voice from “out of the depths,” for it belonged to one whom he believed
to be dead. He could not see the singer; but he could see, as in a
dream, the vision of a piteous face, a face with eyes as blue as a
summer lake, with lips whimsical, tantalising and ineffable; could see
the tender cheek, the chin, the white forehead, the waving hair. He knew
that she who sang was no other than Blanche d’Entrevannes, whom he had
loved and to whom he was still devoted.
But a few years past he had held her in his arms, had kissed those lips,
and had thrilled to the magic of that voice. Her father had frowned upon
their hopes and had forbidden their union. The lad had been called away
to the wars. When he returned he had sought her out and was told that
“she is dead.” He haunted every spot where they had wandered together,
only to learn the truth that “no place is so forlorn as that where _she_
has been,” and only to hear again that she was dead.
Blanche was not dead, but, believing their case to be hopeless, she had
entered the convent of St. Pons and, in a few days’ time, would take the
veil.
After the service the youth—whose name was Raimbaud de
Trects—disappeared to find the singer at any cost. The search was
difficult. At last he met a sympathetic maid who said that Blanche
d’Entrevannes was indeed a novice in the convent and who, with little
pressing, agreed to convey a message to her. The message was short. It
told that he was there and begged her to fly with him that night. The
answer that the maid brought back was briefer still, for it was a
message of two words—“I come.”
The rain continued to pour, the harsh wind blew and the gallant knights
were still in need of shelter. How they spent the night and how they
were disposed of I do not know, for the strict narrative avoids all
reference to that matter.
By the morning the storm had passed away and as the sun broke out the
young men reluctantly prepared to take their leave. The abbess would not
allow them to go without one final ceremony. They must all drink the
stirrup cup together, “to speed the parting guest,” as was the custom of
the time. It was an hilarious ceremony and one pleasant to look upon. In
the road before the convent gate stood the cheery abbess in the light of
the unflinching day. In her hand she raised a brimming goblet and her
sleeve falling back revealed a white and comely arm. Around her was a
smiling company of young men whose many-coloured costumes lit up the
dull road and the old grey-tinted rocks. Behind her were the nuns in a
semicircle of sober brown, giggling and chatting, nudging one another
and a little anxious about their looks in the merciless morning light.
It was a noisy gathering but very picturesque; for the scarlet and blue
of the knights’ doublets and the glint of steel made a pretty contrast
with the row of white faces in white coifs and the cluster of
dark-coloured gowns. It was like a bunch of flowers in an earthenware
bowl.
The abbess, beaming as the morning, was about to speak when something
terrible came to pass. There appeared in the road the most
dread-inspiring thing that the company of knights and nuns could have
feared to see. It was not a lion nor was it a dragon. It was a bishop.
It was not one of those fat, smiling bishops with flabby cheeks and
ample girth, whose loose mouth breathes benevolence and whose hands love
to pat curly heads and trifle with pretty chins. It was a thin bishop
with a face like parchment and the visage of a hawk. He was frenzied
with rage. He stamped and shrieked. He foamed at the mouth. His arm
seemed raised to strike, his teeth to bite.
A word must here be said to explain how it was that the prelate had
“dropped in” at this singularly unfortunate moment, since bishops are
not usually wandering about in valleys at an early hour on November
mornings. It came about in this way. The old almoner of the place,
alarmed and horrified at the conduct of the abbess and the irreverent
and indeed ribald “goings-on” at this religious house, had hurried
during the night to the bishop and had given him an insight into convent
life as lived at St. Pons. He begged the bishop to do something, and
this the bishop did.
The arrival of the prelate at the convent gate had the effect of a
sudden thunder-clap on a clear day. The abbess dropped her cup; the
knights doffed their caps; the maids, peeping behind corners, fell out
of sight; while the nuns stood petrified like a row of brown stones.
The great cleric screamed out his condemnation of the abbess, of the
nuns, of the convent and of everything that was in it. He shrieked until
he became inarticulate and until his voice had sunk to a venomous
whisper like the hiss of a snake. He dismissed the young gallants with a
speech that would have withered a worm. Turning to the women he said
even more horrid things. He expelled the abbess and the nuns from St.
