In Languedoc And Old Provence
[Illustration: Languedoc & Provence]
The dim purple curtain of the Pyrenees had been drawn behind, us, and
we were passing from the patois of Languedoc to the patois of
Provence, where the peasants say _pardie_ in place of _pardou_ when
an exclamation of surprise comes from their lips.
Cast your eyes over the map of ancient France, and you will
distinguish plainly the lines of demarcation between the old
political divisions which, in truth, the traveller by road may find
to exist even to-day, in the manners and customs of the people at
least.
Unconsciously we drew away from the sleepy indolence of Perpignan and
Roussillon, and before we knew it had passed Narbonne, and on through
Béziers to Agde, where we proposed stopping for the night.
Quite as Spanish-looking as Perpignan, Agde was the very antithesis
of the gay and frivolous Catalan city. The aspect of its purple-brown
architecture, the bridge-piers crossing the Herault, and the very
pavements themselves were a colour-scheme quite unlike anything we
had seen elsewhere. Brilliant and warm as a painting of Velasquez,
there was nothing gaudy, and one could only dream of the time when
the Renaissance house-fronts sheltered lords and ladies of high
degree instead of itinerant automobilists and travelling salesmen.
The Hôtel du Cheval Blanc was one of these. It is not a particularly
up-to-date hostelry, and there is a scant accommodation for
automobiles, but for all that it is good of its kind, and one dines
and sleeps well to the accompaniment of the rushing waters of the
river, at its very dooryard, on its way to the sea.
From Agde to Montpellier is fifty odd kilometres over the worst
stretch of roadway of the same length to be found in France, save
perhaps that awful paved road of Navarre across the Landes.
Montpellier is one of the most luxurious and well-kept small cities
of France. It is the seat of the préfecture, the assizes, and a
university--whose college of medicine was famous in the days of
Rabelais. It has the modern attributes of steam-heated,
electric-lighted hotels and restaurants, a tramway system that is
appalling and dangerous to all other traffic by reason of its
complexity, and an Opera House and a Hôtel de Ville that would do
credit to a city ten times its size.
We merely took Montpellier _en route_, just as we had many other
places, and were really bound for Aigues-Mortes, where we proposed to
lunch: one would not willingly sleep in a place with a name like
that.
Of Aigues-Mortes Ch. Lentherie wrote, a quarter of a century ago:
"The country round about is incomparably melancholy, the sun
scorches, and the sandy soil gives no nourishment to plants, flowers,
vines, or grain. Cultivated land does not exist, it is a desert:
ugly, melancholy, and abandoned. But Aigues-Mortes cannot, nay, must
not perish, and will always remain the old city of St. Louis, a
magnificent architectural diadem, with its deserted _plage_ an _aureole_
most radiant, a glorious yet touching reminder."
One other imaginative description is the poem of Charles Bigot on _La
Tour de Constance_, in which the Huguenot women were many long years
imprisoned. It is written in the charming Nimois patois, and runs
thus in its first few lines:
"Tour de la simple et forte,
Simbol de glorie et de piété,
Tour de pauvres femmes mortes
Pour leur Dieu et la liberté."
These few introductory lines will recall to the memory of all who
know the history of the Crusades and of St. Louis the part played by
this old walled city of Aigues-Mortes.
More complete, and more frowning and grim, than Carcassonne, it has
not a tithe of its interest, but, for all that, it is the most
satisfying example of a walled stronghold of mediæval times yet
extant.
With all its gloom, its bareness, and the few hundreds of shaking
pallid mortals which make up its present-day population, the marsh
city of Aigues-Mortes is a lively memory to all who have seen it.
One comes by road and drives his automobile in through the
battlemented gateway over the cobbled main street, or struggles up on
foot from the station of the puny and important little railway which
brings people down from Arles in something over an hour's time.
Ultimately, one and all arrive at the excellent Hôtel St. Louis, and
eat bountifully of fresh fish of the Mediterranean, well cooked by
the _patron-chef_, and well served by a dainty Arlésienne maiden of
fifteen summers, who looks as though she might be twenty-two.
