aisles and the chapels are discreetly hidden between the piers. Far
above one's head curves the ribbed Gothic vaulting, and all around is
unbroken space that ends in darkness or the vague outline of an altar,
dimly lighted by a flickering candle. The walls are painted in rich,
sombre colours, and the light comes very gently through the good old
stained-glass windows. It is a southern church, dark, cool, and somewhat
mysterious; quite foreign to the glare and heat of reality. People are
lost in its solemn vastness, and even with many worshippers it is a
solitude where most holy vigils could be kept, a mystic place where the
southern imagination might well lose itself in such sacred ardours as
Saint Theresa felt. The traveller liked to linger here; in the day-time
when he peered vainly at the re-redos of Soler de Barcelona, at
Mass-time, when the lighted altar-candles glimmered over its fine old
marble, but best of all he liked to come at night. Those summer nights
in Rousillon were hot and full of the murmur of voices. The Cathedral
was the only silent place; more full than ever of the mysterious--the
felt and the unseen. As one entered, the sanctuary light shone as a star
out of a night of darkness; in a near-by chapel, a candle sputtered
itself away, and a woman--whether old or young one could not
see--lighted a fresh taper. Sometimes a man knelt and told his beads,
sometimes two women entered and separated for their differing needs and
prayers. Sometimes one sat in meditation, or knelt, unmoving, for a
space of time; once a child brought a new candle to Saint Antony; always
some one came or some one went, until the hour of closing. Then, the
bell was rung, the door shut by a hand but dimly seen, and the last few
watchers went out--across the little square, down this street or that,
until they were lost in the darkness of the summer's night.
[Illustration: "THE STONY STREET OF THE HILLSIDE."--CARCASSONNE.]
[Sidenote: Carcassonne.]
The train puffed into the station at Carcassonne, and the impatient
traveller, throwing his bags into an hotel omnibus, asked for the
Cathedral and walked eagerly on that he might the more quickly "see in
line the city on the hill," "the castle walls as grand as those of
Babylon," and "gaze at last on Carcassonne." His mind was full of the
poem, and faithfully following directions, he hurried through clean,
narrow streets until he came at length, not upon a poetic vision of
battlemented walls and towers, but on the most prosaic of boulevards and
the Church of Saint-Michel which has been the Cathedral since 1803, a
large, uncouth building with a big, unfinished tower. There is no facade
portal, and a small door-way in the north side leads into the great
vaulted hall, one of the most usual and commonplace forms of the Gothic
interior of the South. This room, which is painted, receives light from
a beautiful rose-window at the West, and a series of small roses, like
miniatures of the greater one, are cut in the upper walls of the nave;
and little chapels, characterised by the same heavy monotony which hangs
like a pall over the whole Cathedral, are lost in the church's capacious
flanks.
[Illustration: "THE ANCIENT CROSS."--CARCASSONNE.]
Having lost much of his enthusiasm, the traveller asked for the old--he
had almost said the "real"--Cathedral, and with new directions, he
started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower
city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its
parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that
perfect vision of Mediaevalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill
of the Cite stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and
flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; yet
beautiful in their mass of uneven, peaked tower-roofs and crenellations.
He climbed wearily up the stony street of the hillside, and as he passed
through the open gate, he realised that Hunnewell had written truly when
he said "Carcassonne is a romance of travel." For he went into a town
so quiet, into streets so still, so weed-grown, and lonely, and yet so
well built, that he felt as a "fairy prince" who has penetrated into
some enchanted castle, and it seemed as if the inhabitants were asleep
in the upper rooms, behind those bowed windows, and as if, when the
mysterious word of disenchantment should be uttered, all would come
trooping forth, men-at-arms hurrying to clean their rusty swords, old
women trudging along to fill their dusty pitchers at the well, and
younger women staring from doors and windows to see the stranger within
their streets.
The Cadets de Gascogne knew the city before the evil spell of modern
times was cast about it. They know and miss it now. And although they
may no longer wear the plumed hat and clanking sword of their ancestors,
the spirit beneath their more conventional garb is as gay and daring as
that of Cadets more picturesque. They have conceived a plan as exciting
as any old adventure, an idea which they present to the world, not as
Cyrano, their most famous member, was wont to convey his thoughts at the
end of a sword, but none the less dexterously and delightfully. This
plan, like the magic word of the traveller's fancy, is to make the old
Carcassonne live again, not as the traveller had timidly imagined, in
time of peace, but in the stirring times of war and battle, and its
magic word is "the siege of Carcassonne." Truly it is but a matter of
bengal lights, blank cartridges, and fire-crackers, though for the
matter of that, Cinderella's coach was but a pumpkin, yet the effect was
none the less real.
