Travellers journeying southward from Paris first meet with olive-trees
near Montdragon or Monsélimart--little towns, with old historic names,
upon the road to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves
within the land of Provence, where the Romans found a second Italy,
and where the autumn of their antique civilisation was followed,
almost without an intermediate winter of barbarism, by the light and
delicate springtime of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed,
the ghost of the dead empire seems there to be more real and living
than the actual flesh and blood of modern time, as represented by
narrow dirty streets and mean churches. It is the shell of the huge
theatre, hollowed from the solid hill, and fronted with a wall that
seems made rather to protect a city than to form a sounding-board for
a stage, which first tells us that we have reached the old Arausio. Of
all theatres this is the most impressive, stupendous, indestructible,
the Colosseum hardly excepted; for in Rome herself we are prepared
for something gigantic, while in the insignificant Arausio--a sort
of antique Tewkesbury--to find such magnificence, durability, and
vastness, impresses one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness
of Empire can scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the colossal,
towering, amorphous precipice which formed the background of the
scena, we feel as if once more the 'heart-shaking sound of Consul
Romanus' might be heard; as if Roman knights and deputies, arisen from
the dead, with faces hard and stern as those of the warriors carved on
Trajan's frieze, might take their seats beneath us in the orchestra,
and, after proclamation made, the mortmain of imperial Rome be laid
upon the comforts, liberties, and little gracefulnesses of our modern
life. Nor is it unpleasant to be startled from such reverie by the
voice of the old guardian upon the stage beneath, sonorously devolving
the vacuous Alexandrines with which he once welcomed his ephemeral
French emperor from Algiers. The little man is dim with distance,
eclipsed and swallowed up by the shadows and grotesque fragments of
the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But his voice--thanks to the
inimitable constructive art of the ancient architect, which, even
in the desolation of at least thirteen centuries, has not lost its
cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and fills the whole vast hollow
with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank heaven, there is no danger of
Roman resurrection here! The illusion is completely broken, and we
turn to gather the first violets of February, and to wonder at the
quaint postures of a praying mantis on the grass grown tiers and
porches fringed with fern.
The sense of Roman greatness which is so oppressive in Orange and in
many other parts of Provence, is not felt at Avignon. Here we exchange
the ghost of Imperial for the phantom of Ecclesiastical Rome. The
fixed epithet of Avignon is Papal; and as the express train rushes
over its bleak and wind-tormented plain, the heavy dungeon-walls and
battlemented towers of its palace fortress seem to warn us off, and
bid us quickly leave the Babylon of exiled impious Antichrist. Avignon
presents the bleakest, barest, greyest scene upon a February morning,
when the incessant mistral is blowing, and far and near, upon desolate
hillside and sandy plain, the scanty trees are bent sideways, the
crumbling castle turrets shivering like bleached skeletons in the dry
ungenial air. Yet inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal
palace, with its terrible Glacière, its chapel painted by Simone
Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber,
funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate--so runs tradition--the shrieks
of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little
French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never
ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their
dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. And strange, indeed,
it is to see the lines of neat narrow barrack beds, between which the
red-legged little men are shaving, polishing their guns, or mending
their trousers, in those vaulted halls of popes and cardinals, those
vast presence-chambers and audience-galleries, where Urban entertained
S. Catherine, where Rienzi came, a prisoner, to be stared at. Pass by
the Glacière with a shudder, for it has still the reek of blood about
it; and do not long delay in the cheerless dungeon of Rienzi. Time and
regimental whitewash have swept these lurking-places of old crime very
bare; but the parable of the seven devils is true in more senses than
one, and the ghosts that return to haunt a deodorised, disinfected,
garnished sepulchre are almost more ghastly than those which have
never been disturbed from their old habitations.
Little by little the eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and
greyness of this Provençal landscape; and then we find that the
scenery round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les
Doms--which is a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it
were, of Avignon--embraces a wide stretch of undulating champaign,
bordered by low hills, and intersected by the flashing waters of the
majestic Rhone. Across the stream stands Villeneuve, like a castle
of romance, with its round stone towers fronting the gates and
battlemented walls of the Papal city. A bridge used to connect the two
towns, but it is now broken. The remaining fragment is of solid build,
resting on great buttresses, one of which rises fantastically above
the bridge into a little chapel. Such, one might fancy, was the
bridge which Ariosto's Rodomonte kept on horse against the Paladins of
Charlemagne, when angered by the loss of his love. Nor is it difficult
to imagine Bradamante spurring up the slope against him with her magic
lance in rest, and tilting him into the tawny waves beneath.
