this church. In the midst of his delighted study he suddenly felt the
attraction of a pair of watchful eyes, and turned to find a peasant
woman gazing fixedly at him. In her strange fascination she had placed
beside her, on the ground, two huge melons and a mammoth cabbage, and
her wizened hands were folded before her, Sunday-fashion. She was a
little witch of a woman, old and bent and brown.
"Yes, my good gentleman," she said, "I have been looking at you,--five
whole minutes of the clock, and much good it has done me. In these days
of books and such fine learning there is not enough time spent before
our door; and I who pass by it every day, year in, year out, I have
watched well, and only two except yourself have ever studied it. The
foreigners come with red books and look at them more than at the door
itself,--they stay perhaps three minutes, and go off, shaking their wise
heads. Our people, passing every day, see but a door, a place for going
in and coming out." She paused for breath.
"And what do you see?" asked the traveller.
"You ask me?" She smiled wisely. "But you know, since you are standing
here and looking too. Listen!" And her old eyes began to gleam. "I'll
tell you of a time before you were born. I was a child then; and we
marched here every Sunday, other little girls and myself, and we stood
before this door. And the nuns--it was often Sister Mary Dolorosa--told
us the stories of these stones. See! Here is Our Lord Who loves all
mankind, but has to judge us too;--and there is Saint-Trophime. But I
cannot read, Monsieur. An old peasant woman has no time for such fine
things, and you will laugh at me for telling you what you have in your
books,--but I have them all here, here in my heart, and many a time I
too come to refresh my old memory, and to pray. Those pictures tell
great lessons to those that have eyes to see them. Well, well-a-day, I
must pick up my melons and begone, for I have taken up your time and
said too much. But you will excuse it in an old woman who is good for
little else than talking now."
They parted in true French fashion, with "expressions of mutual esteem,"
and the traveller turned to the portal which was still fulfilling its
ancient mission of teaching and of making beautiful the House of God.
Applied to a severe facade typical of the plainness of Provencal outer
walls, this is one of the noblest works of Mediaevalism, the richest and
most beautiful portal of the South of France; and no others in the Midi,
except those of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard and Moissac, are worthy of
comparison with it. In boldness and intellectuality of conception it
excels many of the northern works and equals the finest of them. For the
builder of the northern portal seems to have held closely to one
architectural form, the beautiful convention of the Gothic style; and
within that door he placed, in a more or less usual way, the subjects
which the Church had sanctioned. In nearly every case the treatment of
the subject is subordinated to the general architectural plan and
symmetry. At Saint-Trophime there was the limit of space, the axiom that
a door must be a door, and doubtless many allowable subjects. But within
these necessary bounds the unknown sculptor recognised few
conventionalities. The usual place for the portrayal of the Last
Judgment, the tympanum, was too small for his conception of the scene;
the pier that divides his door-way was not built to support the statue
of the church's patron saint; he had a multitude of fancies, and instead
of curbing them in some beautiful conventionality of form, as one feels
great northern builders often did, this artist made a frame within which
his ideas found free play, and, forcing conventionality to its will, his
genius justified itself. For not only is the portal as a whole, full of
dignity and true symmetry, but its details are thoughtfully worked out.
They show, with the old scholastic form of his Faith, the grasp of the
unknown master's mind, the intellectuality of his symbolism, and few
portals grow in fascination as this one, few have so interesting an
originality.
[Illustration: RIGHT DETAIL, PORTAL.--ARLES.]