[Illustration: "OFTEN, TOO LITTLE TIME IS SPENT UPON THE
NAVE."--CARCASSONNE.]
On the evening of "the siege," a rare, great fete, the forces of the
Cadets with their lights and ammunition are in the "upper town", and
long before dark, their friends and every inhabitant of the country for
miles around have gathered in the houses which face the Cite, on the
bridges, and along the banks of the little Aude. As the sunlight fades
and the shadows creep along, a strange feeling of expectancy comes over
everybody, a hush, almost a dread of danger. The towers on the hill-top
loom dark against the sky and the battlements bristle in the moonlight,
no sound comes from the Cite, and it seems to lay in unconcerned
security. Memories of besieging armies which have vainly encamped in
this valley return to the traveller's mind, memories of the treacheries
of Simon de Montfort, and he wonders if any "crusading" sentinel ever
paced where he now stands watching along the Aude, if any spy or even
the terrible Simon himself had ever crept so near the walls to
reconnoitre. Suddenly every one is startled by the sound of distant
shots, which are repeated nearer the walls. Every one peers into the
darkness. There is no sign of life on wall or tower, the attacking force
must still be climbing the hill, out of range of the stones and burning
oil of the defenders. More shots are fired, and now there are answering
shots from the besieged; and so naturally does the din increase, that
one can follow, by listening, the progress of the attack and the slow,
sure gain of the invader. Some of the illusion of the anxiety and mental
tension which war brings, steals over the watching crowd, and they
breathlessly await the outcome of the struggle. The attacking party is
now seen under the walls--now on them--they throw wads of burning
cotton, which are at first extinguished. They still gain--they fire the
walls in several places; and the defenders, who can be seen in the
flashes of light, run frantically to the danger spots; but they are
gradually overcome, beaten back by the intensity of the heat. Flames now
burst forth from a tower; there is an explosion, and the fire curls and
creeps along the walls unchecked. Another explosion follows, another
burst of flames which soar higher and higher. The men of the Cite seem
still more frantic and powerless. All the towers now stand out in bold
relief,--as if they were just about to crumble into the seething mass
below. Roofs within the walls are on fire, and finally a red tongue
licks the turret of the Cathedral. In a few seconds its walls are
hideously aglow, and the people in the valley--although they know the
truth--groan aloud, so real is the illusion. The nave lines of the
Cathedral are silhouetted as it burns, the fires along the walls growing
brighter, spread gradually at first,--then rapidly, and the whole Cite
is the prey of great, waving clouds of flame and smoke. Men and women,
as if fascinated by this lurid and magnificent destruction, press
forward to get the last view of the Cathedral's lovely rose, or the
peaked roof of some tower which is dear to them. But slowly the deep red
flames are growing paler, less strong, and less high. Then the glare,
too, begins to die away; the fire turns to smoke and the light becomes
grey and misty. "It is all over," some one whispers, and with backward
glances at the charred, smoldering hill-top, they turn silently towards
home.
A few, sitting on the stone parapet of the bridge, remain to talk of the
evening's magic, of the inspiration of the Cadets de Gascogne, and other
scenes which their memory suggests, of wars and rumours of other wars.
And when at length they turn to go, they see the moonlight on the
glimmering Aude, the peaceful lower city, and above, Carcassonne--the
Invincible--rising from her ashes.
[Illustration: "THE CHOIR IS OF THE XIV CENTURY."--CARCASSONNE.]
[Illustration: "THE FACADE--STRAIGHT AND MASSIVE."--CARCASSONNE.]
