GRASSE
Advantages of situation—Fine scenery in neighbourhood—The
_foux_—Manufactures—Romeo de Villeneuve—Charles of
Anjou—In Sicily—The Sicilian Vespers—Death of Charles—The
transfer of Episcopal Chair to Grasse from Antibes—Antoine
Godeau—Cathedral—Cathedral of Vence—Western Choirs—Attempt
to blow up the Bishop—The Hôtel Cabris—Louise de Cabris—The
Mirabeaus—Cabris—Gabriel Honoré—André Boniface—The
Gorges of the Loup—Gourdon—Mouans Sartoux—The Calvinist
Seigneur—Pompée de Grasse—Susanne de Villeneuve—François de Théas
Thorenc—Fragonard—Petty quarrels—The Flowers of Grasse.
GRASSE, once a great resort, during the winter, for visitors, has
ceased to be that, unless it be out of curiosity. They run up by train
from Cannes for a couple of hours and return by the next. The only
foreign residents there for the winter season are such as have bought
villas which they cannot dispose of. But Grasse possesses advantages
not shared by Cannes. It is far better protected against cold winds, as
it lies under the great limestone wall that supports the bare terrace
before the Alps. But, built as it is on a steep slope, it is not a
place where any one with a weak heart can live, unless content to live
at his window. There is scarce a bit of level street in the place. The
shops are naught and entertainments indifferent. But then—it is an
admirable centre for a stay of a few weeks, for one who desires to
explore the magnificent scenery of the Loup, the curious country in the
great loop made by the River Var, S. Vallier, and the upper waters of
the Siagne; Vence also and S. Jeannet under its marvellous crag, full
of crevasses and caves.
Grasse must always have been a place where men settled, from the
earliest days, as there is a _foux_, a great outburst of purest water
from the rock. The cave from which it rushes is now closed up, and the
water is led to the place where the women wash clothes, and by pipes is
conveyed about the town. There is, however, no evidence that the town
was one in Greek or Roman times, and it first appears in history in
1154; but then it was a place of some consequence, and shortly after
that it contracted alliances on an equal footing with the Pisans and
the Genoese. Throughout the Middle Ages it throve on its manufactures
of soap, its leather, its gloves, its refined oil and scents. It
was a free and independent town, governing itself like the Italian
communities, as a Republic, with its annually elected consuls; and when
it submitted in 1227 to Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, it made
its own terms with him. Grasse attained to great prosperity under the
celebrated seneschal Romeo de Villeneuve, a remarkable man, whose story
may here be told.
Douce, the heiress of the Counts of Provence, married Raymond Berenger
I., Count of Barcelona, who died in 1131. From him in direct line
descended Raymond Berenger IV., whose most trusty servant was Romeo de
Villeneuve. This man arrived at the court of the Count as a pilgrim,
staff in hand and cockleshell in hat, coming from a visit to S. James
of Compostello. Something attractive about the man drew the attention
of the Count, and he made of him his chief minister, High Constable
of Provence, and treasurer. His strict integrity, his great prudence,
and his justice, endeared him to the people as they did to his master.
Through his instrumentality, Eleanor, the daughter of the Count,
was married to Henry III. of England, and the niece of the Count to
Richard, Duke of Cornwall. Nice had revolted against the Count, and
Romeo reduced it to submission, and was appointed Governor of the
town. Raymond Berenger had succeeded to his Countyship when the barons
of Provence had asserted their independence and were warring against
each other and harassing the towns. Romeo clipped their wings, and did
all in his power to favour commerce and give prosperity to the towns.
Without curtailing the splendour of his master’s court, he took care
that there should be no extravagance there; and he gathered about it
the ablest men of the time, poets and the learned.
