pavilion. The party consisted of her brother and herself, her lover
Briançon and an unnamed lady who was invited, no doubt, to entertain
Mirabeau. Before the meal was over the baron appeared on the upper
terrace of his garden, in order to take the air before the sun went
down. Louise pointed him out to her brother, told him what the baron had
done and what she would do with that nobleman if she had the strength.
Mirabeau at once jumped up from the table, stepped over into the baron’s
garden and fell upon the unsuspecting man with explosive violence.
[Illustration: GRASSE: RUE SANS PEUR.]
Now to introduce a comic element into a conflict of this kind it is
essential that at least one of the combatants should be elderly and
corpulent and that, by some means or another, an umbrella should be
brought into the affair. All these factors were present. The baron was
over fifty; he was very fat and, as the evening was hot, he carried an
umbrella. Excessive perspiration, also, is considered to be conducive to
humour.
Mirabeau, the statesman, flew at the fat man, bashed in his hat and,
seizing the umbrella, proceeded to beat him on the head with it. Further
he made the baron’s nose bleed and tore his clothes, especially about
the neck.
He also kicked him. The fat baron, who was shaped like a melon, clung to
the agile politician, with the result that they both rolled off the
terrace on to the ledge below, where sober gardeners, with bent backs,
were busy with the soil. These honest men were surprised to see two
members of the aristocracy drop from a wall and roll along the ground,
with an umbrella serving as a kind of axle, snarling like cats and using
language that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a pirate.
Louise, on the terrace above, was beside herself with joy. She screamed,
she clapped her hands, she stamped, she jumped with pure delight. She
was in an ecstasy; and when a fresh rent appeared in the baron’s coat or
when fresh mud appeared on his face as he rolled over and over, or when
Mirabeau’s fist sounded upon him like a drum she was bent double with
laughter.
Mirabeau was of course arrested for his part in this entertainment and
was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The prison to which he was
sent was the famous Château d’If. In his confinement, however, he was
consoled by thinking that he had given his sister the merriest day in
her life.
The Mirabeau family was a peculiar one. The Marquis de Mirabeau hated
his daughter and she, as cordially, hated him. The basis of the enmity
was the fact that Louise sided with her mother in the constant quarrels
upon which her parents were engaged. The marquis, who called his
daughter Rongelime after the serpent in the fable, contrived to have her
sent to the Ursuline convent at Sisteron, as a punishment for her many
and scandalous misdeeds. The sisters were, no doubt, pleased to receive
so noble a lady; but their pleasure was short-lived, for at the dinner
table the marquise used such unusual language and told such improper
stories that the convent was soon divided into two parties—those who
were too horrified to associate with her and those who could not
withstand the lure of the beautiful woman who said such thrillingly
dreadful things.
Exile to Sisteron was rather a severe measure for the flighty Louise.
Although it is one of the most picturesque towns in this part of France
it lies far away among the hills, no less than 118 miles from Nice by
the Grenoble road. This road, which is as full of wonders and
enchantment as any road in an adventurous romance, did not exist in the
days of Madame de Cabris.
Sisteron stands in a narrow gorge through which rushes the Durance
river. The pass is bounded on either side by a towering precipice. The
town, which has only room for one long dim street, clings to a ledge
some few yards above the torrent and at the foot of the loftier cliff.
On the summit of this height stood the castle, the place of which is now
occupied by a modern military work. In the town, besides the exquisite
church of Notre Dame of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, are four
isolated and very lonely round towers. They were built about the year
1364. They are put to no purpose, but simply stand in a row on vacant
ground, looking disconsolate, as if they had been accidentally left
behind when the other ancient properties of the city were removed.
Across the river, at the foot of the gentler cliff, is a little wizen,
sun-bleached place called the Old Town. It is made up of gaunt houses
which show many traces of grandeur and of haughty bearing; but which are
now tenanted by a colony of poor and picturesquely untidy folk. At the
far end of this row of ghostly buildings is Louise’s convent, where she
chafed and fumed, said terrible things and told un-nun-like stories.
