its tributaries were making full gallop
for the Atlantic; you see at once torrents racing down gorges to fling
themselves into the Mediterranean in which no Greenland icebergs ever
float to chill alike the currents and the air. Gulfs open beside the
line clothed in chestnuts, mulberries, almonds, vines; oleanders
appear, and the kermes oak with its varnished leaves covering the
slopes.
The line does not descend the first valley entered, but bores its way
through spur after spur of the mountain chain till it reaches the
furrow through which flows the Gardon d'Alais. Génolhac is passed,
that suffered cruelly from Catholic and Camisard alike, whence
Pont-de-Montvert may be visited, and the house seen where lived the
Abbé du Chayla.
A magnificent curved viaduct crosses the basin of the Luech, carried
on two stages of arcades 180 feet above the river to Chamborigaud,
the tragic story of which has been told in the preceding chapter. The
line traverses the masses of a rock and earth slide from the Montagne
du Gouffre, and enters a region of coal-beds. The coal seams can be
seen between sandstone in the cuttings for the line. On the right is
the donjon of La Tour commanding the abbey of Cendras, burnt by the
Camisards, then gorges and smoking cinder heaps, and we arrive at
Alais, a neat, pleasant, cheerful town, once the seat of a bishop,
situated in a loop formed by the Gardon, with the lofty rock of
Rochebelle opposite on the further side of the river. This height was
the site of the primitive oppidum of Alesia, or Alestia. The cyclopean
walls remain in places fairly perfect, and the enclosure can be traced
throughout. Alais never was a Roman city; it was, however, probably
a place where the iron mines were worked. A hermitage was there till
the Revolution. When the plague raged in Alais in 1721, a Carmelite,
Esprit Boyer, worked indefatigably among the sick, and on its cessation
obtained leave to retire to this hermitage, where he planted a garden
and reared a chapel. On his death another hermit took his place, and
he assumed the honoured name of Esprit, but as he was a drunkard he
was nicknamed Esprit de Vin. He ran away, carrying with him the chapel
bell, but was caught and ordered to return to his hermitage. In 1793
he was denounced as suspect, and some individuals were sent up the
height to arrest him. He refused to open to them, and threw stones at
their heads and threatened to shoot the first man who entered. They,
however, stove in the door with a pole, whereupon Esprit escaped out of
a window, but in trying to crawl away unseen fell over the rocks and
broke his leg. He was taken to the hospital and died there.
In the year 472 that magnificent prelate, Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop
of Clermont, and a great noble to boot, came to Alais to pay a visit to
Tonantius Ferreolus, Prefect of Gaul, who had his villa at Prusianus,
now Brégis, a little to the south-west of Alais. Another friend, a
Roman senator, had his country house on the opposite or Alesian side
of the river. Sidonius says: "The Vardo (Gardon) separates the two
domains. These splendid dwellings were commanded by hills covered with
vines and olives; before one of them stretched a rich and vast plain,
the other looked out on woods. Every morning there was a strife between
our two hosts, very flattering to myself, as to which should have our
society for the day, which should make his kitchen smoke on our behalf.
With them we flew from pleasure to pleasure. Hardly had we set foot
in the vestibule of one or the other, before there appeared bands of
those who played tennis, and above their noisy shouts we could hear the
braying of cornets.... Whilst any one of us was occupied in reading or
in playing, the butler would come to inform us that it was time for us
to take our places at table. We dined promptly, after the manner of
senators."
Where stands now the citadel of Alais stood formerly two castles
frowning at one another side by side. The lordship of Alais was in the
family of De Pelet, but the last of the name died in 1405, leaving two
daughters and the barony to be divided between them. Naturally they
quarrelled. Each would have the rock and a castle on the summit, and as
neither could be induced to yield a right, they had their two castles
and scolded and swore at one another out of the windows. At last the
situation became so intolerable that first one and then the other sold
their half baronies to a De Cambis, and he ran the two castles into one.