In design it is simple, in execution incomparably rich. The principal
theme of the Last Judgment has Christ seated on a throne as the central
figure, and about him are the symbols of the four Evangelists. This is
the treatment of the tympanum. Underneath, Patriarchs, Saints, Just, and
Condemned form the beautiful frieze. The Apostles are seated; and to
their left is an angel guarding the gates of Paradise against two
Bishops and a crowd of laymen who have yet to fully expiate their sins
in Purgatory. Behind them, naked, with their feet in the flames, are
those condemned to everlasting Hell; and still beyond is a lower depth
where souls are already half-consumed in hideous fires. On the Apostles'
extreme right is the beginning of our human history, the Temptation of
Adam and Eve; and marching toward the holy men, on this same side, is
the long procession of those Redeemed from Adam's fall, clothed in
righteousness. An angel goes before them, and hands a small child--a
ransomed soul--to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The end panels treat the
last phases of the dominant theme;--a mammoth angel in the one weighs
the souls of the dead; and an equally awe-inspiring devil in the other
is preparing to cast two of the Lost into a sea of fire.
The remainder of the portal tells of many subjects, and represents much
of the theological symbolism of its time. Light, graceful columns, with
delicately foliated capitals and bases rich with meaning sculptures,
divide the lower spaces into niches, and in these niches stand statues
of Apostles and of Saints, each having his story, each his peculiar
attributes; and about these chief figures are carved rich designs,
strange animals, and numberless short stories of the Bible. Above there
is a small, subsidiary frieze; below, the pedestals which tell the tale
of those who stand upon them. The figures have life and meaning, if not
a true plasticity; and in this portal there is instruction, variety, and
majesty, wealth of allegory and subtle symbols for those who love
religious mysteries, and splendour of sculpture for those who come in
search of Art.
There are those to whom a simple beauty does not appeal. After the
richness of the portal's carving, the interior of Saint-Trophime is to
them "far too plain;" in futile comparison with the Cloister's grace, it
is found "too severe;" and one author has written that only "when the
refulgence of a Mediterranean sun glances through a series of long
lances, ... then and then only does the Cathedral of Saint-Trophime
offer any inducement to linger within its non-impressive walls."
It may not be denied that, together with nearly all the Cathedrals of
Provence, this interior has suffered from the addition of inharmonious
styles. The most serious of these is its Gothic choir of the XV century,
which a certain Cardinal Louis Allemand applied to the narrower
Romanesque naves. With irregular ambulatory, chapels of various sizes,
and a general incongruity of plan, this construction has no
architectural importance except that of a prominent place in the
church's worship. The remaining excrescences, Gothic chapels, Ionic
pilasters, elliptical tribune, and the like, are happily hidden along
the side aisles or in the transepts; and during the restoration of
Revoil the naves were relieved of the disfiguring "improvements" of the
XVII century, and stand to-day in much of their fine old simplicity.
Beyond the fifth bay, and rising in the tower, is the dome of dignified
Provencal form that rests on the lower arches of the crossing. Small
clerestory windows cast sheets of pale light on the plain piers,
rectangular and heavy, that rise to support a tunnel vault and divide
the church into three naves of great and slender height.
The stern, ascetic style of the XI and XII centuries has given the nave
piers mere small, plain bands as capitals, and for churchly decoration
has allowed only a moulding of acanthus leaves placed high and unnoticed
at the vaulting's base. There is no pleasing detail and no charming
fancy; but a fine, exquisite loftiness, a faultless balance of
proportion, are in this severe interior, and its solemn and majestic
beauty is not surpassed in the Southern Romanesque.
[Illustration: LEFT DETAIL, PORTAL.--ARLES.]
Beyond the south transept, a short passage and a few steps lead to the
Cloisters, the most famous of Provence, perhaps of France. Large,
graceful, and magnificent in wealth of carving, they have yet none of
the poetic charms that linger around many a smaller Cloister. The
vaultings are not more beautiful than other vaults less known; although
they have the help of the great piers, the little, slender columns seem
too light to support so much expanse of roof, and even the church's
tower, square and high, looks dwarfed when seen across the close. The
very spaciousness is solitary, and the long vista of the walks conduces
to vague wonderings rather than to peaceful hours of thought. It has not
the dreamy solitude of Vaison, nor the bright beauty of Elne's little
close, nor any of the sunny cheerfulness that brightens the decaying
walls of Cahors.
[Illustration: THROUGH THE CLOISTER-ARCHES.--ARLES.]