This was the period when mortal war was being waged between Pope
Gregory IX. and the Emperor Frederick II. The Emperor had been cursed
and excommunicated, a holy war proclaimed against him. Gregory issued a
summons to all the prelates of Europe for a General Council to be held
in the Lateran palace, at Easter, in which he would pour out all his
grievances against Frederick, and unite the whole church in pronouncing
Anathema Maranatha against him. But the Emperor himself had appealed
to a General Council against the Pope; one sitting in Rome, presided
over by Gregory, was not the tribunal to which he would submit. The
Count of Provence commissioned Romeo to go to Rome with a fleet
conveying bishops and cardinals to attend the Council. But Frederick
had prepared a powerful fleet in Sicily and Apulia, under the command
of his son, Enzio. Pisa joined him with all her galleys. The Genoese
and Provençal fleet met that of the Emperor off the island of Meloria;
the heavily laden Genoese and Provençal vessels were worsted after a
sharp conflict; three galleys were sunk, twenty-two were taken. Some of
the prelates went down in the sunken galleys; among the prisoners were
three cardinals, four archbishops, and six bishops.
Cardinal Otho was in the fleet, returning to Rome with English plunder.
He had been collecting enormous sums by exactions on the clergy and
freewill offerings for the replenishing of the Papal treasury, and the
prosecution of the holy war against Frederick. All this now fell into
the hands of the Imperialists. Romeo was not taken prisoner; he fought
with determined courage, and even captured one of the hostile vessels,
and brought it back to Marseilles.
Raymond Berenger died in 1245; by his will he had confided the regency
to Romeo, along with the guardianship of his daughters.
Romeo assembled the Provençal nobles and the representatives of the
chief towns, and made them swear allegiance to Beatrix, the daughter of
his old master, who had been constituted heiress of Provence.
Romeo succeeded in getting her married to Charles of Anjou, brother of
Louis IX. This was done with wise purpose, but events proved—events
over which Romeo had no control—that it was a disastrous mistake.
In his determination to root out the Hohenstauffen from Italy, Pope
Clement IV. offered the crown of Naples and Sicily to this Charles.
This was, as Mr. Addington Symons well says, “the most pernicious of
all the evils inflicted by the papal power on Italy and on Provence.”
Then followed the French tyranny, under which Boniface VIII. expired at
Anagni; Benedict XI. was poisoned at the instigation of Philip le Bel,
and the Papal see was transferred to Avignon.
Provence was henceforth involved in the bloody wars of Italy; its
wealth, its manhood, were drained away, its Count passed to Naples to
keep there his Court as a King, to the neglect of good government at
home.
Romeo underwent the fate of all honest and strong men. He had made
himself enemies, who accused him to the prince of having enriched
himself at the expense of the province.
Romeo produced his accounts before the prince, showing that he had not
betrayed his trust to the value of a denier; and then, resuming his
pilgrim’s habit, resumed also his wanderings. Finally he retired to the
castle of Vence, where he died. His will was dated December 18th, 1250.
Dante places him in Paradise:—
“Within the pearl, that now encloseth us
Shines Romeo’s light, whose goodly deeds and fair
Met ill receptance. But the Provençals,
That were his foes, have little cause for mirth.
Ill shapes that man his course, who makes his wrong
Of other’s worth. Four daughters were there born
To Raymond Berenger; and every one
Became a queen; and this for him did Romeo,
Though of mean state, and from a foreign land,
Yet envious tongues incited him to ask
A reckoning of that just one, who return’d
Twelve-fold to him for ten. Aged and poor
He parted thence; and if the world did know
The heart he had, begging his life by morsels,
’Twould deem the praise it yields him, scantly dealt.”
(Par. vi. 131-44).
Charles of Anjou was at all points opposite to his brother Louis
IX.—the Saint. The latter was true to his word, just, merciful, and
devoid of personal ambition. But Charles was rapacious, cruel, and of
a vehement character. His young wife, moreover, the sister of three
queens, excited him to aspire after a crown; and he saw in the county
of Provence only a stepping-stone towards a throne. He hoped to acquire
that of Constantinople, and he supposed that he was on his way thereto
when he listened to the summons of the Pope to dispossess Manfred of
the Sicilies. This disastrous resolve decided the fate of Provence, and
was the prime cause of its ruin. If in the Count of Anjou there had
been a glimmer of political sense, he would have seen how precarious a
matter it was to accept a sovereignty as a feudatory of the Holy See,
and to become the sport of circumstances ever shifting. He would have
perceived how fatal it would be to his fortunes to oscillate between
two centres; to exhaust the sources of his real strength in Provence
to maintain himself in Naples. The nobility of Provence shared in his
infatuation and eagerly joined in the undertaking. At the accession
of Charles under the wise government of Raymond Berenger, and the
judicious husbanding of its resources by Romeo de Villeneuve, Provence
was at its acme of prosperity. Charles brought it to ruin. After the
execution of Conradin, he rode roughshod over the people of Naples
and Sicily. To his exactions there was no end. The great fiefs were
seized and granted to Provençal or Angevin favourites; the foreign
soldiers lived at free quarters, and treated the people with the utmost
barbarity. There ensued an iron reign of force without justice, without
law, without humanity, without mercy.