Jacques de Cambis, lord of Alais, was engaged in Catalonia under the
great Condé. His war-cry was "Allez comme Alès!" and on his son's sword
was inscribed:
"Je suis Cambis pour ma foi,
Ma maitresse et mon roi,
Si tu m'attends, confesse toi!"
Both Jacques and his son died on the same day, August 21st, 1653, of
wounds received at the taking of Tortosa. With them died out the male
branch of the barons of Alais.
On November 15th, 1323, died a citizen of Alais, named Guy de Corbian.
A week after his burial his widow came in great agitation to the
Dominican convent to say that her husband walked and made unpleasant
noises in the house, and she begged that the prior would lay his
spirit. Jean Gobi was prior at the time. He took three brethren with
him and went to the house. As soon as darkness settled in, all at
once the widow screamed out, "There he is! There is my husband!" All
present were dreadfully frightened, but the prior recovered first,
and bade the woman question the ghost. She asked, "Are you a good
or a bad spirit?" _Answer_: "Good."—"Where are you now?" _Ans._:
"In purgatory."—"Why do you trouble the house?" _Ans._: "A sin was
committed in it by my mother."—"What did she commit?" _Ans._: "That
is a delicate question, which I decline to answer."—"Can you make the
sign of the cross?" _Ans._: "Do not ask silly questions. How can I
when I have no hands?"—"How then is it that you can hear, having no
ears?" was the shrewd repartee. The ghost hesitated a moment and then
replied, "By a special privilege of God." Now it so happened that
at this very period a furious controversy was going on between the
Dominicans and the Franciscans as to whether the disembodied spirits
of the just had the sight of the Face of God. The Franciscans said
they had not, the Dominicans asserted that they had. The strife became
so hot and acrimonious that Pope John XXII. on November 12th, 1323,
issued a decision condemning the opinion of the Friars Minor. They
refused to surrender their tenet. The General of the Order appealed
from an ill-informed Pope to a General Council. Such an appeal is
absurd, argued their adversaries. A council derives all its authority
from the Pope. Philip of Valois threatened that unless John withdrew
his judgment he would have him burned as a heretic. But he had not the
power to carry his threat into execution. Now this ghost story occurred
a week or fortnight after John XXII. had issued his homily, in which
he asserted that the dead did enjoy the beatific vision. Jean Gobi saw
his opportunity. He published at once an account of his interview with
a good spirit, and related how that he had catechised the ghost on the
very point under dispute, and that the departed Guy de Corbian had
affirmed precisely the doctrine for which the Dominicans contended,
and which the Pope had ratified. What better evidence could be desired:
The Franciscans might have replied that they had no better evidence
than the word of Gobi, and that they doubted his veracity. But they
said nothing, they saw that every sensible man would judge that Jean
Gobi told fibs.
"The tenet," says Milman, "had become a passion with the Pope;
benefices and preferments were showered on those who inclined to
his opinions—the rest were regarded with coldness and neglect."
Jean Gobi doubtless had hopes of reaping some solid advantages by his
opportune revelation. But he was disappointed. John XXII. died, and
his successor, Benedict XII., published his judgment on the question,
determining that the holy dead did not immediately behold the Godhead,
thus at least implying the heresy of his predecessor.
In 1567 the Huguenots occupied Alais, and massacred six of the
canons in the church whilst they were singing Matins, as also two
cordeliers and several other ecclesiastics. But Alais was retaken.
In 1575 they again surrounded Alais, under their captains Guidau and
Broise, the latter of whom managed to escalade the walls by means of
a vine-trellis. One part of the population was massacred; those who
could fled into the castle. Damville came to the aid of the besiegers,
and on Easter Eve, after nine weeks of gallant defence, the castle
surrendered. The see of Alais was constituted in 1694. The cathedral
was consecrated in 1780, and is a heavy and hideous building. Only
the west tower remains of the old church. At the Revolution it was
turned into a place for clubs to assemble; but as the church was
inconveniently large for the purpose, it was decided to pull it down.
No one in Alais, however, could be found to set his hand to its
destruction.
