_Vaucluse_
It was very pleasant to get on to the road again, with my pack on my
back. I was not yet tuned up to the nearly twenty mile walk between
Avignon and Vaucluse, though my damaged muscles were now giving me
little trouble, so I took the train to L'Isle-sur-Sorgue, which is
distant from Vaucluse between four and five miles.
In 1789, Arthur Young made this pilgrimage to the shrine of Petrarch
and Laura, and allowed himself to be more moved by sentimental interest
than was his custom. L'Isle has changed very little since that time. It
is still the bright, pleasant, well-watered little town he describes it.
"L'Isle is most agreeably situated," he wrote. "On coming to the
verge of it I found fine plantations of elms, with delicious streams,
bubbling over pebbles on either side; well dressed people were
enjoying the evening at a spot I had conceived to be only a mountain
village. It was a sort of fairy scene to me. Now, thought I, how
detestable to leave this fine wood and water, and enter a nasty,
beggarly, walled, hot, stinking town; one of the contrasts most
offensive to my feelings. What an agreeable surprise, to find the inn
without the town, in the midst of the scenery I had admired! And more,
a good and civil inn. I walked on the banks of this classic stream for
an hour, with the moon gazing on the waters, that will run for ever
in mellifluous poetry: retired to sup on the most exquisite trout and
crawfish in the world. To-morrow to the famed origin."[21]
I do not remember the elms, but the planes were there, as usual, and
fine, spreading ones they were; and what was more, they were beginning
to show a delicate haze of green, which was very delightful, and what
I had been looking out for ever since I had started on my expedition.
During the two days I had been at Avignon the spring seemed to have
taken that little definite step forward which makes all the difference.
In the south, where the sun gets hot long before the trees get green,
and so many flowers come forth to greet it, this longed-for arrival
of the true spring is apt to be discounted, and comes with less of a
thrill than is felt in the north. But the thrill is there, if one's
senses are open to it; and I felt it on that morning as I walked to
Vaucluse.
"I am delighted with the environs of L'Isle," Arthur Young wrote of
his next morning's ride; "beautiful roads, well planted, surround and
pass off in different directions, as if from a capital town, umbrageous
enough to form promenades against a hot sun, and the river splits and
divides into so many streams, and is conducted with so much attention
that it has a delicious effect, especially to an eye that recognizes
all the fertility of irrigation."
* * * * *
It is still a fertile, carefully cultivated country, but gets wilder
as one approaches the famous spring "justly said to be as celebrated
almost as that of Helicon." The river Sorgue, whose source provides
the fountain, is already a full and rapid stream as one nears the
village, and flows through green meadows down the valley not far from
the winding road. The hills are high on either side and a great cliff
looms in front of one, closing in the gorge. One's eye instinctively
searches for a cleft down which the torrent must descend; but none is
to be seen--only the tall rampart of rock.
The village is pleasant enough, and contains two inns, each of them
quite capable of providing for a comfortable night's lodging. Too much,
I think, has been written in disgust of the paper-mills, which use the
power of the stream and provide the village with employment. Their
buildings are old enough to make them not so very incongruous, and
they are a small detail beside the huge masses of rock that enclose the
village on three sides. Nor is either of them in the village itself.
There is an ancient church, an old stone bridge, gardens and terraces
and parapets, and much shade of trees, and the beautiful sparkling
river that makes music all the time. And dominating the village on a
high crag are the ruins of the Bishop of Cavaillon's castle, up to
which Petrarch so often climbed to see his friend.
The fountain is some little distance beyond the village. The road,
which runs by the river, passes one of the factories and then the
garden of a _café_, where everything was being painted up and prepared
for the coming influx of visitors, and "La Belle Laure," the motor-boat
upon which trips can be taken on the river, was just about to be drawn
from her winter quarters. With all this, and with the booths for the
sale of picture-postcards and all sorts of reminiscent rubbish, most
of which has nothing to do with Vaucluse, or even with Provence, the
place has been cockneyfied enough, and I dare say that if I had seen it
later in the year, or on a Sunday, when it is crowded with people, I
should not have carried away with me the next morning such an agreeable
impression. But I had it pretty well to myself, and when I had got past
the last of the booths on to the rocky path above the stream it was as
lonely as it must have been in Petrarch's time, six hundred years ago.