Conradin, from the scaffold, had cast his glove among the crowd, and
called on Peter of Aragon, husband of Constance, daughter of the noble
Manfred, to avenge him, and assume his inheritance. In Sicily, where
the exactions, the tyranny of the French were most intolerable, a
secret correspondence was kept up with Peter of Aragon, and he was
entreated to deliver the island from its French masters. But before he
was ready, an outbreak of the populace precipitated matters. On Easter
Tuesday the inhabitants of Palermo had gone forth in pilgrimage to a
church outside the town to vespers. French soldiers, mingling with the
people, began to assault the young women. The Sicilians, the fathers,
brothers, lovers, remonstrated, and bade the French keep away from
the festival. The French gathered together and laid their hands on
their swords. At this juncture a beautiful girl, with her betrothed,
approached the church. A Frenchman, named Drouet, in wantonness of
insult, went up to her and thrust his hand into her bosom. The girl
fainted in her bridegroom’s arms. A cry was raised of “Death to the
Frenchmen!” and a youth started forward and stabbed Drouet to the heart.
This was the signal for a general insurrection. The cry spread to
the city: every house was searched, and every person whose dress,
speech, appearance, proclaimed him a Frenchman was massacred without
mercy. Neither old age, nor sex, nor infancy, was spared. And in those
Sicilian vespers, over two thousand of the Provençal and Angevin nobles
and their wives perished under the knives of the justly incensed
Sicilians.
When Charles heard of the massacre he burst into paroxysms of wrath.
He is described as next having sat silent, gnawing the top of his
sceptre, and then breaking forth into the most horrible vows of revenge.
Nor was the Pope behindhand in threats. It was to the Pope that Naples
and Sicily owed the incubus of Charles and his Provençals. Clement IV.
indeed was dead; Martin IV. now sat in his chair; but though there was
a change in the person of the Chief Pontiff, there was no change of
mind and policy.
The Palermitans sent an embassy to the Pope to deprecate his wrath,
addressing him: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us!” But even this adulation could not abate his rage.
He proclaimed a crusade against the Sicilians. Heaven was promised to
those who should draw the sword against them. Anathema was proclaimed
against all who took their side.
But Peter of Aragon was indifferent to this ecclesiastical bluster, and
the Sicilians were desperate. In spite of the blessings and promises of
the Pope, Charles encountered only disaster. His fleet was destroyed,
his son, Charles of Salerno, was captured; his treasury was exhausted,
and the principal nobility of Anjou and Provence had been decimated in
the Sicilian vespers. He sank into despondency and died, 1285.
Eventually, at the intercession of King Edward I. of England, the young
prince, Charles the Lame, was released. He swore to pay 20,000 marks,
and surrender his two sons as hostages till the sum was paid, and allow
the claim to the Two Sicilies to drop. But no sooner was he freed than
Pope Nicolas IV. annulled the treaty, released Charles of his oaths,
and crowned him with his own hands. Charles did not surrender his sons,
nor pay his ransom.
“This decree of Nicolas,” says Dean Milman, “was the most monstrous
exercise of the absolving power which had ever been advanced in the
face of Christendom: it struck at the root of all chivalrous honour, at
the faith of all treaties.”
But Charles was fain to content himself with his counties of Provence
and Anjou, and not allow himself to be drawn or impelled into wars by
the Pope. In Provence he found wounds to staunch, ruins to repair.
It is highly to his credit that he frankly accepted this difficult
and not very brilliant part. He avoided war, paid his father’s debts,
re-established his finances, and acquired in return the nickname of
Charles the Miserly. After a reign of twenty-four years he died in 1309.
Grasse had been in the diocese of Antibes, but in 1243 Pope Innocent
IV. transferred the seat of the bishop from Antibes to Grasse, on
account of the unhealthiness of the former, and its liability to be
plundered by the Moorish corsairs.