The last bishop, De Bausset, escaped into Switzerland at the time of
the outbreak; but unable to endure exile from France he incautiously
returned, was arrested, and thrown into prison. It was only due to his
having been forgotten that he escaped the guillotine. In 1801, by order
of Pius VII., he resigned the see to facilitate the reorganisaton of
the dioceses under the Concordat, and he died in Paris in 1824. The
great esplanade above the Gardon before the Place de la République,
planted with plane trees, commands an extensive view over the plain
green with mulberries and chestnut, and with here and there the
silver-grey of the olive rising from among the darker leaves like a
puff of smoke.
Alais is one of the principal centres of silkworm culture in Languedoc,
and it has raised a statue to Pasteur, representing him holding a twig
of mulberry in his hand, in gratitude for his discovery of the fibrine,
the malady which threatened the industry, and for indicating the means
of arresting the plague.
Neither the white mulberry nor the bombyx—the silkworm that feeds on
its leaves—is a native of Europe. Both come from China. The history of
the origin of the silkworm culture and the introduction of both the
mulberry and the worm into Europe is sufficiently curious, and may be
summed up in a few lines.
The Chinese assert that the discovery of the use of silk and how
to weave it took place in the year B.C. 2,697, and great secrecy
was observed as to how the silkworm was reared and how the cocoon
was unwound; and Chinese laws forbade under penalty of death the
divulgation of the secret and the exportation beyond the limits of the
Celestial Empire of the seed of the mulberry and the eggs of the worm.
However, about three thousand years later, in the year A.D. 400,
a Chinese princess married the King of Khotan on the borders of
Turkestan, and she, at the peril of her life, carried off some of the
grains of mulberry and the eggs of the caterpillar, and by this means
introduced the culture of silk into the domains of the king. Some years
later, in 462, Japan got possession of the means of sericulture by a
similar method.
From Khotan the industry slowly spread to Persia and India.
A century and a half later, about 550, two monks of Mount Athos, but
of Persian origin, went to preach Christianity in the unknown regions
beyond the Caspian Sea. These courageous apostles penetrated to Khotan,
and there discovered whence came the silk stuffs that found their way
into Europe in small quantities, and which were so costly that they
sold for their weight in gold.
Rejoiced at their discovery, the monks schemed how they might make
Greece benefit by it. This, however, was not easy, as the inhabitants
of Khotan, knowing the value of their industry, had, like the Chinese,
forbidden the exportation of the seeds of the mulberry and the eggs
of the silkworm. The monks employed craft. In all caution and secrecy
they collected mulberries, crushed them in water, and obtaining thus
the seed alone, dried it and enclosed it in their hollow bamboo canes.
Then they departed on their return journey. On reaching Greece they
related their adventures and sowed the seed.
The young plants did not fail to spring up, and thus was Greece
supplied with the precious tree that is to-day spread along all the
coast of the Mediterranean.
But they had not done enough. Only half of their self-imposed task
was accomplished. The Emperor Justinian sent for the monks, listened
to their narrative, gave them money, and urged them to return into
the East and obtain a supply of the bombyx grain. Nothing loath they
started, arrived in Khotan, and in much the same manner as before
secreted and brought to Europe in all haste the eggs that would hatch
out in spring. The date of their return was 553.
Meanwhile the young mulberries had grown vigorously, and when the
worms issued from their shells they found abundant nourishment. They
passed through their several stages of development and gave vigorous
descendants.
European sericulture was created, but was slow in making progress.
However, in Greece the diffusion was so rapid that in a short time
what had been called the Peloponnesus changed its name to Morea, the
land of the mulberry. From the borders of the Ægean the culture spread
to Sicily, to Italy, and to Spain. The Arabs, who had already in the
East acquired a knowledge of how to produce silk, spread the industry
through all the countries that they conquered.
France was slow in acquiring it. The raw silk was indeed imported to
Lyons and Tours in the latter part of the fifteenth century, but it was
not till after the campaign in Naples of 1495 that the gentlemen who
had attended Charles VIII. brought back with them the seed of the white
mulberry and the eggs of the silkworm into Languedoc and Provence. The
first mulberries planted there were at Alban, near Montélimar, by Guy
Pape, Sieur de Saint-Alban.
