the Hotel du Palais Royal, the scene of Brune's assassination. The
account which M. Jouey gives in the Hermite en Provence, of this horrible
transaction, corresponds as nearly as possible with the particulars
which we heard upon the spot. Being summoned on the restoration of Louis
to answer the charge of treason, and having stopped with his escort at
Avignon for the purpose of changing horses and refreshing himself, the
marshal was recognized by the populace as one of the supposed murderers
of the Princess de Lamballe. A ferocious mob soon assembled at the door
of the hotel, broke in by force, and after deliberately shooting him,
dragged the body to the adjoining bridge, and with every mark of
contumely threw it into the Rhone. Such is the brief outline of the
murder of a defenceless man, on a charge which, whether true or not,
should have rested between God and his conscience. Jouey may indeed be
pardoned for commenting and enlarging on this story, though the simple
facts address themselves more strongly to the mind, than when dressed up
with stage effect, and must be better adapted to produce the impression
probably desired by that author. In the detestable ruffians who
disgraced the good cause of loyalty on this occasion, we recognize the
same black and fiery blood which flowed in the veins of the Marseillois
assassins of 1793, and of the fanatics of Nismes: and whose ebullitions
render them equally hateful as friends or enemies. There are many
strange historical discoveries which would surprise me more than to
learn that the Moorish blood remained in this part of France
unextirpated by the victories of Charles Martel;[28] for to a person who
knows them only by report and casual observation, the _tout ensemble_ of
its inhabitants seems to differ totally from that of the Gascon and the
Basque; names which, like the name of Norman, convey to the mind an
image of frankness and gallantry.
[Footnote 28: "Cette memorable bataille, sur laquelle nous n'avons aucun
detail, nous sauva du joug des Arabes, et fut le terme de leur grandeur.
Depuis ce revers, ils tenterent encore de penetrer dans la France; ils
s'emparerent meme d'Avignon; mais Charles Martel les defit de nouveau,
reprit cette ville, leur enleva Narbonne, et leur ota pour jamais
l'esperance dont ils s'etaient flattes si longtemps."--_Florian's Precis
Historique sur les Maures._]
On the morning after our arrival, we ascended first of all the Roche
Don, a hill enclosed within the walls of the town, and backing the
ruined palace of the legate; being desirous, as in Lyons, to begin our
survey from a point which might serve as a general key to the whole, and
instruct us in the bearings of different objects. From this elevated
spot, situated at the north-western extremity of the city, we looked to
the east, north, and south, over a plain as rich in verdure and
cultivation as the finest parts of Lombardy; to which the stately towers
of the palace, and the clustering spires and battlemented walls of
Avignon form a fine foreground. The distant hills, at the foot of which
Vaucluse is situated, form the eastern boundary of this plain; and are
succeeded and overtopped to the northward by a chain of the Dauphine
Alps, among which the long sweeping mass of Mont Ventou predominates.
From the latter quarter the Rhone is traced winding up in a wide and
rapid current, till it reaches the highly cultivated islands at the foot
of Mont Don, and pursues its course with increased grandeur towards the
southward. The neighbourhood of its junction with the Durance is marked
in this quarter by a barrier of mountains of less height than those
above-mentioned, but more abrupt and wild in their forms, at whose foot
appear casual glimpses of the two rivers, winding like narrow silver
threads into the horizon. "Vous avez passe ce diantre de Rhone," says
Madame de Sevigne, "si fier, si orgueilleux, si turbulent; il faut le
marier avec la Durance quand elle est en furie; ah le bon menage!" The
good people of Lyons have, however, settled this point otherwise by
their inscriptions and statues in the Hotel de Ville, which certify this
river-god as already married to the Saone: the Durance, therefore, can
hold no higher rank than that of his termagant mistress, while the
gentle, even, beneficent character of her rival, and the priority of her
claims, suit much better with the title of wife. If it be permitted me
to quote Mad. de Sevigne once more, I should remark, that the broken
Gothic bridge beneath our feet, which forms so picturesque an object in
every point of view, is the same against the piers of which Mad. de
Grignan was nearly lost.[29] It formerly connected the Roche Don with
the heights on the western side of the Rhone, up which the road to
Nismes winds near Fort Villeneuve; and is well worthy of a nearer survey
as an architectural relic. The few arches which remain have the same
bold span and elegant lightness of design so remarkable in the
celebrated Pont y Prydd in South Wales; and the piers, which appear
slight at a distance, are nevertheless solid and well adapted to the
nature of the Rhone, whose current they cut like the sharp bow of a
canoe. Its remarkable narrowness, which hardly allows two horses to pass
abreast, and the ancient guard-house in the centre, secured by gates on
both sides, carry the mind strongly back to those days of distrust and
violence, which have by some been called "the good old times:"--
"Ego me nunc denique natum
Gratulor."