Pons and ordered them to repair at once to the convent of St. Pierre
d’Almanarre near Hyères, a convent notable for the severity of its
rules. Here, as the historian says, they would be able “to expiate their
sins with austerities to which they had long been strangers.”
It was in this way that the convent of St. Pons came to an end; for the
desecrated building was never occupied from that day. No nun ever again
paced its quiet courtyard; no pigeons came fluttering to the sister’s
hand nor did the passer-by hear again the sound of women singing in the
small grey chapel. In the course of centuries the building fell into
ruin and, year by year, the scandalised walls crumbled away, while
tender rosemary and chiding brambles crept over the place to cover its
shame.
On this eventful morning the bishop’s efforts did not end when he had
sentenced the lady abbess and had swept the convent from the earth. He
proceeded, before he left, to pronounce over the assembly the anathema
of the Church. He cursed them all from the abbess standing with bowed
head to the scullion gaping from the kitchen door. He cursed the nuns,
the novices, the lay helpers and the maids, and had there been a jackdaw
in the building, as at Rheims, he would, no doubt, have included the
bird in his anathema. So wide and so comprehensive a cursing, delivered
before breakfast, had never before been known.
Two of the party—and two only—escaped the curse of the Church,
Raimbaud de Trects and Blanche d’Entrevannes. It was not until the
morning, when the whole of the company were assembled about the convent
gate, that the two were missed.
The historian, in his mercy, adds this note at the end of his narrative:
“In the parish register of the village of Entrevannes, in the year 1408,
there stands the record of the marriage of the chevalier Raimbaud de
Trects to the noble lady Blanche d’Entrevannes.”
-----
[8] “Legendes et Contes de Provence,” by Martrin-Donos.
VIII
VENCE, THE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH
VENCE is a very ancient place with a history of some merit. It is said
to have been, in its earliest days, the stronghold of a native tribe.
Since it stands on a hill convenient in position this statement may
probably be allowed. It had the usual infantile troubles of growing
towns in this area. It was occupied in turn by the Phœnicians, Phocæans
and Gauls, and was ravaged, in due course and in appropriate manner, by
both Saracens and Lombards. It played but a minor part in those later
turmoils which rent the rest of Provence, and was indifferently moved by
the upheaval and the downfall of neighbouring principalities and powers.
Vence, however, had concerns and troubles of its own, achievements to be
proud of and dissensions to deplore; for it was, first and foremost, a
religious town, and both its greatness and its trials had an origin in
religion.
When the Romans came they established on this secluded spot an imperial
city. It seems to have been not so much a military station as an outpost
of the picturesque faith of Rome, a kind of Canterbury in the backwoods
of Provence. They called the place Ventium, and some indication of its
ancient boundaries can still be traced. It is known to the historian by
its temples. How many of these buildings existed is a matter of doubt,
but certain it is that the pious Roman, toiling up to Ventium from the
coast, would see afar off, standing up against the hills, the white
columns of the temples to Cybele and to Mars. Of these shrines no
vestige now remains. The stones have been scattered and have become mere
material in the mason’s hands. Some have helped to build a Christian
church, others to found a city wall or to give dignity to the house of a
mediæval burgher.[9]
There are many Roman inscriptions still in Vence. They have been found
in all sorts of odd places, on street walls, in gardens, in cellars, as
well as on certain stones in the old church. From these fragments, as
disjointed and as incongruous as the mutterings of a sleeping man, a
broken history of Ventium, in the years before and just after Christ,
has been pieced together.
The inscriptions are, in a general way, commemorative. There is one, for
instance, to Lucius Veludius Valerianus, decurion of Vence, to record
the fact that he had filled the functions both of magistrate and of
priest. With his name is associated very prettily that of his wife
Vibia, for she no doubt shared both his honours and his trials. Vibia,
we may suppose, had left the gay and resplendent city of Rome to follow
her adventurous husband into the wilds of Gaul, and was not a little
proud of the position he had made in the lonely and solemn city. One
might guess that it was Vibia who suggested the inscription. It is
notable, moreover, that the most prominent word in the whole tablet and
the one in the largest letters is UXORI (wife). Indeed, this word
occupies an entire line to itself. It would seem as if Vibia wished to
make it emphatic that she was a wife, and not otherwise.
