CANNES
History—Ægitna—Quintus Opimus—Admiral Matthews takes Ile Ste.
Marguerite—La Californie—Climate—S. Cassien—Arluc—Legend—La
Napoule—Antibes—The Terpon stone—Cult of rude
stones—Utriculares—Lerins—Ste. Marguerite—The Man in the Iron
Mask—Mattioli—Fabricated pedigree for Napoleon—Marshal Bazaine:
his escape—S. Honorat—The stand made against Predestinarianism—S.
Augustine—Lerins a home of culture—Decay—Suppressed—Springs of
fresh water in the sea.
CANNES does not possess much of a history. It was but a fishing village
occupying a rock above a little port, built about a ruined castle and a
church, when “invented” by Lord Brougham, as already related.
Its history may be summed up shortly. Old Cannes possibly occupies the
site of the Ligurian town of Ægitna, destroyed B.C. 154 by the Consul
Quintus Opimus. The Ligurian natives had annoyed the Greek settlers
and traders on the coast, who were monopolising their delectable
seats, and the Greeks complained to Rome of their ill-humour and rough
deeds. Opimus was sent to their aid; he subdued the natives without
much trouble, and was accorded a triumph, which meant the leading of a
train of captives in chains behind his chariot through Rome, followed
by the butchery of the prisoners, whose carcases were thrown down the
Gemonian stairs, and drawn by hooks to the Tiber. Opimus was notorious
for his riotous living, and for his brutality. He was as handsome as
he was infamous—“_formosus homo et famosus_.” Cicero speaks of his
disreputable life, and records a jest he made. The Romans gave Ægitna
to the citizens of Marseilles. In the tenth century it pertained to the
abbey of Lerins, and in the Middle Ages maintained incessant contest
with the tyrannical abbots, in efforts to obtain municipal freedom. Not
till 1788—the year before the Revolution—did the town become free
from its ecclesiastical masters.
[Illustration: INTERIOR, CHATEAU ST. HONORAT]
From Cannes in 1580 the plague spread which ravaged Provence. It was
brought there by a ship from the Levant. To plague succeeded war. In
1746 Cannes succumbed to the Piedmontese and German forces that had
crossed the Var. After taking and sacking Cannes, where they got little
beyond fishing-nets, they plundered Grasse.
A little before this Admiral Matthews, who had taken Ventimiglia,
captured the Ile Ste. Marguerite. The war which led to the blockading
of the Ligurian coast by the English was occasioned by a trifle.
In 1738 the English were thrown into a paroxysm of indignation by
a tale that circulated, which was characterised by Burke as “The
Fable of Jenkins’s Ear.” Jenkins was master of a small trading sloop
in Jamaica, which seven years previously had been overhauled by a
Spanish coastguard boat. The captain, disappointed at finding nothing
contraband in the vessel, tore off one of Jenkins’s ears, and bade him
carry it to King George, and inform his Britannic Majesty that if he
should come that way he would serve him in the same manner. This ear
Jenkins carried about with him wrapped up in cotton wool. For seven
years Jenkins kept his ear, and produced it in taverns and to all he
met, as an instance of the indignities to which freeborn Britons were
exposed at the hands of Spain. Of course much correspondence took place
between the two governments relative to this bit of dried ear, but not
till 1737 was he called before a committee of the House of Commons,
when he appeared at the bar, exhibited his ear, that looked like a
dried mushroom or a truffle. War was proclaimed amidst great rejoicing
among the English. Church bells were rung. Walpole said bitterly, “You
are ringing your bells now; before long you will be wringing your
hands.”
The English fleet in the Mediterranean blockaded the ports of Spain.
But the death of Charles of Austria in the following year led to a
general scramble to get hold of portions of his vast possessions, and
the war assumed a more complicated character. The Spaniards, assisted
by the French, landed on the Italian coasts, and Admiral Matthews was
sent to drive them thence.
The story of Jenkins and his ear had roused all England. Pulteney
declared that England needed no allies—that Jenkins’s story alone
would raise volunteers anywhere. It was, however, more than hinted at
the time, that Jenkins had lost his ear in the pillory, and not through
the violence of a Spanish custom-house officer.
The war fizzled out. Matthews was badly served with men and ships from
England, and the Ile of Ste. Marguerite was speedily abandoned.
Compared with Nice, Cannes enjoys certain advantages. It is less towny
and commercial. It does not savour of Monte Carlo. It possesses on
the east the wooded height of La Californie, studded with hotels and
villas, commanding one of the most beautiful evening views in Europe.