[Illustration: THE "FOUNTAIN," VAUCLUSE]
[Illustration: THE CAVES ABOVE THE "FOUNTAIN"
_Page 223_]
But where was the fountain? I had read of a rocky cave in which it
bubbles up, and had pictured I don't know what in the way of gloom and
mystery. The path led up to the straight, towering cliff, and there
stopped. To my right was a broad pool of water, and that was all. At
first sight it was just a pool at the foot of the great rock.
Then I saw that the water was flowing all the time as it were from the
face of the rock itself. There may have been an inch, but not more, of
the top of the cavern showing. I had found it at its fullest. Sometimes
it sinks so low that the waters of the pool do not rise to the rocks
over which they were now thundering to the torrent below, and then the
river is fed by an underground stream, of which the waterfall is only
the overflow.
The pool was very still, and very blue, and the rocks about it were
very bold, but naked and oppressive. I must confess to having been
rather disappointed; for this is a place in which countless people have
been moved to tears by the beauty of their surroundings as well as by a
sensibility to the past of which we seem in these prosaic days to have
lost the knack. Mr. Okey tells us how in 1783 Alfieri, "on his way to
buy horses in England, turned aside with transport to visit the magic
solitude of Vaucluse, and 'the Sorgue,' he writes, 'received many of my
tears; and not simulated or imitative tears, but verily hot, scalding,
heartfelt tears.'" Also how Wordsworth, "on his way to Italy in 1837,
was most of all pleased with the day he spent at Vaucluse, where he was
enchanted with the power and beauty of the stream and the wildness and
grandeur of the rocks."
In the eighteenth century the cult of Petrarch and Laura was very
much alive, and no traveller with any pretensions to taste would
have omitted a visit to the famous fountain if he had found himself
anywhere near. We have already seen how Arthur Young, who was anything
but a sentimentalist, thought nothing of Avignon except in connection
with the loves of Petrarch and Laura. The engaging rascal Casanova,
who was a sentimentalist beyond everything, went to Avignon for no
other purpose but to make the pilgrimage to Vaucluse. Of course he
wept copiously; nothing else was to be expected of him, and I do not
see why Mr. Okey should take it for granted that his emotion was not
genuine.[22] He was not the most estimable of characters, but there
can be no doubt of his love of letters, nor indeed of the power of such
a story as that of Petrarch and Laura to touch him. "I threw myself
on the ruins," he tells us, "arms extended as if to embrace them; I
kissed them, I moistened them with my tears; I sought to breathe the
divine breath which had animated them." And then he characteristically
proceeded to draw a moral from his emotion that would help him with the
lady to whom he was paying court at the time.
"I asked pardon of Mme. Stuard for having relinquished her arm to
render homage to the shade of a woman who loved the finest spirit that
the age had produced.
"I say spirit; for the flesh, as it seems, was not concerned in the
matter. 'It is four hundred and fifty years, madame,' said I to the
frigid statue that regarded me with an air of amazement, 'since Laura
de Sade walked on the very spot on which you stand now. It is quite
likely that she was not so beautiful as you are, but she was gay,
bright, sweet, merry and good. May this air which she breathed, and
which you are breathing at this moment, enliven you with the divine
fire that ran in her veins, that made her heart beat and her breast
palpitate! Then you will capture the homage of all sensible men, and
you will find none who will dare to cause you the least annoyance.