It was a bustling place in its day but it is now deserted and falling
into ruin. Those who would realise the pathos and the beauty of the last
days of an old convent should make a pilgrimage to Sisteron. The convent
buildings are tenanted by a few humble families who seem to have settled
here in the half-hearted mood of diffident intruders. There cannot be
many habitable rooms left in the rambling building, although there is
much space for hoarding rubbish. At one end is the little chapel, still
almost intact, but in a state of lamentable neglect. It is low, has a
curious rounded apse and a bell gable with two bells in it. One wonders
who was the last to ring these bells, for their ropes are gone and they
must have been silent for many years. The ringer may have been some
bent, grey-haired nun who loved the bells and, hearing them sound for
the last time with infinite sorrow, would have dropped the rope with
tears in her eyes.
The chapel is built of a warm, yellow stone and has a roof of rounded
tiles of such exquisite tints of ashen-grey, of dull red and of chestnut
brown that it may be covered with a rippled thatch of autumn leaves. At
the other end of the convent is a fine campanile of sturdy mason’s work.
It is still proud and commanding, although its base is occupied by a
stable and is stuffed with that dusty rubbish, that mouldy hay and those
fragments of farm implements that the poor seem never to have the heart
to destroy.
Behind the chapel is a tiny graveyard which is symbolic of the place;
for it is so overgrown that its few sad monuments are almost hidden by
weeds and scrubby bushes. The view from the convent is one of enchanting
beauty. It looks down the valley of the Buëch which joins the main river
just above the town. It might be a glade in Paradise.
The place is very silent. The only sounds to be heard are the same as
would have fallen upon the ears of the restless marquise—the child-like
chuckle of the river, the song of a shepherd on the hill, the clang of a
black-smith’s hammer far away and the tolling of the old church bell
across the stream.
Before long the illustrious Mirabeau was in another mess and needed once
more the help of his experienced sister. This time he was running away
with Madame de Monnier, the wife of a friend. Louise was still in the
convent; but she could not resist the temptation of assisting her
brother in this laudable and exciting enterprise. So she bolted from the
convent, assumed a man’s attire, armed herself and started on horseback
with her lover Briançon to join the runaway couple. The movements of the
party are a little difficult to follow. They went to Geneva, to Thonon
and to Lyons. They had difficulties at the frontier and other mishaps.
In some way Louise and Briançon failed Mirabeau at a critical moment.
The lady seems to have lost her nerve and to have unwittingly given a
clue as to her brother’s whereabouts, so that he narrowly escaped
capture.
Briançon and Mirabeau quarrelled, flew at one another’s throats, and
were parted, with difficulty, by the panting marquise. This episode led
to a coolness between brother and sister, a coolness which in time ended
in bitter enmity.
Then came the French Revolution which brought complete ruin to the de
Cabris family and destruction to their house. Louise and her husband
fled from the country during the Terror. When they returned to France
they found their home at Grasse gone and their affairs in a state of
dissolution. To add to the troubles of the irrepressible lady her
husband had lapsed into a state of hopeless insanity.
The once gay marquise, having lost estate, position and friends, retired
to a small _appartement_ in Paris with her sick husband. She had one
daughter who was married and had children.
The moralist may ask what was the end of this wild, rollicking and
reckless woman. She did not end her days—as some may surmise—in a
poor-house, a lunatic asylum or a jail. On the contrary she devoted the
last years of her life to the care of her poor imbecile husband whom she
nursed with a tenderness that the most loving wife could not exceed.
More than that she applied her fine talents to the teaching of her
grandchildren; so that the last we see of the flighty marquise is a
sweet-faced old lady, with white hair, who guides the finger of a child,
standing at her knee, across the pages of a book of prayer.
-----
[18] “Contes Populaires des Provençaux,” by Beranger-Feraud, 1887.
[19] “The Maritime Alps,” by Miss Dempster, 1885.
[20] “Old Provence,” by T. A. Cook, 1914, vol. 2, p. 298.
[21] “Life of Mirabeau,” by S. G. Tallentyre. “Les Mirabeau,” by L. de
Lomenie.
[Illustration: CAGNES.]