The bishops of Grasse were not in general men of great mark. Perhaps
the least insignificant of them was Godeau.
Antoine Godeau, born at Dreux in 1605, lived in Paris with a kinsman
named Couart; and as he thought he had the poetic _afflatus_, he
composed verses and read them to his kinsman. Couart took the lyrics
to some literary friends, and they were appreciated. Godeau went
on writing, and a little coterie was formed for listening to his
compositions; and this was the nucleus out of which grew the Academie
Française. Couart introduced Godeau to Mlle. de Rambouillet, and he
became her devoted admirer, and a frequenter of her social gatherings.
The lady says, in one of her letters to Voiture: “There is here a man
smaller than yourself by a cubit, and, I protest, a thousand times more
gallant.” Godeau, who entered holy orders and became an abbé, through
his devotion to Mlle. de Rambouillet, obtained the nickname of “Julie’s
Dwarf.” Voiture was jealous of him, begrudged the favour of the lady
who dispensed the literary reputations of the day, and he addressed a
rondeau to Godeau:—
“Quittez l’amour, ce n’est votre métier,
Faites des vers, traduisez le psautier;
Votre façon d’écrire est fort jolie;
Mais gardez-vous de faire folie,
Ou je saurais, ma foi, vous châtier
Comme un galant.”
Godeau lived at a time when dancers about the saloons of the toasts
and blue stockings of Paris were rewarded with spoils from the Church;
and Godeau, when aged only thirty, was offered and accepted the united
dioceses of Grasse and Vence. He was consecrated, and went to Grasse.
Thence he wrote to Julie:—
“Dans ce désert où je suis retourné,
Mon cœur languit, à souffrir destiné,
Et mon esprit plein de mélancolie
Ne pense plus qu’à la belle Julie.
* * * * *
J’aimerai mieux être aux fers condamné
Dans le dur froid de l’âpre Corilie.
O Rambouillet! O nymphe si jolie,
Souffrirez vous que je sois confiné
Dans ce désert?”
However, Godeau did his duty at Grasse. Indeed, eventually, wearied
with squabbles with his chapter there, he threw up Grasse and
retained only Vence, the poorest of all the sees in France.
[Illustration: CARROS]
Godeau was a voluminous writer, theological, historical, and poetic;
and excelled in none of these lines. In fact, all his works have been
consigned to the literary dust heap. His appointment to Grasse had
followed on his presentation of a paraphrase of the Benedicite to
Richelieu. The Cardinal said, “Sir, you have given me Benedicite. I in
return render you Grasse (Grâce).”
The Cathedral of Grasse is of singularly uncouth Gothic, of the twelfth
century, with huge drums of pillars, and the crudest of vaulting
without any moulding being afforded to the ribs. Grasse possessed
formerly a very curious feature, shared with Vence, of having the choir
for bishop and chapter in the west gallery, over the porch. As this
was so exceptional, and as the early apse would not admit of seats
for the chapter, a late bishop built out a hideous structure behind
the high altar to accommodate himself and the clergy. But at Vence
the arrangement remains intact. That church of Vence is of very early
architecture, I am afraid of stating how early. It consists of a nave
with double aisles on each side, and the double aisles are carried
round at the west end. Each of the aisles on both sides of the nave is
stone-floored and vaulted underneath, forming a gallery. At the west
end, both aisles are so floored, and here, above the narthex or porch,
is the choir, with most beautifully carved stalls, bishop’s throne at
the extreme west end; and in the middle of this odd little upstairs
choir is the lectern with its vellum MS. book of antiphons left as
last used. The date of the stalls is 1455-1460, and the lectern is but
little later.
According to tradition the church was built in the sixth century,
on the site of a Pagan temple, and an image of an idol was buried
under the foundations of each of the pillars. What is certain is that
into two of the piers are inserted figures in alabaster from a Roman
monument, and that numerous votive tablets and inscriptions are walled
into the church. The beautiful woodwork of the western choir escaped
being blown to splinters by a happy accident in 1596.