The marvel of these Cloisters is the sculptured decorations of their
piers and columns. Those of the XII century are the richest, but each of
the later builders seems to have vied as best he might, in wealth of
conception and in lavishness of detail, with those who went before, and,
even in enforced re-building, the addition of the Gothic to the
Romanesque has not destroyed the harmony of the effect. In all the
sculptors' schemes, the outer of the double columns were given foliated
patterns or a few, simple symbols, and the outer of the piers were
channelled and conventionally cut; and although the fancy of the
sculptor is marvellously subtle and full of grace, his greatest art was
reserved for the capitals of the inner columns and the inner faces of
the piers, which meditating priests would see and study. The symbolism
authorised by Holy Church, the history of precursors of Our Lord, the
incidents of His life and the more dramatic doings of the Saints, all
these are carved with greatest love of detail and of art; and in them
the least arduous priest could find themes for a whole year of
meditation, the least enthusiastic of travellers, a thousand quaint and
interesting fancies and imaginations. It is not so much the beauty of
the whole effect that is entrancing in these Cloisters, nor that most
subtle influence, the good or evil spirit of a past which lingers round
so many ancient spots, as that mediaeval thought and mediaeval genius that
found expression in these myriad fine examples of the sculptor's art.
[Illustration: "A NAVE OF GREAT AND SLENDER HEIGHT."--ARLES.]
[Illustration: "THE BEAUTY OF THE WHOLE."--ARLES.]
Alexandre Dumas has written of Arles: "Roman monuments form the soil;
and about them, at their feet, in their shadow, in their crevasses, a
second Gothic city has sprung--one knows not how--by the vegetative
force of the religious civilisation of Saint Louis. Arles is the
Mecca of archaeologists." It is also the Mecca of those who love to
study people and customs, for, in spite of the railroad, and the
consequent influx of "foreign French," it has preserved the old
graeco-roman-saracenic type which has made its beautiful women so
justly famous, and, underneath its Provencal gaieties, their classic
origins may easily be traced. One should see the Roman Theatre, the
solitary Aliscamps, by moonlight, the busy market in the early day,
the Cathedral at a Mass, and a fete at any time,--for
"When the fete-days come, farewell the swath and labour,
And welcome revels underneath the trees,
And orgies in the vaulted hostelries,
Bull-baitings, never-ending dances, and sweet pleasures."
[Sidenote: Entrevaux.]
The most celebrated fortified town in France is the Cite of Carcassonne,
yet, even in the days of its practical strength, it was scarcely a type.
It was rather a marvel, a wonder,--the "fairest Maid of Languedoc," "the
Invincible." And now the citadel is almost deserted. The inhabitants are
so few that weeds grow in their streets, and one who walks there in the
still mid-day feels that all this completion of architecture, these
walls, perfect in every stone, may be an enchanted vision, a mirage; he
more than half believes that the cool of the sunset will dispel the
illusion, and he will find himself on a pleasant little hill of
Languedoc, looking down upon the commonplace "Lower City" of
Carcassonne.
At Entrevaux there is no suggestion of illusion. This is not a
show-place that once was real; it is one of a hundred little
agglomerations of the French Middle Ages. They had no great name to
uphold; no riches to expend in impregnable walls and towers. They clung
fearfully together for self-preservation, built ramparts that were as
strong as might be, and dared not laugh at the "fortunes of war." Except
that there is safety outside the walls, and a tiny post and telegraph
office within, they are now as they were in those dangerous days. The
fortress of Carcassonne is dead; but in the back country of Provence,
Entrevaux is living, and scarcely a jot or tittle of its Mediaevalism is
lost. Among high rocks that close around it on every side, where,
according to the season, the Chalvagne trickles or plunges into the
river Var, and dominated by a fort that perches on a sharp peak, is the
strangest of old Provencal towns.
[Illustration: THE GOTHIC WALK, CLOISTER.--ARLES.]