XII
CAGNES AND ST. PAUL DU VAR
ALONG the road from Nice to Vence are two interesting little towns,
Cagnes and St. Paul du Var. Cagnes—or rather old Cagnes—is perched on
the top of a beehive-shaped hill on the confines of a plain. It looks
very picturesque from the distance and, unlike many other places, it is
equally attractive near at hand.
It is an odd town in the sense that it is made up of odd fragments.
There are no two things alike in Cagnes, nothing that matches. It is
indeed a pile of very miscellaneous houses inclined to set themselves
askew like the parts of a cubist picture. Mixed up with dwellings,
notable by their contrariness and their obvious revolt against all that
is conventional in the shape and arrangements of a house, are portions
of old ramparts, a ruined sentry tower and a gate that has got astray
from its connections. There is a church too that is apparently out of
drawing, that has a lane burrowing under its tower and that has become
wedged in among bits of a town on a precarious slope. It looks like a
very decrepit sick person who has slipped down in bed. Curious chimneys
(some of which are wonderful to see) form conspicuous features of the
dwellings of Cagnes. There are houses that seem to have rather overdone
their efforts to be picturesque; as well as others that have carried
their determination to be simple to excess. Of the super-simple house
the old _Maison commune_ affords a good example.
Cagnes is a quiet town with a total absence of traffic in its streets.
Indeed as if to show that the highway is not intended for traffic an old
lady has seated herself in the centre of the main road to knit, finding,
no doubt, the light better in that position than in a house. The sudden
way in which lanes drop headlong down the hill, to the right and to the
left, is quite disturbing. It is a place of pitfalls and hazardous
stairs that must be very trying to the village drunkard.
The centre of Cagnes—its Place de la Concorde—is a peasant-like little
place, humble and very still, called the Place Grimaldi. It is made
green by a line of acacia trees and is bounded on one side by a row of
modest houses, ranged, shoulder to shoulder, like a company in grey. The
buildings at the principal end are supported upon arches with sturdy old
pillars which give the spot an air of mystery. On the other side of the
square a double flight of stairs mounts pompously to the castle. The
square is approached by a lane which, to add to the fantastic character
of the Place, pops out unexpectedly through the base of the church
tower.
[Illustration: CAGNES: THE TOWN GATE.]
There was a time, long ago, when life in Cagnes was very gay and when,
indeed, Cagnes’ society was so lively and so exuberant as to bring down
upon the inhabitants a crushing reproof from the bishop of Vence. The
reprimand was conveyed to the young men and women of Cagnes in a message
of great harshness in which were unfeeling references to the pains of
hell. This was in 1678. It appeared that the people of Cagnes had
passion for dancing, a passion almost as uncontrolled as the craze of
the present day. They danced in the streets, the bishop stated. As there
are no level streets in Cagnes it is probable that the Place Grimaldi
was the scene of this display of depravity. The young people seem to
have favoured a kind of mediæval tango, for the bishop said some very
unpleasant things to the ladies of Cagnes about their “indelicate
postures and embraces.” As to the male dancers they are described as
“_forcenés_”; so they may be assumed to have introduced into these
street dances some of the violence and surprises of the madhouse.
The dancing took place, of course, principally on a Sunday and the
dancers excused themselves to the bishop by saying that the church was
so exceedingly dirty that they did not care to enter it and, therefore,
there was nothing for them to do on the Sabbath but either to sit in the
shade and yawn or to dance in the streets.
The bishop, who was clearly very “down upon” Cagnes, was severe too on
the subject of the ladies’ dress, or rather lack of dress. He especially
found fault with the low-necked costume and affirmed that women had been
seen in church “with bare throats and chests and without even a kerchief
or scarf to veil them.” It would be interesting to know what the bishop
of Vence would say about the low-necked dress of to-day, which is
carried down to the diaphragm in front and to the base of the spinal
column behind.
The castle of Cagnes stands at the top of the town on a wide platform
from which can be obtained a view of the sea, on the one hand, and of
the snow-covered mountains on the other. This is a castle of the great
Grimaldi family. It dates, Mr. MacGibbon[22] says, from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries and is claimed to be the finest specimen of a
mediæval stronghold in this part of France. It is simply a vast, square
keep, as solid as a cliff and as grim as a prison. It is heavily
machicolated below the parapet. It is frankly ugly, brutal and
repellent, an embodiment of frightfulness, a frown in stone.