The Cathedral of the Cite is worthy of great protecting walls and there
are few churches whose destruction would have been so sad a blow to the
architecture of the Midi. Saint-Nazaire is typical at once of the
originality of the southern builders, of their idealism, and their
joyous freedom from conventional thrall. The facade, straight, and
massive, has the frowning severity of an old donjon wall. Its towers are
solid masses of heavy stone; instead of spires, there are crenellations;
instead of graceful flying-buttresses at the sides, there are solid,
upright supports on the firm, plain side-walls. This is the true old
Romanesque. A few steps further, and the apse appears, as great a
contrast to the body of the church as a bit of Mechlin lace to a
coat-of-mail. A little tower with gargoyles, another with a fine-carved
turret, windows whose delicate traceries could be broken by a blow, and
an upper balustrade which would have been as easily crushed as an
egg-shell in the hands of the lusty Huguenots,--these are the ornaments
of its wall, as true XIV century Gothic as the nave is XII century
Romanesque. It is sadly disappointing to find the Cloisters in
uninteresting ruin, but the church within is so full of great beauty
that all other things are unimportant. The windows glow in the glory
of their glass, and the tombs, especially those of the lower Chapel
of the Bishop, are wonderfully carved. The first burial place of de
Montfort, terrible persecutor of his Church's foes, lies near the High
Altar, and in the wall, there is a rude bas-relief representing his
siege of Toulouse. All these admirable details are puny in comparison
with the interior which contains them. It is to be feared that often,
too little time is spent upon the nave. Even in mid-day, lighted by the
southern sun, its beautiful, severe lines are mellowed but little, and
one turns too instinctively to the Gothic, the greater lightness beyond.
Yet it is a nave of exceedingly fine, rugged strength, and to pass on
lightly, to belittle it in comparison with its brighter choir, is to
wantonly miss in the great round columns, the heavy piers, and the dark
tunnel vaulting, the conception of generations of men who had ever
before their mind--and literally believed--"A mighty fortress is our
God." The choir is of the XIV century, a day when the "beauty of
holiness" seems to have been the Cathedral architect's ideal. Delicate,
clustered columns from which Saints look down, long windows beautifully
veined, a glorious rose at each transept's end, and high vault arches
springing with a slender pointed grace, all these are of exquisite
proportions; and the brilliant stained-glass adds a softening warmth of
colour, but not too great a glow, to the cold fragility of the shafts of
stone. Nothing in the Gothic art of the South, little of Gothic
elsewhere, is more thoughtfully and lovingly wrought than this choir of
Saint-Nazaire, and few churches in the Romanesque form are more finely
constructed than its nave. On the exterior, the Gothic choir and the
Romanesque nave are so different in style it seems they must be,
perforce, antagonistic, that the grace of the Gothic must make
Romanesque plainness appear dull, or that the noble simplicity of the
rounded arch must cause the Gothic arches, here so particularly tall and
slender, to seem almost fragile and undignified. In reality, this
juxtaposition of the styles has justified itself; and passing from one
to the other, the traveller is more impressed by the subtle analogies
they suggest than by the differences of their architectural forms. On
week-days, when the church is empty, they seem to prefigure the two
ideals of the religion which they serve--the stern, self-conquering
asceticism of a Saint Dominic, and the exquisite, radiant visions which
Saint Cecelia saw when heavenly music was vouchsafed her. Or, if one has
time to fancy further, the nave is the epic of its great religion; the
choir, a song which is the expression of most delicate aspiration, most
tender worship. On Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation
is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in
France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, sweet smelling
incense, chants, and prayers of a most majestic ritual, one is tempted
to read into these stones symbolical meanings,--as if the heavy nave,
where the dim praying figures kneel, were typical of their life of
struggle--and their glances altarward, where all is light and beauty,
presaged their final coming into the presence and glory of God.
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE OF THE ROMANESQUE.--CARCASSONNE.]
Hunnewell has finely written, that "while the passions and the terrors
of a fierce, rude age made unendurable the pleasant land where we may
travel now so peacefully, ... and while Religion, grown political,
forgot the mercy of its Lord and ruled supreme, ... an earnest faith and
consecrated genius were creating some of the noblest tributes man has
offered to his Creator," and it may be truly said that of these one of
the noblest is the church begun in that most cruel age of Saint Dominic
and de Montfort, in the very heart of the country they laid waste, in
the city which one conquered by ruse and the other tortured by
inquisition, the old Cathedral of Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne.
[Sidenote: Castres.]
In the VII century Castres, which had been the site of a Roman camp,
became that of a Benedictine Abbey; and around this foundation, as about
so many others, a town grew through the Middle Ages, and came safely to
prosperity and importance. Untrue to its early protectors and in
opposition to the fervent orthodoxy of the neighbouring city of Albi,
Castres became a Protestant stronghold, and its fortunes rose and fell
with the chances of religious wars. It was, perhaps, one of the most
intrepid and obstinate of all the centres of heresy, and the centuries
of struggle seem only to have strengthened the fierceness of its faith.