When the sun goes down beyond the Estérel range, standing up in royal
purple against an amber sky, it may well be thought that this is a
scene of unsurpassable beauty.
Nice has to the East Mont Boron and Mont Alban, but they do not serve
for a residential suburb, as does La Californie. They are cut off from
Nice by the port, and they do not command so incomparable a view.
For the depth of winter, in gloom and cold, then no place for shelter
can be compared with Beaulieu, or Mentone, or Alassio. But when the
months of December and January are passed, then Cannes. Lastly, to cool
off before encountering the chills of spring in England, S. Raphael.
Cannes further has at its door, for a run of a day, Estérel, easily
reached, and never to be exhausted or forgotten. Then, again, from
Cannes, also accessible, the isles of Lerins, where the fresh breezes
blow.
“Verily,” says Leuthéric, “no country in the world possesses a climate
comparable to that of Cannes. There no extremes of temperature are
known, as in other parts of Provence. The belt of hills which enclose
the gulf form a screen intervening between the bay and the towering
mountains; and when the cold winds blow down from the Alps, they
sweep over the littoral, which lies always sheltered. Thanks to this
natural protection, they fall at some distance out to sea, and one can
mark the ruffle of the surface on the horizon, whilst that near the
beach gently undulates like the face of a tranquil lake. The nightly
loss of heat, favoured by the limpidity of a sky always cloudless,
is compensated for by the proximity of the sea, always slow to
give up its heat, and which bathes this coast with an atmosphere
ever temperate. The mean temperature is superior to those of Nice,
Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Rome, and even of Naples; it never falls below
freezing point, and never rises as high as in most of the towns of
Europe.
“This equilibrium of temperature is manifest in the simultaneous
development of vegetations apparently contradictory. At Cannes, above
every spot on the coast of Provence, the vegetations of opposite
climes melt into one another in an admirable promiscuity. The
landscape is veritably unique, and one feels there as if one were
transported into a vast conservatory, in which artificially are united
growths, the most different in character. The plain is covered with
oranges and lemons, from among which shoot up at intervals the fans
of palms trees and the spikes of aloes. The hills are crowned with
umbrella pines, whose majestic heads recall classic sites in the
Roman campagna. In the background of the picture are dark and dense
forests of pines, like a gloomy drapery above which rise the pure and
gleaming heights of the Alps in their eternal snows. Thus, as in a
single framework, one can see grouped together the great conifers of
the north, the olives of Provence, the golden fruits of the Balearic
Isles, the oleanders of Asia Minor, and the thorny vegetation of the
Algerian Tell.”
I must, however, in all fairness, add, as a qualification to this
picture, that in the early months of 1905, frost and hail did so smite
and blast the oranges, the lemons, the eucalyptus of the plain of the
Siagne, that the glory of the glossy leaves was gone, the country had
assumed the aspect of a withered orchard. The golden fruit were shed,
and the leaves were bleached and pendant.
If Cannes has gone up in the world, her neighbours have gone down.
About four miles from Cannes, in the Plain of the Siagne, is an outcrop
of the Estérel red sandstone, crowned by magnificent pines, cypresses,
cork trees and ilexes, that embower a chapel of S. Cassien and a farm.
Here, till recently, lived a hermit. These gentry are becoming scarce.
Possibly the prognostication of M. Anselme Benoît, in Jules Fabre’s
novel _Mon Oncle Celestin_, is accomplishing itself:
“Va au diable avec tes médailles et tes chapelets. Je te le prédis
depuis longtemps: à force d’embrasser les filles, tu finiras par
embrasser les gendarmes au detour de quelque chemin.”
In 1661 Bishop Godeau found a vagabond hermit at S. Jeanette, and tried
in vain to dislodge him; but the man hung on, and Godeau found him
still there in 1667.
These men pick up a subsistence by the sale of sacred medals, pictures,
scapulars, rosaries; sometimes manufacturing the latter themselves.
Very often they are simply lazy loons who can subsist on such sales and
occasional alms; but some have been as great scamps as Jacopo Rusca in
Fabre’s delightful story—which is a graphic picture of country life
and country people in the South, full of delicious word painting.
Formerly S. Cassien was the fortress to the town of Arluc. Castle and
town have disappeared wholly. Arluc, _Ara lucis_[14] as the place is
called in old deeds, was a shrine in a sacred wood. The Provençal
Troubadour Raymond Ferand tells a story of it.