The founding of the tiny episcopal city was after this wise. Toward the
close of the XIV century, in a time of plagues, Jewish persecutions, the
growth of heresies, and the uncurbed ravages of free-booters, the city
of Glandeves, seat of an ancient Bishopric, was destroyed. The living
remnant abandoned its desolate ruins. Searching for a stronger, safer
home, they chose a site on the left bank of the Var, and commenced the
building of Entrevaux. The Bishop accompanied his flock, and although he
retained the old title of Glandeves, in memory of the antiquity of the
See and its lost city, the Cathedral-church was established at
Entrevaux.
The first edifice, Saint-Martin's, built shortly after the founding of
the town, has long been destroyed; and the second, begun in 1610, to the
honour of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, held episcopal rank
until the See was disestablished by the great Concordat. Although this
Cathedral was built in the XVII century, a date perilously near that of
decadence in French ecclesiastical architecture, it was situated in so
obscure a corner of Provence that its plan was unaffected by innovating
ideas; it is of the old native type, a building of stout walls and heavy
buttresses, a single tower, square and straight, and a tunnel-vaulted
room, the place of congregation. This interior, with no beautiful
details that may not be found in other churches, has as many of the
defects of the Italian school as the treasury could afford,--marble
columns, frescoes, gilding, and other rococo decorations which show that
the people of Entrevaux had no higher and no better tastes than those of
Nice; and that the old, simple purity of the church's form was rather a
matter of ignorance or necessity than of choice. The attraction of the
episcopal church pales before the quaint delight of the episcopal city,
and it is as part of the general civic defence that it shares in the
interest of Entrevaux.
[Illustration: "THIS INTERIOR."--ENTREVAUX.]
[Illustration: THE ROMANESQUE WALK, CLOISTER.--ARLES.]
[Illustration: "ONE OF THREE SMALL DRAWBRIDGES."--ENTREVAUX.]
[Illustration: "THE PORTCULLIS."--ENTREVAUX.]
Leaving the train at the nearest railroad station, the traveller
followed the winding Var, and he had scarcely walked four miles when he
saw, across the river, the sharp peak with its fort, and the long lines
of walls that zigzag down the hillside till they reach the crowded roofs
that are clustered closely, in charming irregularity, near the bank.
Along the water's edge, the only part of the town that is not protected
by rocks and hills, there is another line of stout walls and two heavy,
jutting bastions. From a mediaeval point of view Entrevaux looks strong
indeed. The only means of entrance, now as in those olden days, is by
one of three small drawbridges, and so narrow is every street of the
town that no wagon is allowed to cross, for if it made the passage of
the bridge it would be caught hard and fast between the houses. As the
traveller put foot on the drawbridge he felt as though he were a petty
trader or wandering minstrel, or some other figure of the Middle Ages,
entering for a few hours' traffic or a noon-day's rest, and when he
paused under the low arch of the portcullis-gate, people stared at him
as they do at a stranger in little far-off towns. Once inside, he turned
into a street, and was immediately obliged to step into a door-way, for
a man leading a horse was approaching, and they needed all its breadth.
Houses, several stories high, bordered these incredibly dark, narrow
ways, and some of the upper windows had the diminutive balconies so dear
to the South. It was a bright, hot day, but the sun seldom peeped into
these streets; and in the shops the light was dull at mid-day. As he
thought of the men and women of Mediaevalism, who did not dare to wander
in the fields beyond the town, because their safety lay within its
ramparts, suddenly, the little public squares of walled towns appeared
in all the real significance of their light and breadth and sunshine.
Space is precious in Entrevaux, and open places are few. There is one
where the hotels and cafes are found, another across the drawbridge
behind the Cathedral-tower, and a tiny one before the church itself.