Gaiety, madam, is the lot of the happy, and sadness is the dreadful
shadow of spirits condemned to eternal torments. Be gay then, and thus
merit your beauty!'"[23]
It is sad to read that this inspiring address was received by the lady
with no signs of emotion whatever. She took the chevalier's arm again
and the party returned to the house of Messer Francesco d'Arezzo, where
Casanova spent a quarter of an hour in carving his name; after which
they dined and went back to Avignon.
From Casanova's description this scene must have passed at a house just
below Philip de Cabassole's castle, as he describes himself mounting
to the point of a rock. Such a house was shown as Petrarch's during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and one opposite to it,
with an underground passage between the two, was shown as Laura's.
I do not remember either of these houses, which I believe no longer
exist. And it is pretty certain that none of the places that were ever
celebrated as Petrarch's house was really his, though a fair case for
the situation of his dwelling, and the garden he describes with such
affection, has been made out.
The story of Petrarch's love for Laura, like that of Dante for
Beatrice and Abelard for Héloïse, has passed into the very texture of
literature, and need not be told here. And it would be an affectation
for one who is unable to read Italian to pretend to any absorbing
interest in Petrarch's expression of it. I must confess that, for my
own part, I find much more to delight me in the details of his life
at Vaucluse than in anything that I can gather at second-hand of his
worship of Laura, and those details are real and fresh enough to give
to the place such a charm as hangs over no other that I visited in
Provence. Mr. Okey has collected them so well in his chapter "Petrarch
at Vaucluse," that I cannot do better than make a long extract from his
pages.
"In 1337 the poet, revolted by the atmosphere of the papal court, and
perhaps a little disappointed at curial insensibility to his claims
for beneficial favours, turned his back on Avignon and withdrew to
live the simple life near the source of the Sorgue at Vaucluse,
whose romantic beauty had been impressed on his mind since a boyish
excursion he had made thither in 1316. To a modest little house fit
for a Cato or a Fabricius, with no companion but a dog given him
by Cardinal Colonna, living on hard rustic fare and dressed like a
peasant, figs, nuts, almonds and some fish from the Sorgue his sole
luxuries, the poet retired with his beloved books; the only sounds
that greeted his ears in that sylvan solitude were the songs of birds,
the lowing of oxen, the bleating of lambs, the murmuring of the
stream. Like Horace, he scorns gold and gems and ivory and purple;
the only female face he looks upon is that of his stewardess and
servant--a visage withered and arid as a patch of the Libyan desert,
and such that if Helen had possessed it, Troy would yet be standing.
But her soul was as white as her body was black, and her fidelity
was imperturbable. By indomitable industry she was able to attend to
the poet's wants as well as to those of her own household; faring on
hard, dry, black bread, watered wine, sour as vinegar, she lay on the
bare ground, and would rise with the dawn; in the fiery heat of the
dog-days, when the very grasshoppers are overcome, her invincible
little body would never tire. Two small gardens the poet had: one a
shady Transalpine Helicon, sacred to Apollo, overlooked the deep,
mysterious, silent pool where the Sorgue rises, beyond which there was
nothing save naked, barren, precipitous, trackless crags, inhabited
only by wild animals and birds--the like of it could not be found
under the sun. The other garden, better tilled and nearer his house,
was bathed by the crystal waters of the rapid Sorgue, and hard by,
separated by a rustic bridge from his house, was a grotto whose cool
shade and sweet retirement fostered study; there, in a little retreat,
not unlike the _atriolo_ where Cicero was wont to declaim, the happy
recluse passed the hot afternoons in meditation; in the cool of the
evening he roamed about the green meadows, and in the morning rose
early to climb the hills. Were not Italy so far and Avignon so near
the poet could end his days there, fearing nothing so much as the
return to a town.