The first steps taken in this new culture were slow and timid during
nearly a century. Francis I. accorded special favours. His successor,
Henry II., is said to have been the first King of France to wear silk
stockings, 1550. The religious troubles and the rivalries between the
great seigneurs did much to impede the progress of agriculture and of
sericulture. The cultivators of the soil were crushed by taxation and
exactions of every sort, as well as by the ravages of rival political
and religious factions.
But when Henry IV. was well settled on his throne, and the League was
at an end, it was possible for agriculture and all the trades save that
of the armourer to revive. Henry was keenly desirous to raise them from
the deplorable condition into which they had been plunged during the
long period of civil and religious discord which had marked the end of
the dynasty of the Valois.
The Béarnais, who had spent his early years among farmers, nourished
great ideas as to how to help them on and to make trade flourish in the
land, so great as sometimes to startle his most devoted councillors,
notably Sully, his finance minister. The King, seeing that the industry
of weaving silks was on the increase, and that to supply the looms
raw material had to be imported in great quantities, was desirous
of encouraging the production of silk in France, and he confided
to a gentleman of the Vivarais, Olivier de Serres, the mission of
developing sericulture by writing a treatise advocating it. De Serres
published his "La cueillette de la soie" in 1599. Two years later he
brought to Paris twenty thousand young mulberry trees, which were
planted in the gardens of the Tuileries. At the same time Traucat, a
gardener at Nîmes, with royal assistance, erected vast nurseries, which
in forty years supplied over five millions of mulberry stocks. Sully,
who had at first thought the King's projects chimerical, threw himself
eagerly into them when he saw that they were likely to increase the
wealth of the country; prizes were offered, subventions were promised
to such as should take active part in the development of the industry.
There exist still some of the old mulberry trees planted four centuries
ago, that the Cevenol peasants designated Sullys in commemoration of
the great minister of Henry.
Sériculture made no progress during the reign of Louis XIII. It lost
ground, and it was Colbert, the celebrated minister of Louis XIV., who
resumed forty years later the policy of Henry IV., and had to struggle
against just the same difficulties of inertia and indifference among
nobles and peasants alike. Colbert, following the same idea as his
predecessors, wished that France should produce the raw material needed
for the looms of Lyons, which were using 500,000 kilogrammes of foreign
silk, whereas the French harvest produced at the outside 20,000 kilos
of raw silk.
To attain this result, exemptions from taxation were accorded to
plantations of mulberry trees and to magnanaries of silk. In the
Langue d'Oc, the silkworm is called _magnan_, derived from the Latin
_magnus_, as giving the greatest profit to the farmer, and the sheds in
which the worm is brought to spin is called a magnanerie. A bonus of
twenty-four sols, equal to five francs, was given for every mulberry
plant that lived over three years. The Protestants of the south
devoted themselves especially and with great energy to the rearing of
silkworms. In 1650 De Comprieu, Consul of Le Vigan, introduced the new
industry into the Cévennes from the Vivarais where it had taken root,
due to the initiation of Olivier de Serres.
A few years later Colbert brought a silk-spinner, Pierre Benay, from
Bologna and installed him near Aubenas, in a factory for the spinning
of the thread.
The production of the cocoon and of silk was prospering and developing,
when in 1605 the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and this disastrously
affected the growing industry. The Protestants, hunted out and
persecuted, were forced to expatriate themselves, and carry their
knowledge and their energies elsewhere. The creation of silk-weaving
factories in Switzerland, Germany, and England was mainly due to these
refugees. Some 50,000 French Protestants had come to England. Of these
the silk-spinners settled in Spitalfields, and introduced several
new branches of their art. At this time foreign silks were freely
imported, and about 700,000 pounds' worth were annually admitted. But
the establishment of the refugees in this country led to monopolies and
restrictions. In 1692 they obtained a patent, giving them the exclusive
right to manufacture lute-strings and à-la-modes, the two fashionable
silks of the day, and in 1697 their solicitations were effectual in
obtaining from Parliament a prohibition, not only of the importation of
all European manufactured goods, but also of those of India and China.