On a clear October morning, when the vineyards are taking their last
tints of gold and crimson, and the yellow foliage of the poplars by
the river mingles with the sober greys of olive-trees and willows,
every square inch of this landscape, glittering as it does with light
and with colour, the more beautiful for its subtlety and rarity, would
make a picture. Out of many such vignettes let us choose one. We are
on the shore close by the ruined bridge, the rolling muddy Rhone in
front; beyond it, by the towing-path, a tall strong cypress-tree rises
beside a little house, and next to it a crucifix twelve feet or more
in height, the Christ visible afar, stretched upon His red cross;
arundo donax is waving all around, and willows near; behind, far off,
soar the peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds; past the cypress,
on the Rhone, comes floating a long raft, swift through the stream,
its rudder guided by a score of men: one standing erect upon the prow
bends forward to salute the cross; on flies the raft, the tall reeds
rustle, and the cypress sleeps.
For those who have time to spare in going to or from the south it
is worth while to spend a day or two in the most comfortable and
characteristic of old French inns, the Hôtel de l'Europe, at Avignon.
Should it rain, the museum of the town is worth a visit. It contains
Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa, and another, less
famous, but perhaps more interesting, by swollen-cheeked David, the
'genius in convulsion,' as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas
is unfinished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made the painter
fling his palette down and leave the masterpiece he might have
spoiled? For in its way the picture is a masterpiece. There lies Jean
Barrad, drummer, aged fourteen, slain in La Vendée, a true patriot,
who, while his life-blood flowed away, pressed the tricolor cockade
to his heart, and murmured 'Liberty!' David has treated his subject
classically. The little drummer-boy, though French enough in feature
and in feeling, lies, Greek-like, naked on the sand--a very Hyacinth
of the Republic, La Vendée's Ilioneus. The tricolor cockade and the
sentiment of upturned patriotic eyes are the only indications of his
being a hero in his teens, a citizen who thought it sweet to die for
France.
In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted,
not so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the
drive, and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For some
time after leaving Avignon you jog along the level country between
avenues of plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives,
mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into
distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island
village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic
plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy
fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be
some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be
astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon
its fountain-head. It has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that
communicate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing, let it not
be forgotten that it was somewhere or other in this 'chiaro fondo di
Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the
Glacière, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from his foes, and had
his accursed life, by some diabolical providence, spared for future
butcheries. On we go across the austere plain, between fields of
madder, the red roots of the 'garance' lying in swathes along the
furrows. In front rise ash-grey hills of barren rock, here and there
crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up
and seems to bar all passage. Yet the river foams in torrents at our
side. Whence can it issue? What pass or cranny in that precipice is
cloven for its escape? These questions grow in interest as we enter
the narrow defile of limestone rocks which leads to the cliff-barrier,
and find ourselves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse. Here is the
village, the little church, the ugly column to Petrarch's memory,
the inn, with its caricatures of Laura, and its excellent trout, the
bridge and the many-flashing, eddying Sorgues, lashed by millwheels,
broken by weirs, divided in its course, channelled and dyked, yet
flowing irresistibly and undefiled. Blue, purple, greened by moss and
water-weeds, silvered by snow-white pebbles, on its pure smooth bed
the river runs like elemental diamond, so clear and fresh. The rocks
on either side are grey or yellow, terraced into oliveyards, with here
and there a cypress, fig, or mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease,
and lentisk, rosemary, box, and ilex--shrubs of Provence--with here
and there a sumach out of reach, cling to the hard stone. And so at
last we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable precipice.
At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in
which the sheltering rocks and nestling wild figs are glassed as in a
mirror--a mirror of blue-black water, like amethyst or fluor-spar--so
pure, so still, that where it laps the pebbles you can scarcely say
where air begins and water ends. This, then, is Petrarch's 'grotto;'
this is the fountain of Vaucluse. Up from its deep reservoirs, from
the mysterious basements of the mountain, wells the silent stream;
pauseless and motionless it fills its urn, rises unruffled, glides
until the brink is reached, then overflows, and foams, and dashes
noisily, a cataract, among the boulders of the hills. Nothing at
Vaucluse is more impressive than the contrast between the tranquil
silence of the fountain and the roar of the released impetuous river.
Here we can realise the calm clear eyes of sculptured water-gods,
their brimming urns, their gushing streams, the magic of the
mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or again, looking up at the
sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in height, and arching slightly roofwise,
so that no rain falls upon the cavern of the pool, we seem to see the
stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus, the force of Moses'
rod, which cleft rocks and made water gush forth in the desert. There
is a strange fascination in the spot. As our eyes follow the white
pebble which cleaves the surface and falls visibly, until the veil
of azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if some glamour
were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden caves. At least, we long to
yield a prized and precious offering to the spring, to grace the nymph
of Vaucluse with a pearl of price as token of our reverence and love.