[Footnote 29: As late as 1688, Louis XIV. seized on the territory of
Avignon in consequence of disagreements with Innocent XI., and the Count
de Grignan held the city as his viceroy for two subsequent years. Mad.
de Sevigne, in her letters written at this period of time, congratulates
her daughter (whose boat was nearly overset against the piers of this
identical bridge), on the dignity of the situation conferred on the
count, and the more solid advantages which might accrue from it.
"Vous prenez, ma chere fille, (says she) une fort honnete resolution
d'aller a votre terre d'Avignon, voir des gens qui vous donnent de si
bon coeur ce qu'ils donnoient au vicelegat."--June, 1689.
"Quelle difference de la vie que vous faites a Avignon, toute a la
grande, toute brillante, toute dissipee, avec celle que nous faisons
ici!"--_Les Rochers_. June, 1689.
"Toutes vos descriptions nous ont divertis au dernier point; nous sommes
charmes, comme vous, de la douceur de l'air, de la noble antiquite des
eglises honorees comme vous dites, de la presence et de la residence de
tant de Papes, &c. &c."--June 26, 1689.]
At the period when the territory of Avignon was styled by the kings of
France the "derriere du Pape," from the convenient posture in which it
lay for their correction, one may fancy the same scenes to have taken
place on a larger scale, which are described as occurring at the bridge
of Kennaquhair, the same struggle between secular and monastic
authority, the same sullen important bridgeward, and the same forcible
arguments employed by wandering troops of jackmen to effect a passage.
In Mr. Cooke's first view of the legate's palace, this bridge appears
projecting from the part of the Roche Don where we stood, a spot marked
with two round buildings, like small Martello towers. The window marked
by two birds flying directly over it, and second from the highest in the
same tower, has acquired a bloody notoriety. From this giddy height, as
we were informed by an inhabitant whom we met, the half-murdered victims
of revolutionary massacre were thrown, to put an end to their
sufferings: and their remains heaped up for a time in the square
building which stands below, originally erected for the purpose of an
ice-house.
Having familiarized ourselves with the leading features of Avignon and
its vicinity, as viewed from this commanding point, we descended into
the town to take a more particular survey.
Rhetor comes Heliodorus,
Graecorum longe doctissimus.
To translate Horace freely, our companion was a rhetorician, or talker
by profession, and the most learned of his class in extraordinary
legends and fabrications; in other respects an useful civil fellow, with
an Irish brogue, which his service in the French army had not been able
to eradicate, or even weaken, and the established cicerone of the place.
To account satisfactorily for his wooden leg and French uniform, he
anticipated our inquiries by informing us, that he had been crippled by
a shipwreck on the French coast, and through the recommendation of his
friends the _Duchess_ of Westmoreland and _Countess_ of Devonshire,
patronized by Louis, "who allowed him this uniform coat to wear, and two
_males_ a-day." In England, one would not have borne the sight of such a
lying varlet another instant, but I must confess that the mere sound of
our own language in a foreign town, disarmed our indignation, and we
bore with the fellow, whom we found not unamusing, and from his local
knowledge, serviceable. A very small degree of merit indeed suffices to
open one's heart towards a fellow-countryman in a strange land; a truth
no doubt known and acted on by knights of industry, matrimonial
speculators, and
"Broken dandies lately on their travels."