From this period the smuggling of silks from France became extensive,
reaching, it is said, to the value of £500,000 per annum.
In France a disaster at the beginning of the eighteenth century gave
a new impulse to sericulture in the south. The winter of 1709 was
of exceptional severity, and froze the olive trees of Languedoc and
Provence. The farmers, obliged to root out their stricken olives,
replaced them by mulberries, and the rearing of silkworms, the spinning
and weaving of the silk made rapid progress. From this time sericulture
issued from a period of groping and hesitation to become a standard
industry. The production of cocoons rose to six and seven millions of
kilogrammes between 1760 and 1790, again to slacken during the period
of revolution. Nor were the first years of the nineteenth century,
marked as they were by the great wars of the Empire, favourable to the
industry. But an event that had considerable influence on the destinies
of agricultural France had taken place. The lands of the clergy and of
the emigrated nobility had been declared national property, and had
been sold at ridiculously low prices to the peasants on account of
the depreciation of the paper money of the period, the assignats. The
peasants worked with enthusiasm and energy on the land as proprietors
where they had lived painfully as common labourers. Great plantations
were made on ground newly cleared, and so soon as peace gave the people
breathing time, the production of France doubled as by enchantment.
From 500,000 kilogrammes, the output of silk passed to a million,
between 1826 and 1830, and between 1840 and 1854 it grew to two
millions.
"The silkworm is the caterpillar of the mulberry-tree moth
(_Bombyx mori_) belonging to the tribe of mealy-winged nocturnal
insects, of which in the summer evenings we see so many examples.
The eggs of this moth are smaller than grains of mustard-seed,
very numerous, slightly flattened, yellowish at first, but
changing in a few days to a slate colour. In temperate climates
they can be preserved through the winter without hatching
until the time when the mulberry tree puts forth its leaves in
the following spring. This tree forms the entire food of the
caterpillar, and seems almost exclusively its own; for while other
trees and vegetables nourish myriads of insects, the mulberry
tree is seldom attacked by any but this insect, which in many
parts of its native country, China, inhabits the leaves in the
open air, and goes through all its changes without any attention
from man. The common mulberry (_Morus nigra_), so well known in
Great Britain, is not the best species for the nourishment of the
silkworm. The white-fruited mulberry (_M. alba_), a native of
China, is the best, and is greatly preferred by the insect."[9]
The silkworm when first hatched is about a quarter of an inch long.
After eight days' feeding, it prepares to change its skin. It throws
out filaments of silk, attaching its skin to adjacent objects, becomes
sluggish, raises the forepart of its body, and finally the whole outer
case is cast off, including the feet and jaws. The newly moulted worm
is pale in colour, but speedily regains its appetite, which had failed
previous to the change, and it swells so fast that in five days another
uncasing becomes necessary. Four of these moults and renewals of the
skin bring the caterpillar to its full size, when its appetite becomes
voracious, and the succulent parts of the mulberry leaf disappear with
extraordinary rapidity. The insect is now nearly three inches long.
Beneath the jaw are two small orifices through which the worm draws the
silken lines out of its body.
Having acquired full size in the course of twenty-five to thirty
days, and ceasing to eat during the remainder of its life, it begins
to discharge a viscid secretion in the form of pulpy twin lines that
rapidly harden in the air. It begins now to climb and seek out a
suitable place for spinning the cocoon. For this purpose broom and
heath-bushes are erected about the trays in which they have hitherto
lived and fed and sloughed their skins. The insect first forms a
loose structure of floss-silk, and then within it the closer texture
of its nest, of an ovoid shape; within this the caterpillar remains
working out of sight, spinning its own beautiful winding-sheet, the
production of which reduces its size to one-half. On the completion of
the cocoon it changes its skin once more and becomes a chrysalis. In
this corpse-like state it remains for a fortnight or three weeks. Then
it bursts its cerements and comes forth furnished with wings, antennæ
and feet for living in its new element—the atmosphere. The female moth
flutters its wings, but rarely uses them for flight, but the male
employs his for seeking a partner. As the moth is not furnished with
teeth, it perforates its tomb by knocking with its head against the
end of the cocoon, after moistening it with saliva, and thus rendering
the filaments more easily torn asunder by its claws. In the perfect
or _imago_ form the insect takes no food, and lives only two or three
days; the female dies after laying her eggs, and the male does not long
survive her.