On Sunday, the Feast of S. Michael, the bishop occupied his throne at
mass. When he stood up for the Gospel, his foot broke through the floor
of his stall. He drew his foot out, and after the conclusion of the
Creed proceeded to the pulpit to preach. Whilst he was away a choir boy
looked into the hole made by the bishop’s foot, thrust in an arm and
drew out his hand full of a black powder, which he showed to an officer
standing by, who at once recognised that this was gunpowder. A search
was made, and it was found that enough gunpowder had been rammed in
under the throne to blow bishop and chapter up, and wreck the church. A
fuse had been inserted through a hole bored in the woodwork, and it was
supposed that the purpose was to light this when the bishop returned
from the pulpit. A messenger was at once sent to him, but he refused to
desist from his sermon, calmly proceeding with it to the conclusion,
although the congregation, who had received wind of the attempt,
had begun to clear out of the church. He returned to his throne and
remained there to the end of the service. It was never ascertained by
whom the plot was arranged, whether by Huguenots, or whether it was due
to private malice.
A corner house looking out on the Cours at Grasse, between the rue du
Cours and the Passage Mirabeau, is the old town residence of the family
of Cabris. The noblesse of the neighbourhood had their town residence
at Grasse, and there spent the winter in such gaieties as could be got
up between them.
In this house, No. 2 and 4 of the street, lived Louise, Marchioness de
Grasse-Cabris, the youngest and most beautiful of the sisters of the
famous Mirabeau. She had been married when quite young to the Marquis,
who was a prey to ungovernable fits of temper, and was considerably
her senior. But there was an excuse for his violence in the dissipated
conduct of his wife.
The Mirabeaus were an old Provençal family which had migrated from
Florence through some of the civic broils in the twelfth century.
The patronymic was Arrigheti, which got by degrees Frenchified into
Riquetti. The estate and title of Mirabeau were only acquired in 1568,
by Jean Riquetti, who was first consul of Marseilles.
The Mirabeaus were a race of men singularly energetic, independent,
and audacious. They boasted that they were all hewn out of one block,
without joints. They were proud, rude, with original and strongly
marked features, free-and-easy morals, and violent tempers. Jean
Antoine de Riquetti, Marquis de Mirabeau, brigadier of infantry, was
wounded in defending a bridge in the battle of Cassans. He fell, and
all the hostile army passed over him. His old sergeant, seeing him
down, put an iron pot over his master’s head, and fled. This pot saved
Mirabeau’s life, but his right arm was broken, and he was so damaged
that he was obliged to wear a silver collar to keep his head upright.
He was presented by the Duke de Vendôme, under whom he had fought, to
Louis XIV., who received him with some commonplace remark; to which the
old crippled soldier replied rudely, “If in quitting the Colours he had
come to Court _payer quelque catin_ he would have received more honour
and less words.” Vendôme was so scared at his audacity, that he said,
“Henceforth, Riquetti, I will present you to the enemy, and never again
to the king.”
The son of this man was Victor de Riquetti, who called himself “l’Ami
des Hommes,” a fantastic hodge-podge of contradictions. He was a
philanthropist and a despot, a feudalist, but also a reformer, a
professed friend of mankind, but a tyrant in his own family. He hated
superstition, but scoffed at “la canaille philosophique.” Separated
from his wife, he was engaged in lawsuits with her for years, which
published to all Provence the scandals of the domestic hearth of the
House of Mirabeau. The eldest son of this man was Gabriel Honoré,
the great orator, and the youngest daughter was Louise, Marchioness
de Grasse-Cabris. The feudal castle of the Cabris is on the way to
Draguignan. Cabris occupies a conical hill in a dreary limestone
district, where the soil is so sparse that even the olive cannot
flourish there—it exists, that is all. The place is supplied with
water from cisterns that receive the rain from the roofs. Honoré was
disfigured by smallpox at the age of three, and he retained thenceforth
an extraordinary hideousness of aspect which struck his contemporaries,
but which does not seem in the slightest to have impeded his success
with women. His father declared that physically and morally he was a
monster. The romance of his life begins when he was aged seventeen,
when, owing to a love intrigue, and to debts, his father obtained a
_lettre de cachet_ and had him imprisoned in the isle of Ré. From
that time ensued a pitiless struggle, a veritable duel, between the
imperious father and the ungovernable son. In 1772 Honoré married
Emilie de Marignane at Aix; she was a wealthy heiress, but he speedily
dissipated her fortune. His father obtained an order that he should be
interned at Manosque. But he broke bounds and came to Grasse to visit
his sister. Two days later an indecent pasquinade appeared placarded
over the walls of Grasse, containing aspersions on the characters of
the principal ladies of rank who spent the winter there.