Meanwhile nothing has been said about Petrarch, who himself said much
about the spring, and complained against those very nymphs to whom we
have in wish, at least, been scattering jewels, that they broke his
banks and swallowed up his gardens every winter. At Vaucluse Petrarch
loved, and lived, and sang. He has made Vaucluse famous, and will
never be forgotten there. But for the present the fountain is even
more attractive than the memory of the poet.[4]
The change from Avignon to Nismes is very trying to the latter place;
for Nismes is not picturesquely or historically interesting. It is a
prosperous modern French town with two almost perfect Roman
monuments--Les Arènes and the Maison Carrée. The amphitheatre is a
complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even
where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles
Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest
inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably.
Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of
Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence
displayed in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose,
are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice--Palladio's
Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--which approaches the dignity and
loftiness of Roman architecture; and this it does because of its
absolute freedom from ornament, the vastness of its design, and the
durability of its material. The temple, called the Maison Carrée, at
Nismes, is also very perfect, and comprehended at one glance. Light,
graceful, airy, but rather thin and narrow, it reminds one of the
temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome.
But if Nismes itself is not picturesque, its environs contain the
wonderful Pont du Gard. A two or three hours' drive leads through a
desolate country to the valley of the Cardon, where suddenly, at a
turn of the road, one comes upon the aqueduct. It is not within the
scope of words to describe the impression produced by those vast
arches, row above row, cutting the deep blue sky. The domed summer
clouds sailing across them are comprehended in the gigantic span of
their perfect semicircles, which seem rather to have been described
by Miltonic compasses of Deity than by merely human mathematics. Yet,
standing beneath one of the vaults and looking upward, you may read
Roman numerals in order from I. to X., which prove their human origin
well enough. Next to their strength, regularity, and magnitude, the
most astonishing point about this triple tier of arches, piled one
above the other to a height of 180 feet above a brawling stream
between two barren hills, is their lightness. The arches are not
thick; the causeway on the top is only just broad enough for three men
to walk abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls
that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct
in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no
buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined
with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of
science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but
Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a
place--a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with
low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep--for such a purpose,
too, in order to supply Nemausus with pure water. The modern town does
pretty well without its water; but here subsists the civilisation
of eighteen centuries past intact: the human labour yet remains,
the measuring, contriving mind of man, shrinking from no obstacles,
spanning the air, and in one edifice combining gigantic strength and
perfect beauty. It is impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such
a place, and to say with him: 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces
immenses voûtes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux
qui les avaient bâties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette
immensité. Je sentais, tout en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi
qui m'élevait l'âme; et je me disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je né
Romain!'
There is nothing at Arles which produces the same deep and indelible
impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes,
partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because
of its ruinous antiquity, and partly also because of the strong local
character of its population. The amphitheatre of Arles is vaster and
more sublime in its desolation than the tidy theatre at Nismes; the
crypts, and dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of
speculation as to the uses to which they may have been appropriated;
while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous,
like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest
pictures of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of
the smaller theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments
and their standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to
some dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps
the Aliscamps, or ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting
thing at Arles, not only because of Dante's celebrated lines in the
canto of 'Farinata:'--
Si come ad Arli ove 'l Rodano stagna,
Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo;
but also because of the intrinsic picturesqueness of this avenue of
sepulchres beneath green trees upon a long soft grassy field.
But as at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief
attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special
expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provençal desert where
one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'--a
wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and
tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes
the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all
periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but
henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and
terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast
Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their
decay than the older and austerer mediæval towers, which rise up proud
and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When at
length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you
find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into
bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient
art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and
nature are confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl
with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped
round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; the
doors and windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and wild fig
for tapestry; winding staircases start midway upon the cliff, and lead
to vacancy. High overhead suspended in mid-air hang chambers--lady's
bower or poet's singing-room--now inaccessible, the haunt of hawks and
swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb--'cette ville en monolithe,'
as it has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one
mountain block--live about two hundred poor people, foddering their
wretched goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting mud
beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. Murray is wrong in
calling the place a mediæval town in its original state, for anything
more purely ruinous, more like a decayed old cheese, cannot possibly
be conceived. The living only inhabit the tombs of the dead. At
the end of the last century, when revolutionary effervescence was
beginning to ferment, the people of Arles swept all its feudality
away, defacing the very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the
palace towers to dust.
The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain over Arles, the
stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and the salt pools of the lingering sea.
In old days it was the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les
Baux; and whether they took their title from the rock, or whether,
as genealogists would have it, they gave the name of Oriental
Balthazar--their reputed ancestor, one of the Magi--to the rock
itself, remains a mystery not greatly worth the solving.