If any of the inhabitants of the old town could come back to life again
I should especially like to witness the meeting, in the main street,
between Vibia and her successor in office, the mayoress of Vence of
to-day. They would be a strange couple, strange in dress, in bearing and
in speech, as odd as if a person wore on one foot a dainty Roman sandal
and on the other an American boot. The two ladies would have, however,
this in common—the country they gazed across would be as familiar to
the one as to the other.
There is among the many writings in stone one which refers to the
goddess Cybele and the ceremony of the Taurobolium. This pagan ceremony
was both a sacrifice and an act of purification. Its symbolism is of
interest when viewed in connection with that of the Christian church
which directly followed upon the old faith. A bull was sacrificed to the
goddess. The animal was placed upon a grating or latticed stage over a
pit. In the pit crouched the penitent. The blood of the bull, as it
poured over the body of the penitent, washed away all sin, all
impurities and stains, and gave to the man thus made regenerate a new
and holier life.[10]
Vence was at an early period converted to Christianity. The identity of
the missionary who brought about this change is not clearly established;
but the work is generally ascribed to St. Trophime. The body of St.
Trophime lies in the old cathedral of Arles, in that church which bears
his name. Among the ruins of the abbey of Montmajour, near Arles, is his
cell, a little rock sanctuary buried in the very bowels of the earth.
A bishopric was founded in Vence as early as 374. The city became a
prominent and influential centre and its bishops were, with scarcely an
exception, illustrious men. Most of these prelates are buried in the
cathedral of the town. The tombs of two of the very earliest, viz. St.
Veran and St. Lambert, occupy chapels in that sanctuary.
A famous ecclesiastic was Bishop Godeau. He was born in 1605 and took
orders when he was thirty years old. He was a man of great learning and
one of the founders of the French Academy. He was highly esteemed, not
only by the people of Provence but also by the Papal Court and the
counsellors of the king. “The epitaph of Bishop Godeau,” writes Hare,
“commemorates the favourite of Richelieu, who obtained his good graces
by dedicating to him a paraphrase of the Psalms, which begins with the
words ‘_Benedicite omnia opera Domini_,’ on receiving which the powerful
cardinal said, ‘Monsieur l’Abbé, vous me donnez _Benedicite_, et moi je
vous donner _Grasse_.’ The Pope afterwards allowed Godeau to hold the
bishopric of Vence with that of Grasse.”[11]
The worthy bishop died as he would have wished to die. In Holy Week in
the year 1672 he was singing the Tenebræ before the altar of his
cathedral of Vence.[12] The Tenebræ represent a very beautiful service
of the Catholic Church. A candlestick bearing fifteen candles is placed
in the sanctuary. These are lit when the service begins. At the end of
each Psalm or Canticle one of the candles is extinguished to express the
desertion of Our Lord by His apostles and disciples. At last only one
candle remains. It signifies the Light of the World, and when it is
taken down and placed behind the altar it serves to symbolise the burial
of the Redeemer of Mankind. On the occasion of the celebration at Vence
as the last candle was being extinguished the good bishop fell dead upon
the altar steps.
[Illustration: VENCE: THE EAST GATE AND OUTER WALL]
Bishop Surian who succeeded to the see in 1727 had a somewhat romantic
career. He began life as a shepherd boy. Finding this existence
intolerable he ran away from home with the very inadequate sum of 35
sous in his pocket. Falling in with men who perceived his ability he was
educated by them and admitted, in due course, to the priesthood. It is
said that he lived as frugally when he was a bishop as he did when he
was tending sheep on the hillside.
On the outbreak of the French Revolution, the bishop of Vence, Bishop
Pisani, fled and joined that vast body of some 4,000 priests who left
the country in order to avoid the penalties which the Revolution
imposed. Pisani was the last bishop of Vence, for the see was never
restored.
In early days Vence belonged to the bishops, the Church being the ruling
power in the pious town. When Vence came into the possession of the
Villeneuves—the lords of Villeneuve-Loubet—the seigniorial rights over
Vence were divided between the bishopric and the Villeneuve family. The
Villeneuves fled from France at the time of the Revolution and although
they returned when the Terror had passed away it was only to rid
themselves of their lands in Provence and seek a habitation elsewhere.