"_C'est un chose à voir_" every one tells you in the Bouches-du-Rhône
when you mention Aigues-Mortes; and truly it is. As before suggested,
you will not want to sleep within its dreary walls, but "it's a thing
to see" without question, and to get away from as soon as possible,
before a peculiarly vicious breed of mosquito inoculates you with the
toxic poison of the marshes.
Now we are approaching the land of the poet Mistral, the most
romantic region in all modern France, where the inhabitant in his
repose and his pleasure still lives in mediæval times and chants and
dances himself (and herself) into a sort of semi-indifference to the
march of time.
The Crau and the Camargue, lying south of Arles between Aigues-Mortes
and the Etang de Berre, is the greatest fête-making _pays_, one might
think, in all the world.
How many times, from January to January, the Provençal "makes the
fête" it would be difficult to state--on every occasion possible, at
any rate.
The great fête of Provence is the day of the _ferrande_, a sort of a
cattle round-up held on the Camargue plain, something like what goes
on in "_le Far West,_" as the French call it, only on not so grand a
scale.
Mistral describes it of course:
"On a great branding-day came this throng,
A help for the mighty herd-mustering,
Li Santo, Aigo Marto, Albaron,
And from Faraman, a hundred horses strong
Came out into the desert."
Here we were in the midst of the land of fêtes, and if we could not
see a _ferrande_ in all its savage, unspoiled glory, we would see
what we could.
We were in luck, as we learned when we put into St. Gilles for the
night, and comfortably enough housed our auto in the _remise_ of the
company, or individual, which has the concession for the stage line
across the Camargue, which links up the two loose ends of a toy
railway, one of which ends at Aigues-Mortes, and the other at Stes.
Maries-de-la-Mer.
Our particular piece of luck was the opportunity to be present at the
pilgrimage to the shrine of the three Marys of Judea, which took
place on the morrow.
The poet Mistral sets it all out in romantic verse in his epic
"Mirèio," and one and all were indeed glad to embrace so fortunate an
opportunity of participating in one of the most nearly unique
pilgrimages and festivals in all the world.
We entered the little waterside town the next morning soon after
sunrise, _en auto_. Others came by rail, on foot, on horseback, or by
the slow-going _roulotte_, or caravan; pilgrims from all corners of
the earth, the peasant folk of Provence, the Arlésiens and
Arlésiennes, and the dwellers of the great Camargue plain.
The picture is quite as "Mirèio" saw it in the poem: the vision of
the lone sentinel church by the sea, which rises above the dunes of
the Camargue to-day, as it did in the olden time.
"'It looms at last in the distance dim,
She sees it grow on the horizon's rim,
The Saintes' white tower across the billowy plain,
Like vessel homeward bound upon the main."
On the dunes of the Camargue, between the blue of the sky and the
blue of the Mediterranean waves, sits the gaunt, grim bourg of
fisherfolk and herders of the cattle and sheep of the neighbouring
plain. The lone fortress-church rises tall and severe in its
outlines, and the whole may be likened to nothing as much as a desert
mirage that one sees in his imagination.
At the foot of the crenelated, battlemented walls of the church are
the white, pink, and blue walled houses of the huddling population,
and the dory-like boats of the fishers.
Officially the town is known as Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer, but the
_reliques_ of the three Marys, who fled from Judea in company with
Sts. Lazare, Maxim, and Trophime, and other followers, including
their servant Sara, have given it the popular name of "Les Saintes."
The exiles, barely escaping death by drowning, came to shore here,
and, thankful for being saved from death, thereupon celebrated the
first mass to be said in France, the saints Maxim and Lazare
officiating.
Maxim, Lazare, Sidoine, Marthe, and Madeleine immediately set out to
spread the Word throughout Provence in the true missionary spirit,
but the others, the three Marys, St. Trophime, and Sara, remained
behind to do what good they might among the fishers.