Here lived once on a time a sorcerer named Cloaster; he had an altar
in the wood, at which he practised all kinds of _diableries_. There
was a bridge over the Siagne crossed by the people who came there to
worship. Now S. Nazarius was abbot of Lerins. One day, a youth named
Ambrose was sacrificing to idols at Arluc, when the devils laid hold
of him, raised him in the air, and flew away with him, in spite of all
his protests and kicks, to convey him to hell. But as they were thus
transporting him over the island of Lerins, Ambrose heard the chanting
of the monks, and he cried out to S. Honorat to help him. Then the
devils let go, and he came fluttering down like a feather into the
midst of the cloister of Lerins, where S. Nazarius received him; and
thenceforth Ambrose lived with the monks as a good Christian.
The Lerins Chronicle tells us that the Abbot Nazarius destroyed a
temple of Venus that was at Arluc, and built a church on its site,
which he dedicated to S. Stephen in A.D. 616, and attached to it a
convent of women. But in 730 the Saracens destroyed church and convent
and town, and sacked Lerins, where they massacred the abbot and five
hundred of his monks.
The town of Arluc was rebuilt by Pepin le Bref, but in 890 the Saracens
again destroyed it. It again struggled into existence, but was finally
utterly ruined and effaced by the Tard-Venus in 1361, under their
chief, who called himself “The Enemy of Man.” These Tard-Venus were one
of the Free Companies that ravaged the country, gleaning after others
had reaped.
The chapel was rebuilt, and when given to the abbey of S. Victor at
Marseilles, was dedicated to S. Cassien. The fête is on July 23rd;
religious services take place in the morning and a pleasure fair and
merrymaking in the afternoon.
A pretty watering place is La Napoule, that once enjoyed a prosperity
of which Cannes had no thought. It was the Roman station Ad Horea,
where vast stores of provisions were collected in magazines, for
transmission to the troops. The name Napoule has been supposed to be
the same as Naples, Neapolis, signifying the New Town, but no text
gives colour to this derivation, and it is more probable that La
Napoule comes from Epulia, _Provisions_, as it was a store place;
excavations made there when the railway was in construction laid bare
immense underground magazines and granaries, divided systematically
into compartments by pillars, and vaulted. These were originally well
ventilated. Remains of Roman constructions may still be seen by the
shore, and although no mention is made in the Itinerary of Antoninus
of a port there, it cannot be doubted that there was one for the
disembarkation or embarkation of stores.
The little feudal castle built on Roman substructures was wrecked by
the Saracen corsairs in the thirteenth century. The present village of
Napoule is tenanted by poor fishermen, but it is likely to look up as
a bathing place, and as a centre for excursions into the Estérel. The
tower is all that remains of a castle of the Counts of Villeneuve. The
rocks in the bay, beaten by the sea, have assumed fantastic shapes;
being of sandstone, they are not like porphyry, too hard to resist the
erosion of the sea.
And La Napoule, facing east, sees how that,—
“The eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.”
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, III. 2.
Another old place that fell into decay, but which has in it now hopes
of renovation, is Antibes. This was the Greek Antipolis, the town
_over against_ Nicæa, at the farther side of the bay.
Almost all of the monuments bearing Greek inscriptions that have
been found in such numbers in Provence belong to a date after the
Roman annexation. But this is not the case with regard to a curious
inscription discovered at Antibes on a black boulder, egg-shaped,
of diorite, a kind of basalt. This stone had no shaping given to it
by the hand of man, but on it was cut in archaic characters, this
inscription:—
“I am Terpon, servant of the august goddess Aphrodite; may Cypris
reward with her favours those who erected me here.”
What does this mean? How could the stone be Terpon, a servant of the
Goddess of Love?
It would seem to have been one of those mysterious sacred stones which
received worship from the most remote ages, a form of worship belonging
to the earliest people of whom anything is known. This _cult_ of rude
unshapen stones, very generally black, prevailed among the Phœnicians;
it forced its way into the worship of the Israelites. Such stones were
set up even in the temple of Jehovah by some of the kings, who inclined
to the superstitions of the Canaanites. The worship had so strong a
hold on the Arabs that Mohammed could not extirpate it, and the Black
Stone of Mecca still receives the veneration of the faithful. It forced
its way into the religion of the ancient Greeks, and though quite
incongruous with their mythology, held its own to the last.
Prudentius, the Christian poet (died about 410) shows us how strong was
the devotion, even in his day.
“His first food was the sacred meal, his earliest sight the sacred
candles, and the family gods growing black with holy oil. He saw his
mother pale at her prayers before the holy stone, and he, too, would
be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn.” (_Cont. Symmachum._)
It has been so tough that it is not extirpated yet.
In 1877 a correspondent of the Society of Anthropology at Paris wrote
about the worship as still prevailing in the valleys of the Pyrenees.