The legate's palace is now divided into barracks and a prison, and the
nakedness of its appearance upon a nearer view make its lofty
proportions more striking. We were expressing to each other our wonder
at its size, when our guide interrupted us with an original observation
of his own:--"The reason of its size, sir, is quite _clare_. The pope,
you see, always went about with such a _hape_ of monks--and of nuns--and
of all them kind of people, that the big number of rooms which you see
could hardly hold them any how." After all, if the annals of former
times have been truly written, the Milesian's account of this merry
menage might be nearer the truth than he knew or suspected.
The Papal Chapel exhibits now but few remains of its former probable
grandeur, its inside having been defaced with the most persevering
animosity during the Revolution, and presenting little more than a damp
bare shell, filled with the broken remains of monumental figures.
Headless popes and crippled cardinals lie together in heaps, mingled in
a manner which will render it impossible to restore to each his proper
allotment of limbs, when the projected repairs of the chapel are put in
execution. One tomb, broken up and shattered to pieces more than the
rest, was pointed out by the old woman as the sepulchre of La belle
Laure, an honour which, for aught I know, may be claimed by a tomb in
every church of Avignon. An assertion apparently still more apocryphal,
however, is that one of the small side chapels was built by
Constantine.
The interior of Avignon affords a much more agreeable promenade than
that of Lyons, from the superior cleanliness of its inhabitants, and the
moderate height of the houses. These circumstances tend to disperse the
combinations of ill smell, and purify the thick, vapid, flagging air
which is felt so perceptibly at Lyons. It may, perhaps, be beneath the
dignity of a _printed book_ to enumerate such circumstances as these,
but they occupy in fact a high place in the scale of human comfort; and,
joined to the cheapness of the necessaries of life, (which we inferred
from the price of two or three articles of consumption,) must have their
weight in rendering Avignon a desirable place of banishment. Banishment,
I say; for I have no better name by which to express a prolonged
residence abroad, especially in cases where the mind has lost its power
of deriving amusement from trifles.
With the exception of its fine walls, its Gothic bridge, and the
legate's palace, Avignon possesses in itself no remarkable architectural
feature, or fine combination of buildings. Its churches are numerous;
but no one remarkable above the rest, as far at least as external
appearance is concerned; and we had not time for a very minute internal
survey. The Hopital des Fous, however, is an establishment well
calculated to gratify the laudable curiosity of the humane; and to judge
from all we witnessed, may perhaps exhibit points of internal regulation
worthy the attention of professional men. Nothing indeed can exceed the
quiet, orderly behaviour of the patients there confined, whom we found
walking about at perfect liberty in a square court planted with trees.
Many of them wore a certain air of content and satisfaction which could
not be mistaken, and all seemed much gratified by the notice of the mild
sensible ecclesiastic who accompanied us, and who presides over the
establishment. No coercion, as we understood from him, is used, save
restriction from walking with their fellow patients, and the restraint
of handcuffs, when rendered necessary in cases of violent conduct. I
particularly observed also, that he had never any occasion to exert that
command of the eye, on which so much stress is laid as a means of
intimidation, but passed all their little follies off with a smile, in
which we were frequently inclined to join. One poor patient accosted us
with high titles of nobility, dwelling on the peculiar pleasure he
experienced from our visit; another, an old man of a very venerable
appearance, called our attention to a dirty stone which he held in his
hand, affirming it to be a piece of Henri Quatre's identical foot: but
none were troublesome or obtrusive, and most appeared to be deriving as
much enjoyment from their own little vagaries as their melancholy state
would admit of.[30] Their apartments, built round the square, are neat
and airy, each furnished with a bed, dressing table, and a few plain
utensils. In one large room are a row of hot and cold baths, which are
frequently and regularly used; and nothing, the good priest said, has
been found to produce so desirable an effect on the mind and body as
this custom. The rank of the patients is various; the poorer sort are
supported by voluntary contributions; and many persons in the higher
ranks are also placed here at their own expense, or that of their
friends. Among others, there is a general who became deranged, as we
were assured, on hearing of the abdication of his patron Napoleon; the
most unequivocal instance of misplaced fidelity, which I have ever
heard. How this poor man contrives to agree with the partizan of Henry
IV., I am at a loss to make out: and he was not then visible to answer
for himself. At the time of the Revolution, the estates belonging to the
hospital were confiscated; and the establishment itself would have been
abolished, had not one of the members of the council at Avignon
observed, half in jest, that they might possibly be one day glad
themselves of such a retreat. It is now, as I mentioned, maintained by
private donations, and by the salaries paid for the accommodation of the
richer patients. The only objects of taste belonging to the institution
are a fine altar-piece attributed to Murillo, and an ivory crucifix
carved by Jean Guillermin, in 1659. The latter is not above two feet in
length; but the manner in which every muscle and vein indicate
suffering, and the mingled expression of pain and resignation in the
countenance, place it on the footing of a statue; and I could hardly
have supposed that a small piece of ivory-carving could do such justice
to a sacred subject. The worthy priest dwelt, with great exultation, on
the precautions he had taken to secure this favourite relic from
revolutionary pillage, slightly alluding to the circumstance of having
been forced to fly for his life to Italy, as a matter of minor
importance to himself.