It is said that the great hall of the château possesses a ceiling
painted by Carlone in the seventeenth century. The fresco represents the
Fall of Phæton. The present state of this work of art is doubtful, for
in 1815 the castle was occupied by Piedmontese soldiers who, lolling on
sofas and divans, amused themselves by firing at the head of Phæton and
apparently with some success.
The castle has, however, been disfigured in such a way as to render it
pitiable and ridiculous. At some period huge modern windows have been
cut in its fearsome walls. These windows, brazen and aggressive, have
all the assurance of the windows of a pushing boarding house and to
sustain that character are furnished with sun-shutters and lace
curtains. The worst phase of this outrage is the cutting away of some of
the glorious machicolations in order to make room for the blatant plate
glass. This superb old castle, in its present plight, can only be
compared to the figure of a sun-tanned and scarred veteran with a helmet
on his grey head and a halberd in his hand and on his breast, in the
place of the steel cuirass, a parlourmaid’s pinafore trimmed with lace.
[Illustration: CAGNES: THE PLACE GRIMALDI.]
[Illustration: CAGNES: THE CASTLE.]
St. Paul du Var, on the way between Cagnes and Vence, affords a vivid
realisation of the fortified town of the middle ages. It is but little
altered and that only on the surface. Its fortifications, laid down in
1547, are still quite complete. Its circle of ramparts is unbroken.
There are still the old gates, the towers, the bastions and the
barbicans. The path along the parapet that the sentry patrolled is
undisturbed. One almost expects to hear his challenge for the password.
The town is as ready to withstand the attack of an army of bowmen or of
halberdiers as it ever was. It might even defy cannon if they were as
small and as weak as the old piece of ordnance that still occupies the
battery by the main gate.
The streets are disposed as they were in the days of the leathern jerkin
and the farthingale. There are more houses of obvious antiquity in the
place than will be seen in any town of its size in Provence. The hand of
improvement has of course passed clumsily over them. Whitewash can wipe
out the past and it has done much in this way in St. Paul. If the stone
wall of a house has become too rugged and worn it can be covered up with
plaster and paint. If the balcony crumbles away its balustrade can be
used in the fowl-house and can be replaced by something in cheap iron
from a shop in Nice. When the stone chimney falls down a tin stovepipe
can fill the void. If the Gothic window be too small it is easy to make
a fine square opening that will take lace curtains and be worthy of
Bermondsey, and when the oak door, whose black nails have been fumbled
over by ten generations of boys and girls, has become shabby a door of
deal, painted green and varnished and provided with a brass knocker will
make the whole town envious. Still, in spite of all these sorry
evidences of advance with the times, the town of St. Paul remains a rare
relic worthy (if it were possible) to be placed bodily in a museum, for
it is a museum specimen.
The visitor enters the town through the vaulted passage of the main gate
and then makes his way by the inner guard and under a tower, with a
channel for the portcullis, into the town. It is a rather terrifying
entry that belongs to the old days of romance. A gateway that the reader
of heroic tales has passed through, in imagination, many a time. It
should be held with flashing swords by such men as the Three Musketeers,
by Athos, Porthos and Aramis, but at the moment it is obstructed only by
an aged woman with a perverse and overburdened donkey.
The town is quiet and clean, full of picturesque lanes, of quaint
corners and of odd passages. As it was at one time a favourite resort of
the nobles of the country and at all times a place of much dignity it
contains still many houses with handsome stone staircases and elaborate
chimney-pieces; while over door after door will be found carved the
armorial bearings of old world tenants. The dates above many entries go
back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some of the old wooden
doors still standing are most beautiful, while examples of ancient
windows and of ancient archways are very numerous.
In St. Paul du Var will be seen, in almost every street, examples of the
little shop of the Middle Ages. Under a wide arch or in a square opening
will be found a door approached by a step and by the door a window. The
window only reaches to the level of the middle of the door. It there
ends in a stone counter upon which the goods for sale were displayed.