Vence being a devout town and one prominent in all ecclesiastical
affairs it is no matter of surprise that it became deeply disturbed by
the “new religion” as taught and stoutly maintained by the Huguenots. It
is further no matter of surprise that the dissenters made this
stronghold of the Church a special object of attack and that Vence
became a conspicuous scene of their protestings.
The position assumed some gravity when the Huguenots did more than
protest against forms of worship and took to arming themselves with
weapons of war. They went further. They became clamorous and threatening
and made it clear that they were no longer to be put off by mere
academic arguments or quotations from the Fathers. Moreover this
conflict between the Protestant and the Catholic involved certain
political issues which were outside the burning questions of creed; and
thus it was that men were drawn into the quarrel to whom matters of
State were more important than matters of doctrine.
The trouble came to a head in 1560. The bishop at the time was a
Grimaldi, while the castle of Villeneuve was possessed by his uncle, a
Lascaris. On the Catholic side, therefore, Vence was solid and prepared
to take prompt action to crush the revolt. A body of some three hundred
men was raised to deal with the Huguenots, but, in spite of the
all-pervading power of the Church there were Huguenots in Vence and the
vicinity and they, in turn, raised men to support their cause. A
Huguenot gentleman, with the pleasant name of René de Cypières, also
collected a squadron of forty horse to help those who espoused the
reformed faith.
Vence thus became in this fair area of France the Defender of the Faith.
The governor of the town issued an order forbidding the citizens to
harbour or conceal a Huguenot in any house, garden or vineyard. The
bishop denounced the Protestants as “vagabonds and seditious men.” What
terms the Huguenots, on the other hand, applied to the bishop are not
known, but they were certainly not lacking in invective for the contest
was bitter.
Life in the cathedral town must have been very unpleasant about this
period. So keen was the dispute that everyone must, of necessity, have
taken sides. Friends broke from one another after an intimacy of a
lifetime; lovers parted; the Catholic wife left the husband who had
turned Huguenot; while families who were united by ties that had endured
for generations now found themselves scowling at one another from
opposite camps. Children were forbidden to speak to old playmates, and
the little girl who had been so sweet to her boy friend now put out her
tongue at him when they passed in the street.
In 1562 there seems to have been a lull in this unhappy quarrel and even
a sign of tolerance, if not of peace; for the Huguenots, although
forbidden the righteous city of Vence, were allowed to hold meetings
without its walls.
The fire was, however, only smouldering. The truce was little more than
a pretence. The quiet in the streets was ominous. Although the sun shone
upon the faithful town a black cloud that betokened a storm was rising
in the south. In 1582, with a rumble of thunder and a darkening sky, the
tempest burst. A Huguenot army was advancing upon Vence.
It is necessary to pause here for a moment to record the fact that ten
years before this time Vence was approached by a far more terrible and
crafty enemy than the Huguenot; for in the year 1572 the army of the
Black Death marched into the town. It crept through the open gates, for
no one saw it. It set out to strangle and kill without remonstrance, for
no one heard its footsteps. It spared neither the armed nor the
helpless. It struck down the captain of the guard as he strutted on
parade as well as the child who toddled up the cathedral steps to peep
in at the door. It felled the lusty armourer at his forge and the maiden
singing over her needlework.
As many as could flee from the town fled, including the bishop who
sought refuge in St. Paul du Var. Grass grew in the empty streets, the
silence of which was broken only by the rumble of a cart laden with dead
and the tolling of a weary bell. The passer-by, with his cloak drawn
over his face, slunk down a by-way when he saw another coming. The shops
were closed; the market-place still, or traversed by a starving dog
seeking his master whom he would never find. Here a door would be
standing open, day after day, because the very last dweller in the house
had crawled out into the street to die, while from an open window would
hang the head of a woman whose last cry for help had been unheeded.
One would have supposed that this common disaster would have made for
peace, but it only served to deepen the dissent; for the Catholics
ascribed the visitation to the heresies of the Huguenots, while they, in
turn, regarded the Black Death as a mission from God to punish the
Church for its misdeeds.