“One comes across these sacred stones most usually near fountains.
They are rough blocks of porphyroid, or amphibolite granite, left
on the mountain side by glacial action. They are almost invariably
shapeless, and rarely present any features that can distinguish
them from other great stones strewn about. One might pass them by
unnoticed but for the local traditions that attach to them and the
veneration with which they are regarded by the natives. In vain do the
priests preach against them. They have utterly failed to drive the
superstition from the hearts of their people. In vain do they get them
smashed up secretly, in hopes of thereby destroying these vestiges
of paganism; especially do they use their efforts against such as
serve as meeting-places to young men and girls. The natives, when
they come on the workmen engaged in the destruction, break out into
riot, and stop the work. When they cannot do this, then they collect
the fragments, replace them, and continue to surround them with
veneration. It is necessary to disperse the _débris_ of the Holy Stone
to put an end to the cult; but even then, the place where it stood is
regarded as sacred, and sometimes the clergy plant a cross there, as
the only means of turning the traditional reverence of the spot into a
new direction.”
Whether this religion of the black stone of Antibes goes back to
Phœnician or to Ligurian religion one cannot say—probably both
Phœnician colonist and Ligurian native shared the same devotion to rude
blocks of stone.
In Scotland, in Ireland, in Cornwall, in Brittany, among the graves of
the dead of the Bronze Age, almost invariably a piece of white quartz
or a jade weapon is found. Indeed, the bit of quartz is so constant
that a workman engaged in opening one of the barrows will cry out, “Now
we are coming on the bones,” when he sees it gleam. The bit of quartz
or jade pertained to the same category of ideas. It was the rude stone
protecting the dead, as the rude stone was the safeguard of the living,
the object of worship in life, of hope, of confidence in death.
At Antibes, in the wall of the Hôtel de Ville, is the stone with the
inscription, already spoken of, to the poor little dancing boy of
twelve, from the North. In the museum is an inscription to the memory
of a horse, by his sorrowing master. Another shows that at Antibes
there was a corporation of Utriculares, that is to say, of boatmen who
navigated the sea in vessels sustained by bladders. These were common
enough on the lagoons and the rivers, but exceptional on the coast.
Perhaps the most interesting excursion that can be made from Cannes
is to the isles of Lerins. Of these there are two—Ste. Marguerite
and S. Honorat—the latter formerly the seat of the great school and
monastery of Lerins. The islands take their name from some mythic Lero,
of whose story nothing is known; but Pliny informs us that there had
once been a town named Vergoanum situated on one of them which had
disappeared before the Christian era, and of which no traces remained.
That Ste. Marguerite was occupied by Greeks and Romans is testified
by the finding there of a bi-lingual inscription. But whatever relics
of structures may have been left by its old masters have been used up
again and again from mediæval times down to the present. The fortress
now standing is a barrack. It was built by Richelieu, considerably
enlarged by the Spaniards when they had possession of the island, and
then transformed after the plans of Vauban. The fortress was employed
mainly as a military or State prison.
[Illustration: THE PRISON OF THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK]
The most celebrated of its prisoners, or at least him about whom most
has been written, was the Man of the Iron Mask. It was due to Voltaire
that the story obtained such currency and excited so keen an interest.
In his _Age of Louis XIV._, published in 1751, he wrote:—
“Some months after the death of Mazarin an event happened which
is without a parallel in history. Moreover, and this is not less
remarkable, the event has been passed over in silence by every
historian. There was sent with the utmost secrecy to the castle of
the Isles of Ste. Marguerite, in the Sea of Provence, a prisoner
unknown, of a stature above the average, young, and with features of
rare nobility and beauty. On the way the prisoner wore a mask, the
chin-piece of which was furnished with springs of steel, so that he
could eat without removing it. Order had been given to kill him if he
ventured to uncover. He remained at the Isles until a trusted officer,
Saint Mars by name, Governor of Pignerol, having been appointed in
1690 to the command of the Bastille, came to Ste. Marguerite to fetch
him, and bore him thence—always in his mask—to the Bastille. Before
his removal he was seen in the isle by the Marquis de Louvois, who
remained standing while he spoke to him with a consideration savouring
of respect. In the Bastille the unknown was as well bestowed as was
possible in that place, and nothing that he asked for was refused
him. He had a passion for lace and fine linen; he amused himself with
a guitar; and his table was furnished with the best. The governor
rarely sat down in his presence. An old doctor of the Bastille, who
had often attended this interesting prisoner, said that, although he
had examined his tongue and the rest of his body, he had never seen
his face. He was admirably made, said the doctor, and his skin was
of a brownish tint. He spoke charmingly, with a voice of a deeply
impressive quality, never complaining of his lot, and never letting
it be guessed who he was. This unknown captive died in 1703, and was
buried by night in the parish of S. Paul. What is doubly astonishing
is this: that when he was sent to Ste. Marguerite there did not
disappear from Europe any personage of note. But observe what happened
within a few days of his arrival at the isle. The governor himself
laid the prisoner’s table and then withdrew and locked the door. One
day the prisoner wrote something with a knife on a silver plate and
threw the plate out of the window towards a boat on the shore, almost
at the foot of the tower. A fisherman to whom the boat belonged picked
up the plate and carried it to the governor, who, surprised beyond
measure, asked the man: ‘Have you read what is written on this plate,
and has any one seen it in your hands?’ ‘I cannot read,’ answered the
fisherman; ‘I have only just found it, and no one else has seen it.’