The pilgrimage to this _basilique_ of "Les Saintes" has ever been one
of great devotion. In 1347 the Bishops of Paris and of Coutances, in
Normandy, accorded their communicants many and varied indulgences for
having made "_la feste S. Mari Cléophée qui est le XXVe Mai, et la
feste S. Marie Salomé, XXIIe Octobre, festeront, O l'histoire d'elles
prescherent, liront ou escouteront attentilment et devotement._"
In the fourteenth century three thousand or more souls drew a
livelihood from the industries of "Les Saintes" and the
neighbourhood, and its civic affairs were administered by three
consuls, who were assisted in their duties by three classes of
citizen office-holders--_divities_, _mediocres_, and _paupers_, the
latter doubtless the "_povres gens_" mentioned in the testament of
Louis I. of Provence, he who bequeathed the guardianship of his soul
to "_Saintes Maries Jacobé et Salomé, Catherine, Madeleine et
Marthe._"
The first day's celebration was devoted to the further gathering of
the throng and the "Grand Mess." At the first note of the
"Magnificat" the _reliques_ were brought forth from the upper chapel
and the crowd from within and without broke into a thunderous
"_Vivent les Saintes Maries!_" Then was sung the "_Cantique des
Saintes:_"
"O grandes Saintes Maries
Si chéries
De notre divin Sauveur," etc.
On the second day a procession formed outside the church for the
descent to the historic sands, upon which the holy exiles first made
their landing, the men bearing on their shoulders a representation of
the barque which brought the saints thither. There were prelates and
plebeians and tourists and vagabond gipsies in line, and one and all
they entered into the ceremony with an enthusiasm--in spite of the
sweltering sun--which made up for any apparent lack of devoutness,
for, alas! most holy pilgrimages are anything but holy when taken in
their entirety.
The church at "Les Saintes" is a wonder-work. As at Assisi, in Italy,
there are three superimposed churches, a symbol of the three states
of religion; the crypt, called the catacombs, and suggestive of
persecution; the fortified nave, a symbol of the body which prays,
but is not afraid to fight; and the _chapelle supérieure_, the holy
place of the saints of heaven, the Christian counsellors in whose
care man has been confided. This, at any rate, is the professional
description of the symbolism, and whether one be churchman or not he
is bound to see the logic of it all.
Deep down in the darkened crypt are the _reliques_ of the dusky Sara,
the servant of the holy Marys. She herself has been elevated to
sainthood as the _patronne_ of the vagabond gipsies of all the world.
On the occasion of the Fête of Les Saintes Maries the nomads,
Bohemians, and Gitanos from all corners of the globe, who have been
able to make the pilgrimage thither, pass the night before the shrine
of their sainted _patronne_, as a preliminary act to the election of
their queen for the coming year.
The gipsy of tradition is supposed to be a miserly, wealthy,
sacrilegious fellow who goes about stealing children and dogs and
anything else he can lay his hands upon. He may have his faults, but
to see him kneeling before the shrine of his "_patronne reine Sara,_"
ragged and travel-worn and yet burning costly candles and saying his
_Aves_ as piously and incessantly as a praying-machine of the East,
one can hardly question but that they have as much devoutness as most
others.
The hotels of "Les Saintes" offer practically nothing in the way of
accommodation, and what there is, which costs usually thirty sous a
night, has, during the fête, an inflated value of thirty or even
fifty francs, and, if you are an automobilist, driving the most
decrepit out-of-date old crock that ever was, they will want to
charge you a hundred. You will, of course, refuse to pay it, for you
can eat up the roadway at almost any speed you like,--there is no one
to say you nay on these lonesome roads,--and so, after paying fifty
centimes a pailful for some rather muddy water to refresh the water
circulation of your automobile, you pull out for some other place--at
least we did. One must either do this, or become a real nomad and
sleep in the open, with the stars for candles, and a bunch of
beach-grass for a pillow. If you were a _Romany cheil_ you would
sleep in, or under, your own _roulotte_, on a mattress, which, in the
daytime, is neatly folded away in the rear of your wagon, or hung in
full view, temptingly spread with a lace coverlet. This in the hope
that some passing pilgrim will take a fancy to the lace spread and
want to buy it; when will come a trading and bargaining which will
put horse-selling quite in the shade, for it is here that the woman
of the establishment comes in, and the gipsy woman on a trade is a
Tartar.