"Dear friends, too, are not lacking. The cultured Philip of
Cabassoles, Bishop of Cavaillon, dwells in the château that crowns
the hill above his hermitage, and the great ones of the earth are
pleased to seek him in his rustic home. The island garden of the
Sorgue gave incessant trouble. Writing to Guglielmo di Pastrengo, the
studious recluse recalls the stony patch of ground his friend helped
to clear with his own hands, and informs him, the once barren waste
is now enamelled with flowers, rebellious nature having been subdued
by human toil. In a charming epistle, in Latin verse, to Cardinal
Colonna, Petrarch tells of the fierce frontier wars he waged with
the naiads of the Sorgue in order to recover possession of the garden
which he had usurped from them and which they had reconquered during
his absence in Italy. By dint of strenuous labour he had cleared
a stony patch of land and planted there a little green meadow, as
a retreat for the Muses. The nymphs, taking it ill that he should
establish strangers in their territory and prefer nine old maids to a
thousand young virgins, rushed furiously down the mountain to ravage
and destroy his budding garden; he retires terrified, but, the storm
passed, he returns shamefacedly and restores the desolated land to its
former verdure. Scarce had the sun run his course when the furious
nymphs return, and once more undo all his labour. Again he prepares to
restore the evicted Muses, but is called away to foreign parts. After
six years he returns to his solitude: not a vestige remains of his
handiwork, and fish swim at their ease over the site of his garden.
Grief gives him arms, and anger, strength; he calls to his aid the
peasant, the shepherd, the fisherman; together the allies roll away
great stones and tear out the entrails of the earth; they chase forth
the invading nymphs; with Phoebus's help re-establish the sacred
Muses in their place and build them an abiding temple. The enemy
retires breathing vengeance and awaits the help of the winter floods
and storms; but the victorious champion of the Muses is prepared; he
defends his conquest by a rocky rampart and defies the fury of the
nymphs. Now will he enjoy a lasting peace and fear no foes; not even
were they allied to the waters of the Po and the Araxes. His triumph
was, however, short-lived, for we learn from a further letter that
with their allies, the winter floods, the naiads of the spring gained
a final victory, and the defeated Petrarch was forced to lodge the
Muses in another spot.
"The poet always found solace and refreshment in his gardens. A true
lover of horticulture, he cultivates exotics, experiments on soils and
plants, and writes to Naples for peach and pear trees. He invites the
Archdeacon of Genoa to his dwelling, happy, celestial and angelic; to
the silence and liberty of his grateful solitude; he will find secure
joy and joyful security, instead of the noise and strife of cities; he
shall listen to the nocturnal plaints of Philomela, and the turtledove
cooing for her mate.
"He bids the convalescent Bishop of Viterbo find health of body and
serenity of mind in the soft and balmy air of Vaucluse. There in the
warm sun, by the crystal fountain, in umbrageous woods and green
pastures, he shall experience the delights of Paradise as described by
theologians, or the charms of the Elysian fields as sang by poets; a
good supply of books and the society of faithful friends shall not be
lacking."[24]
That is a picture worthy to be put beside those that one makes for
oneself of Horace enjoying his Sabine retreat, and indeed, if one were
to leave Laura out of consideration, there is an almost exact parallel
in the retirement of the two poets. If one could have read Petrarch,
as one reads Horace, there would have been a constant series of little
discoveries and recognitions to be made all about Vaucluse. Even as it
was, wandering about the pleasant quiet place as I did that afternoon
and evening, with the music of its many waters always in my ears, I
gained an impression that comes back to me now as among the best that
that land of many memories afforded me. It was only the "fountain"
itself in which I was a little disappointed. The rest was as sylvan
and poetic and peaceful as one would wish such a place to be, and the
shade of the courtly nature-loving poet seemed to brood over it all, so
little has it changed in essentials.
I made my way up through the olive gardens to the ruins of the castle,
of which there are enough left to provide a most picturesque feature,
but hardly enough to enable one to picture it as it was when Petrarch
visited his friend there. One sees the pool and the cliff from it, and
the river running over its stones below, the curious cave dwellings
high up in the rocks opposite, and the pleasant fertile valley opening
out on the other side. It must have been a delightful country retreat,
and in that remote spot fairly safe from the disturbances that were
apt to centre round such dwellings, although it was strongly built and
fortified.