[Footnote 30: It is to be hoped that Adam Smith has taken a correct view
of the subject of madness in his Moral Sentiments. "Of all the
calamities," says he, "to which the condition of mortality exposes
mankind, the loss of reason _appears_ by far the most dreadful; and we
behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commisseration
than any other. But the poor wretch who is in it, laughs and sings,
perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish
therefore which humanity feels at the sight of such an object, cannot be
the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the
spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he would
himself feel if he were reduced to the same situation, and, what perhaps
is impossible, were at the same time able to regard it with his present
reason and judgment.]
The admirers of show houses, may find some gratification in visiting the
hotel of M. De Leutre, the banker; which was purchased of M. Villeneuve,
an emigre, and contains, besides the usual etceteras of carving and
gilding, orange-trees, and gold fish, a curious collection of prints
representing Chinese battles, and supposed to be the only perfect
duplicate of that in the royal collection. A sight more interesting is
presented in the hospital of invalid soldiers, established in the place;
1500 of whom are maintained as in-pensioners, apparently in great
comfort. "On est bien ici," said a blind veteran, who, hearing the
voices of strangers, invited us to walk in; and indeed most of those
whom we saw strolling in the garden, or sitting under the shade of the
trees, seemed very cheerful, though some of them, and those very young
men, were dreadfully mutilated, and the loss of both legs very common.
The two buildings which accommodate them were formerly the Convent des
Celestins, and that of the Dames de St. Louis. Two other handsome
convents have been converted to uses less beneficent, one being now a
gunpowder manufactory, and the other a cannon foundery.
In the evening we walked across the long wooden bridge adjoining our
hotel,[31] towards the western bank of the Rhone; and the expectations
which we had formed of the view from this quarter, were not
disappointed. The Roche Don terminates more abruptly on the side of the
river than in any other part, and in a manner which sets off strikingly
the commanding height of the legate's palace. With this princely pile of
building, the broken Gothic bridge and its guard-house, the ancient
palace of the archbishop, and a portion of the battlemented walls of
Avignon, combine to form a striking architectural group, whose unity of
character is hardly at all broken by meaner objects; and the whole is
well backed by Mont Ventou and the Dauphine Alps. From this spot we
again returned to Roche Don, a station to which every visitor of Avignon
may return twice or thrice in the day with undiminished pleasure. In our
way we fell in with a procession of children, the eldest of whom could
not be more than seven years of age, in pairs, and with lighted candles
in their hands, escorting a cross of lath and a very indifferent daub,
which represented some female saint, and screaming in chorus with all
their might. Those who had no candles, ran about with little dishes,
vociferously begging money to buy some; and in spite of the respect with
which one would wish to consider whatever fellow Christians choose to
denominate, in pure earnest, a religious ceremony, it was impossible not
to be reminded, by the petitions of these sucking Catholics, of Guy
Fawkes's little votaries on the fifth of November. We thought
involuntarily of a boy who had followed us that very morning into the
church of St. Didier, tossing a ball in his hand, and after crossing
himself with great gravity, immediately began his game again. Whether
the interests of religion gain or suffer most by the familiarity with
the ordinary business of life which it assumes in Catholic countries, is
a point which I cannot presume to determine. It is true, that it may
frequently occasion such ridiculous scenes as those which I have
mentioned; and our habits of mind, as Protestants, may lead us to
conceive that such familiarity may tend to generate levity and
indifference. On the other hand, however, amidst all the mummery which
may mix itself up with the occasional ceremonies of the Catholic
service, there is much worthy of commendation in the more common
ordinances, to which alone a sensible Catholic must look for religious
improvement. I particularly allude to the shortness and frequent
recurrence of the mass (such as it is), and the constant access afforded
to Catholic churches, in which some service or other appears to be
carried on during great part of the day. These regulations are well
adapted to take advantage of those serious trains of thought which often
arise most forcibly at accidental times, and from unpremeditated causes.