Anyhow, here they lived and flourished, these feudal princes, bearing
for their ensign a silver comet of sixteen rays upon a field of
gules--themselves a comet race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands,
blazing with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a burning,
raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in whom a flame unquenchable
glowed from son to sire through twice five hundred years until, in
the sixteenth century, they were burned out, and nothing remained but
cinders--these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some outworn and dusty
titles. Very strange are the fate and history of these same titles:
King of Arles, for instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance;
Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian novels; Prince
of Orange, which the Nassaus, through the Châlons, seized in all its
emptiness long after the real principality had passed away, and came
therewith to sit on England's throne.
The Les Baux in their heyday were patterns of feudal nobility. They
warred incessantly with Counts of Provence, archbishops and burghers
of Arles, Queens of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging,
betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and buying it again
by deeds of valour or imperial acts of favour, tuning troubadour
harps, presiding at courts of love,--they filled a large page in the
history of Southern France. The Les Baux were very superstitious. In
the fulness of their prosperity they restricted the number of their
dependent towns, or _places baussenques_, to seventy-nine,
because these numbers in combination were thought to be of good omen
to their house. Beral des Baux, Seigneur of Marseilles, was one day
starting on a journey with his whole force to Avignon. He met an old
woman herb-gathering at daybreak, and said, 'Mother, hast thou seen
a crow or other bird?' 'Yea,' answered the crone, 'on the trunk of a
dead willow.' Beral counted upon his fingers the day of the year, and
turned bridle. With troubadours of name and note they had dealings,
but not always to their own advantage, as the following story
testifies. When the Baux and Berengers were struggling for the
countship of Provence, Raymond Berenger, by his wife's counsel, went,
attended by troubadours, to meet the Emperor Frederick at Milan.
There he sued for the investiture and ratification of Provence. His
troubadours sang and charmed Frederick; and the Emperor, for the joy
he had in them, wrote his celebrated lines beginning--
Plas mi cavalier Francez.
And when Berenger made his request he met with no refusal. Hearing
thereof, the lords of Baux came down in wrath with a clangour of armed
men. But music had already gained the day; and where the Phoebus of
Provence had shone, the Æolus of storm-shaken Les Baux was powerless.
Again, when Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello
chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of
Christendom flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let
Rambaude des Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly
meant, but at this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good
piece, for she is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it
well who knows so well to husband her own weal.' But the poets were
not always adverse to the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and
gentle melodist whom Dante placed in paradise, served Adelaisie, wife
of Berald, with long service of unhappy love, and wrote upon her
death 'The Complaint of Berald des Baux for Adelaisie.' Guillaume de
Cabestan loved Berangère des Baux, and was so loved by her that she
gave him a philtre to drink, whereof he sickened and grew mad. Many
more troubadours are cited as having frequented the castle of Les
Baux, and among the members of the princely house were several poets.
Some of them were renowned for beauty. We hear of a Cécile, called
Passe Rose, because of her exceeding loveliness; also of an unhappy
François, who, after passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the
grace and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the real temper of
this fierce tribe was not shown among troubadours, or in the courts of
love and beauty. The stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and
the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of their nature.
History records no end of their ravages and slaughters. It is a
tedious catalogue of blood--how one prince put to fire and sword the
whole town of Courthezon; how another was stabbed in prison by his
wife; how a third besieged the castle of his niece, and sought to
undermine her chamber, knowing her the while to be in childbed; how a
fourth was flayed alive outside the walls of Avignon. There is nothing
terrible, splendid, and savage, belonging to feudal history, of which
an example may not be found in the annals of Les Baux, as narrated by
their chronicler, Jules Canonge.
However abrupt may seem the transition from these memories of
the ancient nobles of Les Baux to mere matters of travel and
picturesqueness, it would be impossible to take leave of the old
towns of Provence without glancing at the cathedrals of S. Trophime
at Arles, and of S. Gilles--a village on the border of the dreary
flamingo-haunted Camargue. Both of these buildings have porches
splendidly encrusted with sculptures, half classical, half mediæval,
marking the transition from ancient to modern art. But that of S.
Gilles is by far the richer and more elaborate. The whole façade of
this church is one mass of intricate decoration; Norman arches
and carved lions, like those of Lombard architecture, mingling
fantastically with Greek scrolls of fruit and flowers, with elegant
Corinthian columns jutting out upon the church steps, and with the old
conventional wave-border that is called Etruscan in our modern jargon.
From the midst of florid fret and foliage lean mild faces of saints
and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists with half-human, half-animal
eyes and wings, are interwoven with the leafy bowers of cupids. Grave
apostles stand erect beneath acanthus wreaths that ought to crisp the
forehead of a laughing Faun or Bacchus. And yet so full, exuberant,
and deftly chosen are these various elements, that there remains no
sense of incongruity or discord. The mediæval spirit had much trouble
to disentangle itself from classic reminiscences; and fortunately for
the picturesqueness of S. Gilles, it did not succeed. How strangely
different is the result of this transition in the south from those
severe and rigid forms which we call Romanesque in Germany and
Normandy and England!
* * * * *