The next morning I set out early to walk back to L'Isle by a roundabout
way which took me over the hills to Saumane, where I had heard that
there was an ancient castle still inhabited.
I found a hill village, very picturesque, as is the way of such
villages in Provence, and walked round the walls that guarded the
château from the gaze of the vulgar, but found it more inaccessible
to curiosity than is usual with such places. So I went down again to
the village and into the _auberge_ to refresh myself, and found a
friendly postman also refreshing himself at a table in the kitchen,
who conversed with me on many subjects but particularly on that of
dogs. He seemed to take an occasional bite as something in the ordinary
way of his rounds, and only showed apprehension in the case of the
dog that bit him being "malade." I am bound to confess that this
possibility gave me something of a chill. I had seen the teeth of so
many dogs, which seem to be of a particularly unfriendly disposition
in that country, and although I had always managed to drive them off,
my accident at Les Baux had made me nervous about them. But I had
not considered the chance of hydrophobia, which an Englishman is apt
to forget all about. However, I suffered nothing further, except an
occasional scare; but whenever I approached a farm and heard the bark
of a dog, I went past very gingerly.
Both the postman and the woman of the inn gave me to understand that,
although the château was kept strictly closed against unauthorized
visitors, something might possibly be done for me if I called at a
certain cottage with a large rose over the porch and rattled the coins
in my pocket. Which I did, and was sent up the road hopefully. On it I
met a man leading a donkey laden with fagots, who promised to join me
at the entrance when he had disposed of his load.
Parts of the château date back to the twelfth century, but the dull
square front is of the seventeenth. It is magnificently situated on
a point of rock above the village, and commands splendid views. Or
rather, the terraces do, for a grove of ilexes has been planted all
along the front--I suppose for shade, and shelter from the wind--and
nothing can be seen from those windows.
I had exhausted the interest of the gardens, and the immediate
surroundings of the château long before the man with the ass
reappeared. There was an untidy "pièce d'eau" on the sandy square in
front of the house, and some dejected-looking peacocks in a cage, and
over all the rest was that air of makeshift and economy which marks
so strange a contrast between the châteaux of France and the lavishly
kept-up country houses of England. Nor was the impression altered
when I was taken inside, as far as the appointments of the rooms were
concerned. I have never been inside any of the great French provincial
châteaux, but I have seen a good many of the size of an ordinary
English country house, and never one that was not full of rubbish, or
that had gardens kept up except with the bare minimum of labour. They
have the air of places to which their owners occasionally retire for a
sort of picnic existence, and I suppose that is what they are generally
used for--as appanages to some fine house in a city.
But all the rubbishy furniture and decoration of this château could not
detract from its interest. It had belonged to the Marquises of Sade. I
do not know whether the infamous eighteenth century marquis ever owned
or lived in it, but it was the property of the Sades when Petrarch was
at Vaucluse, and even if Laura had not married into the family, as it
is generally supposed that she did, Petrarch must have visited it. The
vaulted dining-hall, with its curious echo, can have changed but little
since his time, and one can say almost with certainty that his feet
trod the stones upon which one stands today, or at least that he knew
the room as one sees it.
The appalling dungeon cells, most of them too dark and inconvenient to
be used now even as storerooms, show that this castle was equipped with
all the conveniences of the middle ages. One could more easily imagine
a nobleman of those days doing without his dungeons than a modern one
without his bathrooms or garage. But the owners of this château seem to
have been more enterprising in making economic use of their prisoners
than most of their fellows. They ran an illicit mint. There are the
stone trough and table in one of the maze of cells underground. Nobody
could have been indelicate enough to pry into the domestic arrangements
of a gentleman's dungeons, and the coiners were no doubt as safe from
detection there as anywhere. Nor was it probable that any of them would
give away the secret. They did not mix with the outside world, and were
not likely to do so again when once they had been initiated into their
new trade.