In 1525, when the Duke de Rohan was absent and a royal army again
summoned it to submission and conversion, the Duchess had herself
carried from a sick bed to the gate of the city which was threatened,
and it is related that the inhabitants of all classes, men, women, and
children, without distinction of sex or age, armed themselves and rushed
victoriously to her aid. Thirty-five years later, their children sacked
churches, destroyed altars and images, and drove out monks and nuns.
Bellicose incidents make history a thrilling story, but they are
accompanied by such material destruction that they too often rob a city
of its greatest treasures, and leave it, as far as architectural
interest is concerned, an arid waste. Such a place is Castres,
prosperous, industrial, historically dramatic, but actually commonplace.
Old houses, picturesque and mouldy, with irregular, overhanging eaves,
lean along the banks of the little river as they are wont to line the
banks of every old stream of the Midi, and they are nearly all the
remains of Castres' Mediaevalism. For her streets are well-paved,
trolleys pass to and fro, department stores are frequent, and that most
modern of vehicles, the automobile, does not seem anachronistic. No
building could be more in harmony with the city's atmosphere of
uninteresting prosperity than its Cathedral, and he who enters in search
of beauty and repose, is doomed to miserable disappointment.
Confronted in the XIV century by a growing heresy, John XXII devised,
among other less Christian methods of combat, that of the creations of
Sees, whose power and dignity of rank should check the progress of the
enemies of the Church; and in 1317, that year which saw the beginning of
so many of these new Sees, the old Benedictine Abbey of Castres, lying
in the very centre of Protestantism, was created a Bishopric. The
century, if unpropitious to Catholicism, was favourable to architecture,
the Abbey was of ancient foundation, and from either of these facts, a
fine Cathedral might reasonably be hoped for,--a dim Abbey-church whose
rounded arches are lost in the gloom of its vaulting, or a bit of
southern Gothic which the newly consecrated prelate might have
ambitiously planned. But the Cathedral of Saint-Benoit is neither of
these, for it was re-constructed in the XVII century, the XVII century
in all its confusion of ideas, all its lack of taste, all its travesty
of styles. There is the usual multitude of detail, the usual
unworthiness. Portals which have no beauty, an expanse of unfinished
facade, dark, ugly walls whose bareness is not sufficiently hidden by
the surrounding houses, heavy buttresses, ridiculously topped off by
globes of stone,--such are the salient features of the exterior of
Saint-Benoit.
The "spaciousness" of the interior has given room, if not for an
impartial representation, at least for a reminder of all the styles of
architecture to which the XVII century was heir. There is the
Renaissance conception of the antique in the ornamental columns; in the
rose-window, there is a tribute to the Gothic; the tradition of the
South is maintained by a coat of colours--many, if subdued; and the
ground plan of nave and side-chapels might be called Romanesque.
Although the vaulting is high and the room large, there is no
simplicity, no beauty, no artistic virtue in this interior.
Opposite the church is the episcopal Palace which Mansart built, a large
construction that serves admirably as a City Hall. Behind it, along the
river, are the charming gardens designed by Le Notre, where Bishops
walked and meditated, looking upon their not too faithful city of
Castres. Upon this very ground was the ancient Abbey and close of the
Benedictines; and as if in memory of these monkish predecessors, Bishop
and builder of the XVII century left in an angle of the Palace the old
Abbey-tower. This is the treasure of Castres' past, a Romanesque belfry
with the pointed roofing of the campanile of Italy, heavy in comparison
with their grace, and stout and strong.
[Sidenote: Toulouse.]