Finally, on the last day, came the "_Grande Entrée des Tauraux,_"
which, it would seem, was the chief event which drew the Camargue
population thither. They came in couples, a man and a woman on the
back of a single Camargue pony, whole families in a Provençal cart,
on foot, on bicycles, and in automobiles.
[Illustration: Peasants of the Crau]
Six Spanish-crossed bulls, were brought up in a great closed van and
loosed in an improvised bull-ring, of which the church wall formed
one side, and the roof a sort of a tribune. What the curé thought of
all this is not clear, but as the alms-coffers of the church were
already full to the lids, and the parish depends largely upon the
contributions of visitors to replenish its funds, any seeming
sacrilege was winked at.
For three days we had "made the fête" and saw it all, and did most of
the things that the others did, except that we always slept at St.
Gilles, far away by the long flat road which winds in and out among
the marshes, flamingo nests, and rice-fields of the Camargue.
The "bull-fight," so called, was nothing so very bloodthirsty or
terrifying; merely the worrying by the "amateurs" of a short-legged,
little black bull, about the size of a well-formed Newfoundland dog,
or perhaps a little larger--appearances are often deceptive when one
receives a disappointment.
Truly, as Mistral says, Provence is a land of joy and, laughter, and
fêtes followed close on one another, it seemed.
We had seen the announcements in the local journals of a "_Mis à
Mort_" at Nîmes, and a "_Corrida de Meurte_"--borrowing the phrase
from the Spanish--at Arles, each to take place in the great Roman
arenas, which had not seen bloodshed for centuries; not since the
days when the Romans matched men against each other in gladiatorial
combat, and turned tigers loose upon captive slaves.
The "to-the-death" affairs of Arles and Nîmes appealed to us only
that we might contrast the modern throngs that crowd the benches with
those which history tells us viewed the combats of old. Doubtless
there is little resemblance, but all the same there is a certain gory
tradition hanging about the old walls and arches of those great
arenas which is utterly lacking in the cricket-field, tawdry plazas
of some of the Spanish towns. The grim arcades of these great Roman
arenas are still full of suggestion.
We did not see either the "_Mis à Mort_" at Arles, or the "_Corrida
de Meurte_" at Nîmes; the automobile got stalled for a day in the
midst of the stony Crau, with a rear tire which blew itself into
pieces, and necessitated a journey by train into Arles in order to
get another to replace it. Owing to the slowness of this apology for
a railway train, and the awkwardness of the timetable, the great
"_Mis à Mort_" at Arles was long over ere we had set out over the
moonlit Crau for Martigues on the shores of the Etang de Berre.
[Illustration: Les Saintes]
We knew Martigues of old, its _bouillabaisse_, the _Père Chabas_ and
all the cronies of the Café du Commerce where you kept your own
special bottle, of whatever _apéritif_ poison you fancied, in order
that you might be sure of getting it unadulterated.
"_La Venise de Provence,_" Martigues, is known by artists far and
wide. Chabas and his rather grimy little hotel, which he calls the
Grand Hotel something or other, has catered for countless hundreds of
artist folk who have made the name and fame of Martigues as an
artist's sketching-ground. After a three weeks' pretty steady
automobile run the artist of the party craved peace and rest and an
opportunity of putting Martigues's glorious sunsets on canvas, and so
we camped out with Chabas, and ate _bouillabaisse_ and the _beurre de
Provence_ and _langouste_ and Chabas's famous straw potatoes and rum
omelette for ten days, and were sorry when it was all over.