This is the most curious of them all; for, far from being a "Place de la
Cathedrale," it is a true "Place d'Armes." Near the portals, on whose
wooden doors the mitre and insignia of papal favour are carved, a few
steps lead to a narrow ledge where archers could stand and shoot from
the loop-holes in the walls. As the traveller sat on this ledge and
wondered what scenes had been enacted here, how many deadly shots had
sped from out the holes, what crowds of excited townsfolk had gathered
in the church, what grave words of exhortation and of blessing had been
spoken from the altar or the threshold by anxious prelate, robed and
mitred for the Mass of Supplication to a God of Battles, an humble
funeral appeared,--a priest, a peasant bearing a black wooden Cross with
the name of the deceased painted on it, a rope-bound coffin carried by
hot and sorrowing women, and a little procession of friends. The pomps
and vanities of the past disappeared as a mist from the traveller's
mind, and he saw Entrevaux as it really is, without the comforts of this
world's goods, without the greatness of a Bishopric, a small Provencal
village whose perfection of quaintness--so charming to him who passes
on--means hardship and discomfort to those who have been born and must
live and die there.
[Illustration: "A FORT THAT PERCHES ON A SHARP PEAK."--ENTREVAUX.]
[Illustration: "A TRUE PLACE D'ARMES."--ENTREVAUX.]
And yet so potent is that charm, when the traveller re-crossed the
drawbridge and looked up at the sharp teeth of the portcullis that may
still fall and bite, when he had passed out on the high-road and turned
again and again to watch the fading sunlight on the tangled mass of
roofs, the illusion had returned. The bastions stood out in bold relief,
the church tower with its crenellated top stood out against the rocky
peaks, the sun fell suddenly behind the hill, and the traveller felt
himself again a minstrel wandering in a mediaeval night.
[Illustration: "THE LONG LINES OF WALLS THAT ZIGZAG DOWN THE
HILLSIDE."--ENTREVAUX.]
[Sidenote: Sisteron.]
The traveller is curious,--frankly curious. Almost every time that he
enters a Cathedral, his memory recalls the words of Renan, "these
splendid marvels are almost always the blossoming of some little
deceit," and after he has feasted his eye, he thinks of history and of
details, and of Renan, prejudiced but well-informed, and wonders what
was here the "little deceit." At Grasse, he had longed for the papers a
certain lawyer has, which tell much of the city's life a hundred and
fifty years ago, and at Sisteron, he sat by the Durance, wondering how
he could induce a kind and good old lady of a remote corner of Provence
to lend him an ancient manuscript, which even the gentle Cure said she
"obstinately" refused to "impart." Blessed are they who can be satisfied
with guide-books, as his friends who had visited Avignon and Arles,
Tarascon and the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and had seen Provence to
their entire edification while he was merely peering about
Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the Fort Saint-Andre. Of a more indolent and
leisurely turn of mind, he suffers--and perhaps justly--the penalty of
his joyous idleness, for even lawyers and good ladies with hidden papers
are rare. Revolutionary sieges, fires, and a wise discretion have led to
the destroying of many a fine old page, and it is often in vain one goes
to these decaying cities of Provence. "We see," he said, gesticulating
dejectedly, "we see their towers and their walls, but if we say we know
that place, how many times do we deceive ourselves. It is too often as
though we claimed to know the life and thought and passions of a man
from looking on his grave."
But--to consider what we may know. Sisteron is an old Roman city, most
strongly and picturesquely built in a narrow defile of the Durance. On
one side the river is the high, bare rock of La Baume; on the other, a
higher rock where houses, supporting each other by outstretched
buttresses, seem to cling to the sheer hillside as shrubs in mountain
crevasses, and are dominated and protected by a large and formidable
fortress-castle that crowns the very top of the peak. The town walls are
almost gone; the fortress is abandoned; since the Revolution there are
no longer Bishops in Sisteron; but the old town has lost little of its
war-like and romantic atmosphere of days when it commanded an important
pass, and when the way across the Durance was guarded by a drawbridge,
and a big portcullis that now stands in rusty idleness.
[Illustration: "THE CHURCH TOWER STOOD OUT AGAINST THE ROCKY
PEAKS."--ENTREVAUX.]