The position of affairs when the war burst upon Vence in 1582 was as
follows: That corner of Provence to the west which bordered on
Marseilles, and which would be behind a line drawn—let us say—from
Aix-en-Provence to Brignolles, was in the hands of the Church party. On
the east the Duke of Savoy, with 2,000 men, was moving from the Italian
frontier to the support of his friends at Marseilles. His concern in the
conflict was based upon political rather than upon religious grounds. He
was, in fact, taking advantage of the discord that raged on his borders.
Between these two forces was the open country, in the centre of which
was Vence.
Now the Huguenot army was advancing from the south, from the shelter of
the Esterel mountains. It was led by a very remarkable man, by name
Lesdiguières. He was young, brilliant, daring and ever victorious.
Nothing could stand in his way; nothing, indeed, dared stand in his way,
for his very name inspired terror.
He had two things to accomplish—one was to cut off the advancing army
of the Duke of Savoy and prevent it from reaching Marseilles, and the
other was to destroy the city of Vence, the outpost of Marseilles and
the holder of the pass.
Vence stood alone in the way as the Defender of the Faith. It was the
centre stone of the position. So long as Vence held it was well for
those who were fighting the battle of the Church. If the faithful city
fell the outlook was unthinkable.
Lesdiguières the invincible appeared before Vence, surrounded it with
his troops and his cannon and laid siege to it. It must have been a
terrific conflict, for so much depended upon the issue, and the Vençois
were well aware what would happen to them and their town if once the
Huguenot captain got possession of the gates.
Beyond the fact that the loss on the side of the besiegers was very
great, no details as to the actual storming of the city nor of the deeds
of the defenders have survived. What is known is that the great
adventure failed. The doughty Lesdiguières, hitherto invincible, raised
the siege and retired again to the south beyond the Esterels.
Vence was saved, the prestige of the Church upheld, and a turn was given
to events which can only be appreciated by imagining what would have
been the history of Provence, and possibly of France, had the faithful
city fallen.
Many of the Huguenot leaders and adherents rejoined the Church of Rome,
old family feuds were forgotten, old friends shook hands again who had
shunned one another for years, the Huguenot lover became Catholic and
led his bride to the very altar he had fought to destroy. Even that
hardy fighting man, the fierce, impetuous Lesdiguières, came back to the
Church of Rome. He was, it is true, long in coming, for his
reconciliation was not made until forty years had passed after the great
failure of his life before the walls of Vence.
-----
[9] “Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France,” by E. W. Rose.
[10] “Voyages dans les Départements du Midi de la France,” by A. L.
Millin, 1808. “La Chorographie et l’histoire de Provence,” by Honoré
Bouche, 1664, p. 283.
[11] “The Rivieras,” by Augustus J. Hare, 1897, p. 47.
[12] “The Maritime Alps and their Seaboard,” by Miss C. L. N. Dempster,
1885.
[Illustration: VENCE: THE CHURCH AND COURT OF BISHOP’S PALACE.]
IX
VENCE, THE TOWN
ON the bend of a pleasant road some thirteen miles from Nice stands
Vence, 1,065 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. It is a little
place of about three thousand inhabitants, on the crown of a hill in a
land of hills. Behind it rise precipitous heights which shield it from
the north, while in front of it is an undulating country of pine wood
and dale that rolls lazily to the sea. Vence consists of two parts, the
old town and the new. The old town is a mere appendage to the new, and
may be compared to an ancient reliquary attached to a gaudy piece of
electro-plate in the modern taste.
The old town was entirely surrounded by ramparts built in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. On the summit of these was a broad way, where
the defenders mustered when the town was attacked. Upon the northern
front a considerable portion of the ancient ramparts still exists, while
the terrace that capped them has become a modest promenade. Within and
above the ramparts rose the town, like a castle of stone elliptical in
shape. To the outer world it presented only a lofty and continuous wall,
entered by certain gates, and strengthened here and there by towers. The
wall represented the backs of the outer houses welded together in one
unbroken barrier. The fronts of these houses looked into narrow streets,
but the outer wall was blank and blind, being pierced only by a few
small windows, high above the reach of attack, and by long, narrow,
vertical slits as the ground was neared.