The attention is thus excited without being fatigued, and the privacy of
the closet is combined with that solemnity which attaches itself to the
house of God. It may be said, indeed, that to consult the caprices and
associations of the human mind, is to lower the dignity of religion; but
surely a good end must justify any means which are not in themselves
culpable or ridiculous. The mechanic, for instance, in returning from
his daily labour, enters an open church from accident or curiosity,
crosses himself from habit, and is led on by the momentary feeling of
reverence which that act must generally awaken, to employ five minutes
in his devotions, a well spent portion of time, which probably would not
otherwise have been rescued from the business of the day, but which may
influence his conduct during the rest of it.
[Footnote 31: Vide Cooke's Views.]
On ascending the Mont Don, we found it the scene of a graver ceremony
than the infantine gambols which we had just witnessed. In the centre of
the terrace facing the river, a new and highly gilt crucifix of colossal
size has been erected at the expense of the Mission, round which a
number of monks and inhabitants were collected on their knees, the still
evening increasing the effect of a solemn mass which they were singing,
and in which we heard the name of St. Paulus several times repeated.
Several nuns, belonging to an establishment lately revived, knelt on the
steps of the cross, enveloped in their black hoods; and the prisoners at
the palace window united their deep tones to the chant, pausing every
now and then to solicit the charity of passers by. Scattered at
different distances from the cross, eight or ten separate groups of
persons were kneeling farther off, in attitudes of the deepest
devotional abstraction, though surrounded on all sides by sauntering
soldiers, children playing, and groups of loungers laughing or
whispering. The different distances at which they knelt were regulated,
as we were told, by the degrees of penance imposed upon them, and the
place which their respective consciences allowed them to assume. Some,
in the true spirit of the poor Publican, were kneeling at a considerable
distance, just within view of the cross, to which they hardly lifted
their eyes; others, whose penance was originally lighter, or its term
abridged by frequent visits to this place, had approached the cross more
nearly, and with greater signs of satisfaction.
I must confess, that we observed these poor penitents with an interest
and attention which the other parts of the ceremony had failed to
excite. The manifestation of a deep and genuine religious feeling is
respectable in Catholic, Turk, or Bramin, and seldom or never to be
mistaken; and though attended by no circumstances of external pomp, must
impress upon serious beholders of every creed a reverence which
trappings and mummery fail to excite. It should seem indeed that
Providence, wishing gently to humble the pride of men, delights in
producing by the simplest means those physical and moral effects, which
they waste toil and expense in bringing about. The splendid procession,
for instance, which takes place on the day of Corpus Christi at Rome,
with all its assemblage of monks, horse and foot guards, cardinals,
choristers, and banners, would dwindle before the eye of reason into
"shreds and patches, were it not for the figure of the truly venerable
man who now fills the papal chair, kneeling with the same humility and
abstraction from the busy scene around him, which marked the deportment
of the penitents just mentioned.
Time, which decides all questions when they have ceased to be any longer
interesting, will probably show whether the celebrated Mission, which
has excited such a sensation in many parts of France, be a mere
political manoeuvre to strengthen the hands of government by calling in
the aid of superstition, or (which is at least as probable) a sincere
and well-meant attempt to awaken the forgotten spirit of religion. In
the mean while, it is a desirable thing to have turned the attention of
the French to a subject which, by all accounts, is become nearly
obsolete among the higher orders of the nation. Even with a view to the
ascendancy which a more simple and purified religion may ultimately
obtain under an improved and free constitution, it is better that a
religious feeling of some sort should exist. The worst and most twisted
crabstock, if alive, possesses an active principle, which allows of
successful grafting; not so with a dead branch.