The window (which is, of course, not glazed) is closed by a shutter.
Both shutter and door are usually studded with heavy nails. These
curious little establishments are no longer used as shops, but through
them the dwelling is still entered.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DU VAR.]
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DU VAR: THE ENTRY.]
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DU VAR: THE MAIN GATE.]
On the summit of the town is the church and, close to it, two great,
square towers of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. The taller of
these is the belfry of the church, while the more sturdy is the tower of
the town. They are both severely plain and fine specimens of the period
to which they belong.
The church dates from the same era as the towers and is—as regards its
interior—one of the most beautiful churches in Provence and certainly
one of the most interesting. Among its notable features are certain
altar screens of exquisitely carved wood which date from between the
fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The chapel of St. Clement the
Martyr, completed in 1680, is a magnificent work of art, full of details
of great merit. It is classed as a national monument. On the north side
of the church is a bust of Saint Claire, carved in wood, a work of the
sixteenth century. It represents the head of a young woman with a
singularly beautiful and pathetic face. It is a haunting face, for
whenever the church of St. Paul is recalled to mind this face at once
comes back among the shadows of its aisles.
There is in the sacristy a collection of treasures which has made the
church famous throughout France. It includes marvellous crucifixes in
silver, silver statuettes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a
_tabernacle portatif_ and numerous old reliquaries, one of which—very
curious in shape—contains the shoulder-bone of St. George.
-----
[22] “Architecture of Provence,” 1888.
XIII
CAP FERRAT AND ST. HOSPICE
CAP FERRAT is the name of a narrow tongue of land which is suddenly
thrust out into the sea between Villefranche and Beaulieu. It is one of
the great landmarks along the coast, is nearly a mile in length and
rises at one point to the height of 446 feet. It is a peninsula of rock
covered with trees and forms a pleasant strip of green athwart the blue
expanse of water. At its further end it breaks up into two capes which
spread apart like the limbs of a Y. One is Cap de St. Hospice, the
other Cap Ferrat.
Cap de St. Hospice is a very humble cape, small and low. All the present
dignity of the peninsula belongs to Cap Ferrat, which has a lighthouse
on its point and a great hotel, as well as a semaphore on a hill and a
number of villas of high quality. Cap de St. Hospice has none of these
things; but it possesses a little fishing village, a lonely church, an
ancient tower and a wealth of glorious memories. Cap Ferrat is modern.
It has no associations; for until the road-maker and the villa builder
came it was merely a strip of rough forest. The whole interest of this
would-be island centres around the promontory of St. Hospice.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DU VAR: A SIDE STREET.]
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DU VAR: A SHOP OF THE MEDIÆVAL TYPE.]
In the early days the land, far and wide, that bordered on the cape was
buried in the gloom of paganism. It was as dark as a moonless night in
winter and as chill. Then, in a certain year, a spark of light appeared
on Cap de St. Hospice. It was very small, a mere isolated speck in the
overwhelming shadow. It glowed from a humble monastery of a few stone
huts which formed the first Christian settlement in this part of the
Mediterranean. With the passage of years the spark grew until the
darkness about the cape changed to day and the whole country beyond was
flooded with a light that men came to know as the Light of the World.
The missionary who established himself upon this remote point of land
was St. Hospice or St. Auspicius. He, with only a few followers, planted
on the cape, in the year 560, an outpost of the Christian religion. So
primitive and crude was the settlement that it was rather an
entrenchment than a monastery. Of the rough stone hovels that composed
it no trace, of course, exists.
St. Hospice is described as a man, eloquent of speech, whose presence
was commanding but whose heart was that of a child. He had the gift of
prophecy and the power of working miracles. He foretold the coming of
the Lombards and saw, as in a vision, the desolation that they would
leave in their track. He warned his converts to seek safety in strong
places and to take their goods with them. As for himself, when the news
reached Cap Ferrat in 572 that the Lombards had crossed the Col di
Tenda, he shut himself up in an old deserted tower on the crest of the
cape and—like St. Paul—hoped for the day.