The cocoons destined for filature are not suffered to remain many days
with the worms alive within them. Those containing male moths are
distinguished as being lighter than those that hold the female. Only
so many of each are retained as are required for the propagation of
the worm. The rest are plunged in boiling water or put into an oven to
extinguish the life in the chrysalis. The reeling off of the silk is
the next process.
The cocoons are softened by immersion in warm water, and then the
reeler stirs them with brushes, to which the loose threads adhere,
and are thus drawn out of the water. They are taken up four or five
together and twisted by the fingers into one thread, passed through a
metal loop, and reeled off. The silk husbandry is completed within six
weeks from the end of April.[10]
The life of the insect from leaving the egg has been about fifty days,
and in that period what a series of changes—transformations even—it
has gone through; and all for what, but the produce of one of the most
beautiful imaginable textures for the adornment of womankind! Verily
Nature has made laborious provision that she should be coquette.
Even the severe Quakeress, objecting on principle to all adornment,
must don a pearl-grey silk bonnet.
On the Place de la République is a bronze statue to Florian (Jean
Pierre Claris), born in the château of Florian, near Sauve, in 1755,
and who died in 1794. He wrote plays, stories, verses, and fables. Not
knowing much about his works, I went to a bookseller at Alais to ask
if he had them.
"The works of Florian!" he exclaimed. "We have his statue in the place."
"Yes; but that is the work of the sculptor Gaudez, not of Florian
himself."
"Les œuvres de Florian—mais—" The man looked puzzled. "He lived a very
long time ago. What did he write?"
"I fancy, fables."
"Ah, monsieur! you mistake. That was La Fontaine."
"There is an 'F' in each," said I, "as there is a river in Macedon, and
there is also a river in Monmouth, and there is salmon in both." Of
course, the allusion was lost on him.
"I think his works have never been reprinted," said the bookseller. "I
will tell my child to ask the school-master about him."
Now I happen to possess at home an edition of Florian, printed in
the year III. of the Republic, 1797, and on my return I read some of
his works—as much as was possible. Among them is an "English novel,"
very complimentary to our nation at the opening, but full of the most
amusing blunders. The characters are Sir Edouerd Selmours, Mistriss
Hartlay, a M. Pikle, and a Mekelfort. Florian gives a translation into
French verse of "Auld Robin Gray," but in an evil moment appended the
original Scottish text, which is rendered thus—
"Vhen the shepare in the fauld, and the kyeat hame
And all the weary warld asleop is gane,
Thewaes o my heart fall in shovers fra my eye"—
and so on.
We have a fault, Florian is kind enough to inform us:—
"Ils dédaignent d'ouvrir les yeux sur le mérite, sur les qualités
qui sont propres à chaque peuple; cette insouciance donne à leurs
vertus un air d'orgueil qui en diminue l'attrait; enfin, ils
comptent pour fort peu de chose l'approbation, le suffrage des
autres; et le seul moyen d'être aimable, c'est de les compter pour
beaucoup."
I suspect that this criticism is more just than his rendering of
English surnames and his spelling of Scottish words.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Tomlinson's _Cyclopedia of the Useful Arts_, _sub voce_.
[10] De l'Arbousset, _Les Cévennes Séricoles_, and _Cours de
Sériculture Pratique_, Alais, n.d. Maillot (E.), _Leçons sur le Ver à
Soie_, Paris, 1885.