It was at once bruited abroad that Mirabeau and his sister, Mme. de
Cabris, had concocted the lampoon between them. Mirabeau was incensed.
He was too much of a gentleman thus to defame ladies; and he hunted out
M. de Villeneuve-Mouans as the author of this report. He went after him
one day, when this old gentleman was walking on the road bare-headed,
with an umbrella spread, horsewhipped him, and broke the umbrella over
his shoulders.
The consequence was that a _lettre de cachet_ was taken out against
Louise; but on investigation it turned out that it was the Marquis
de Grasse-Cabris, the husband of Louise, who was the author of the
scurrilous lampoon, and that Honoré had known nothing about it.
When the Revolution broke out, the Marquis fled. The Castle of Cabris
was sacked by the mob, and Louise and her husband lived for ten years
in great poverty as _emigrés_.
When, finally, she returned to Provence it was to ruined Mirabeau. The
castle had been wrecked, but she contrived to have a cottage built out
of the ruins for herself and for her husband, who had sunk into dotage.
The brother of the great orator and of Louise de Cabris was André
Boniface, Deputy to the Estates-General for the nobility of Limoges.
His excesses at table, and his corpulence, procured for him the
nickname of Mirabeau Tonneau. Gabriel Honoré reprimanded him for
ascending the tribune when he was drunk. “Why,” he replied, “you have
monopolised all the vices of the family, and have left but this one
to me.” “In any other family but ours,” he said, “I would pass as a
disgrace. In mine, I am its most respectable member.” He emigrated to
Germany. An epigram was composed on him:—
“L’horreur de l’eau, l’amour du vin
Le retiendront au bord du Rhin.”
Grasse, as already said, is an admirable centre for excursions, and no
excursion is finer than that up the Gorge of the Loup. It is not often
that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this
it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold
sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the
scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its
trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the
right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from
an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required
power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of
great beauty.
It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of
the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as
seen from the hill-side as the train swings down from the direction of
Nice, or whether from the side approached from Grasse, whence up the
Gorge is obtained a glimpse of snowy peaks.
[Illustration: CASCADE, GORGE OF LOUP]
[Illustration: FALL IN THE GORGE OF THE LOUP]
There are views one sees that never leave one, that fix themselves in
the mind indelibly; and the view of the mouth of the Loup Gorge is
certainly one such scene.
The ravines of the Tarn are visited by increasing numbers of tourists
every year, and I know them well; but I do not think them superior to
those of the Loup, the Cians, and the Var. Visitors to the Riviera
are for the most part content to hug the coast and cling to the great
centres of civilization, where there are shops, casinos, and theatres,
and do not branch off afield. Only the day before writing this page,
I heard a gentleman who had spent several winters on the Côte d’Azur
remark that “After a while one gets very sick of the Riviera.” I
promptly inquired whether he had penetrated any of the ravines sawn
in the limestone; whether he had visited the mountain villages, such
as Thouet de Bëuil; whether he had explored the Estérel. No—he knew
nothing of them. In fact, through a dozen winters he had seen naught
save the vulgar side of Provence.
It does not suffice to look at the mouth of the Gorge of the Loup.
The ravine must be ascended, and that not by the new track, cut to
accommodate the lazy, high up in the cliff, but by the footpath at
the bottom. This will lead in the first place to an exquisite subject
for the artist. On the farther bank is planted a little chapel with a
cell once tenanted by a hermit. In mid torrent is a pile of rocks, and
a light bridge of rudest construction traverses the river; above the
piles of stone in the centre, against the purple gloom of the gorge,
rises a crucifix, bathed in golden sunlight. Below, where it can root
itself, is flowering laurestinus.
Farther up, after a succession of magnificent scenes, one drops upon
a little house, where trout can be eaten, lying behind a waterfall;
and to assist the visitor in reaching it, the proprietor runs out with
a big umbrella to protect him from the torrent dissolved into rain.