Toulouse is one of the most charming cities of the South of France. It
is also one of the largest; but in spite of its size, it is neither
noisy nor stupidly conventional; it is, on the contrary, an ideal
provincial "capital," where everything, even the climate, corresponds to
our preconceived and somewhat romantic ideal of the southern type. When
the wind blows from the desert it comes with fierce and sudden passion,
the sun shines hot, and under the awnings of the open square, men fan
themselves lazily during a long lunch hour. Under this appearance of
semi-tropical languor, there is the persistent energy of the great
southern peoples, an energy none the less real because it is broken by
the long siestas, the leisurely meal-times, and the day-time idling,
which seem so shiftless and so strange to northern minds. This is the
energy, however, which has made Toulouse a rich, opulent city,--a city
with broad boulevards, open squares, and fine buildings, and a city of
the gay Renaissance rather than of the stern Middle Ages. Yet for
Toulouse the Middle Ages were a dark time. What could be gotten by the
sword was taken by the sword, and even the mind of man, in that gross
age, was forced and controlled by the agony of his body. It is a time
whose most peaceful outward signs, the churches, have been preserved to
Toulouse, and the war-signs, towers, walls, and fortifications,
dungeons, and the torture-irons of inquisition, are now--and
wisely--hidden or destroyed. Of the fierce tragedies which were played
in Toulouse, even to the days of the great Revolution, few traces
remain,--the stern, orthodox figure of Simon de Montfort, and of Count
Raymond, his too politic foe, and the anguish of the Crusaders' siege,
the bent form of Jean Calas and the shrewd, keen face of Voltaire, who
vindicated him from afar, these memories seem dimmed; and those which
live are of light-hearted troubadours and gaily dressed ladies of the
city of the gay, insouciant Renaissance to whom an auto-da-fe was a gala
between the blithesome robing of the morning and the serenade in the
moonlight. Fierce and steadfast, sentimentally languishing, dying for a
difference of faith, or dying as violently to avenge the insult of a
frown or a lifted eye-brow, such are the Languedocians whom Toulouse
evokes, near to the Gascons and akin to them. Here is the Academie des
Jeux-Floreaux, the "College of Gay Wit" which was founded in the XIV
century, and still distributes on the third of every May prizes of gold
and silver flowers to poets, and writers of fine prose; and here are
many "hotels" of the Renaissance, rich and beautiful homes of the old
Toulousan nobility whose courts are all too silent. Here is the Hotel du
Vieux-Raisin, the Maison de Pierre, and the Hotel d'Assezat where Jeanne
d'Albret lived; and near-by is a statue of her son, the strongest,
sanest, and most debonnaire of all the great South-men, Henry of
Navarre. Here in Toulouse is indeed material for a thousand fancies.
[Illustration: "THE NAVE OF THE XIII CENTURY IS AN AISLE-LESS CHAMBER,
LOW AND BROADLY ARCHED."--TOULOUSE.]
And here the Cathedral-seeker, who had usually had the proud task of
finding the finest building in every city he visited, was doomed to
disappointment. In vain he tried to console himself with the fact that
Toulouse had had two Cathedrals. Of one there was no trace; in the
other, confusion; and he was met with the axiom, true in architecture
as in other things, that two indifferent objects do not make one good
one. The "Dalbade," formerly the place of worship of the Knights of
Malta, has a more elegant tower; the Church of the Jacobins a more
interesting one; the portal of the old Chartreuse is more beautiful; the
Church of the Bull, more curious; and the Basilica of Saint-Sernin so
interesting and truly glorious that the Cathedral pales in colourless
insignificance.
Some cities of mediaeval France possessed, at the same time, two
Cathedrals, two bodies of Canons, and two Chapters under one and the
same Bishop. Such a city was Toulouse; and until the XII century,
Saint-Jacques and Saint-Etienne were rival Cathedrals. Then, for some
reason obscure to us, Saint-Jacques was degraded from its episcopal rank
and remained a simple church until 1812 when it was destroyed. The
present Cathedral of Saint-Etienne is a combination of styles and a
violation of every sort of architectural unity, and realises a confusion
which the most perverse imagination could scarcely have conceived.
According to every convention of building, the Cathedral is not only
artistically poor, but mathematically insupportable. The proportions are
execrable; and the interior, the finest part of the church, reminds one
irresistibly of a good puzzle badly put together. The weak tower is a
sufficient excuse for the absence of the other; from the tower the roof
slopes sharply and unreasonably, and the rose-window is perched, with
inappropriate jauntiness, to the left of the main portal. The whole
structure is not so much the vagary of an architect as the sport of
Fate, the self-evident survival of two unfitting facades. Walking
through narrow streets, one comes upon the apse as upon another church,
so different is its style. It is disproportionately higher than the
facade; instead of being conglomerate, it is homogeneous; instead of a
squat appearance, uninterestingly grotesque, it has the dignity of
height and unity. And although it is too closely surrounded by houses
and narrow streets, and although a view of the whole apse is entirely
prevented by the high wall of some churchly structure, it is the only
worthy part of the exterior and, by comparison, even its rather timid
flying-buttresses and insignificant stone traceries are impressive.
[Illustration: "THE PRESENT CATHEDRAL IS A COMBINATION OF
STYLES."--TOULOUSE.]