Further up the ravine come other and finer leaps of water, the main
stream of the Loup, in maddest gambol of youth; and over all flash out
gleams of the eternal snows.
Le Bar has a painting in the church, representing a Dance Macabre; it
is, like all other such dances, of the fifteenth century. It represents
Death armed with his bow among a party of dancers. Some are dying, and
their souls are leaving their bodies. The picture is accompanied by a
long Provençal inscription.
High above the entrance to the Gorge of the Loup stands the village of
Gourdon, on the limestone terrace. The only spring water the place was
supplied with came from a fountain in a cave in the face of a sheer
precipice, reached by a thread of path, a foot to eighteen inches wide,
along the cliff, and this, moreover, interrupted by a rift, usually
crossed by a plank. But not infrequently this plank fell, or was
carried away. Then those in quest of water leaped the gap, went on to
the cave, filled their pitchers, and returned the same way, springing
over the interval, where a false step would entail certain death.
At Mouans Sartoux, between Grasse and Cannes, stood the castle of a
grim Huguenot Seigneur. The church was under the patronage of the
Chapter of Grasse. The Sieur Reinaud invited two Calvinist ministers
to his castle. In 1572, when the curé of Mouans had summoned a friar
to help him for Christmas Day, and to preach, as he himself was a
poor speaker,—just after midnight the Sieur sent armed men into the
parsonage to threaten to kill the friar if he preached next day. On
Christmas morning, accordingly, the frightened man abstained, and
the congregation had to go without instruction on the lessons of the
day. Then the Sieur broke into the church when the parishioners were
communicating, along with his men-at-arms and his ministers, and made
one of these latter ascend the pulpit and harangue the congregation,
pour contumely on the Catholic Church, and denounce all respect for
holy seasons. The fellow further told the people that their fathers
and mothers were burning in hell-fire for not having revolted from the
Church. Next, the Sieur renewed his threats that, should “the _Cagot_
of a friar” venture to address the parishioners in the afternoon, he
would do him to death. At vespers he again invaded the church, and set
up one of his preachers to speak to the people. He did the same on
the two following days. The Consuls of Mouans appealed to the Chapter
of Grasse for protection, but they were incapable of affording them
effectual aid.
The son of this Sieur, Pompée de Grasse, was more zealous even than his
father, and did not confine himself to threats. He placed sword-edge
and firebrand at the disposal of the Huguenot cause. He was a terror to
the whole countryside. At last, one night, when he was at Bormes, in
the Maures, a party of Catholics, disguised in long cloaks, managed to
get into his castle, and killed him and his brother, and set fire to
the place. His widow, Susanne de Villeneuve, and her two daughters,
were allowed to escape by boat to Hyères.
We are vastly mistaken if we regard the parties in the Wars of Religion
as all Lamb on one side, and all Wolf on the other. As a matter of
fact, except in the Cevennes, the Reform was favoured only by the
lesser nobility, not out of religious conviction, but out of a spirit
of turbulence bred by the long disorders of the English occupation of
Aquitaine, and the riots of the Free Companies. They resented the firm
hand imposed on them by the Crown, and they hoped to get pickings out
of Church estates.
The people generally were not touched by the negatives of Calvinism.
After that Henry IV. joined the Church, most of the nobility and
country gentry followed his example—again, not from conviction, but
because they saw that the game of resistance was up.
At present, in the department of Var there are 1,500 Protestants out of
a population of 310,000. In Alpes Maritimes they number 1,000 out of
nearly 294,000, and most of these sectaries are foreign importations.
If there had been deep-rooted convictions, these would not have
been dissipated so certainly. In the Cevennes, Calvinism holds on
notwithstanding persecution in the past, and in Ireland is a reverse
instance.
But to return to Susanne de Villeneuve.
In 1592 the Duke of Savoy was at Grasse, and resolved on chastising
this Susanne as a capital influence among the Razats. Actually two
women at this period fomented the fury and bloodshed of internecine
strife. The Baron de Vins, head of the Leaguers, had been killed
in 1589 outside Grasse. The Countess Christine de Sault, his
sister-in-law, had been the headpiece, as he the arm, of the party,
and it was she who, in desperate resolve to save the Catholic cause,
invited Charles Emmanuel of Savoy to give his help against the king.
What she was on one side, that was Susanne de Villeneuve on the
other—implacable, fanatical, remorseless in hate, and with an iron
will.
The Duke of Savoy besieged Susanne in her castle of Mouans, and she
defended herself gallantly; but, forced to surrender through lack of
food, she imposed as condition that the castle should be spared. The
duke broke his word, and levelled it. She was furious, reproached him,
and demanded 40,000 crowns indemnity, or she would brand him as a liar
and perjurer. He promised the money, but departed without paying. She
hasted after him, caught him up in the plain of Cagnes, and poured
forth afresh a torrent of abuse. He spurred his horse, so as to escape
it; she flung herself in the way, held the bridle, and used her woman’s
tongue with such effect that Charles Emmanuel was glad to disburse the
money on the spot so as to effect his escape.
The castle has disappeared to its foundations. The church stands
intact, unrestored.
I have spoken of the Hotel of the Cabris family in the Cours. No. 1 is
the ancient mansion of the family of Théas-Thorenc, and was built by
Count François, who was engaged in the wars of Louis XV., and whose
praises have been sung by Goethe. He was at the taking of Frankfort,
when his commander-in-chief, the Prince of Soubise, acquired the
celebrity of the epigram:—
“Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main:
‘J’ai beau chercher! où diable est mon armée?
Elle était là pourtant, hier matin?’”
He died there August 15th, 1793.
Another Grasse worthy is Fragonard, the painter, a mercer’s son, born
at Grasse in 1732. He was put as clerk to a notary in early youth, but
wearied mortally of the office, and in 1748 was given to the painter
Bucher to be trained as an artist.
He was in full swing of favour and success in Paris when the Revolution
broke out.
“Soon events became tragic, and then began the dusk of that bright and
gentle life which had to him hitherto been one long smile. Frago had
no thought of flying from the storm, and republicanism always remained
idealised in his mind. But sadness oppressed his heart, and his
friends shared it with him. These old pensioners of the king, enriched
by the aristocracy, could not see without regret the demolition of
the _ancien régime_, and the ruin of their protectors, emigrated,
imprisoned, hunted down. Without hating either royalty or Jacobinism,
the little group of artists of plebeian birth and bourgeois manners
suffered in silence the great revolution in which all their past went
down, as the shadows of old age deepened on them. Their art was out of
fashion. Their piquant scenes, their dainty subjects, were no longer
possible in the midst of political and social convulsions, and a few
years sufficed to convert the respect of yesterday into the contempt
of to-day. Eighty years must pass before taste and justice could bring
men back to love the charming French school of 1770, to understand its
importance in the history of the national genius, so as to induce the
digging of its relics forth from under the cinders of the Revolution,
the empire, and the bourgeois royalty.”[13]
A curiously small life must have been that of these little towns under
the _ancien régime_, when the time of warfare was over. It was made
up of petty quarrels, of scandals and gossip. Even in the cathedral,
the bishop and the dean and the chapter were at loggerheads over the
merest trifles—whether two or three _coups_ of the censer should be
given to the bishop, whether a bow to him should extend to the hams of
the canons. Perhaps the funniest quarrel was about the patronage of the
diocese. The bishop issued a pastoral, in which he announced that he
had constituted S. Honoratus the patron of the clergy of Grasse, and
did not say “with the assent of the chapter.” Whereupon the incensed
chapter cut the name of Honoratus out of their calendar, and refused to
celebrate his festival. Some of the bishops were engaged in incessant
strife. When one died, to him might be applied the epigram written on
Clement XI.:—
“A vermibus terræ consumendus in tumulo,
A vermibus ecclesiæ jam consumptus in throno.”
“The happy little town of Grasse,” says Lenthéric, “seems to be the
very home of flowers and perfumes. Its forests or olives furnish the
finest and sweetest oil of Provence; its groves of oranges and lemons
yield at the same time flowers in abundance and fruit in maturity.
About it are roses, jessamine, mint, heliotrope, Parma violets,
mignonette, cultivated over wide tracts, as are also everywhere
the common pot-herbs. The transformation of these natural products
into perfumery has become the predominant industry of the district;
and the neighbourhood of the Alps allows of the addition to this
domestic flora of a thousand wild flowers and herbs—thyme, lavender,
rosemary—all to be gathered close at hand.”