He was detained until the governor had made sure that he could not
read, and that no other person had seen the plate. ‘Go,’ he then said.
‘It is well for you that you cannot read.’”
How Voltaire could describe the prisoner as “with features of rare
nobility and beauty,” when he was invariably masked, so that no one
could see his face, is certainly remarkable.
When Voltaire found that this story had created a sensation, he
vouchsafed a solution to it. “The Iron Mask was without doubt a
brother, and an elder brother, of Louis XIV.”
But the mystery has been solved. We know with certainty who the
prisoner was—no one of great importance after all, but one against
whom Louis XIV. entertained a bitter and implacable resentment—Ercole
Antonio Mattioli.
Louis XIV. had a strong desire to obtain the Marquisate of Montferrat,
with its capital Cassale; but the marquisate belonged to Charles, Duke
of Mantua, a feeble, dissipated, extravagant fool. On the other hand,
the Empress and the Spanish party were bitterly hostile to French
schemes of aggrandisement. Mattioli acted as a paid agent of the
French Government to negotiate in secrecy a sale of Cassale to Louis;
and after he had received a good deal of payment for his services,
betrayed the whole intrigue to the Austro-Spanish Government. Louis was
furious, not only at having failed in this _coup d’état_, but also at
being so fooled. Mattioli was lured near to the frontier, and fallen
on upon Piedmontese soil, carried off and thrown into the fortress of
Pignerol, which was then in the hands of the French. From Pignerol he
was afterwards moved to Lerins, and then finally to the Bastille, where
he died. The whole story has been thoroughly thrashed out, and that the
Man in the Iron Mask was Mattioli and no one else has been conclusively
established.[15]
It would seem that an attempt was made to fabricate for Napoleon a
descent from the Iron Mask, who was assumed to be an elder brother to
Louis XIV., and by this means to establish for Napoleon a legitimate
right to the throne of the Capets. But the attempt was too absurd to
obtain credence, if ever proposed to Bonaparte. In the _Mémorial de
Sainte Hélène_ allusion is made to this.
“Conversation turned on the Mask of Iron, and all that had been said
on the subject by Voltaire, Dutens, etc., and what was found in the
_Mémoires_ of Richelieu was passed in review. These made him, as is
well known, to be the twin brother of Louis XIV., and his elder.
Then some one (probably Count de Las Casas) added that on studying
genealogical trees, it had been seriously shown that he, Napoleon,
was the lineal descendant of the Man in the Iron Mask, consequently
legitimate heir to Louis XIII. and to Henry IV. in preference to Louis
XIV. and his posterity. The Emperor replied that he had, in fact,
heard this, and added that human credulity and love of the marvellous
was capable of believing anything; that it would have been quite
possible to establish this to the satisfaction of the multitude,
and that there would not have lacked men in the senate capable of
producing the requisite demonstrations, and these the men who later
turned against him when they saw that he was unfortunate.
“Then we went on to discuss the particulars of the fable. The governor
of the isle of Ste. Marguerite at the time, so it was said, the man
to whose care the Iron Mask was confided, was called M. de Bonpart, a
very remarkable fact. This man had a daughter. The young people saw
each other and loved. The Governor thereupon communicated with the
Court; and it was there decided that no great inconvenience could
arise if the unfortunate man were suffered to find in love some
alleviation of his misfortunes. Accordingly M. de Bonpart had them
married.
“He who related this turned red when the facts were disputed. He said
that the marriage could be verified by inspection of the register
of a certain parish in Marseilles, which he named. He added that
the children born of this marriage were clandestinely removed to
Corsica, where the difference of language, or deliberate purpose,
caused the name Bonpart to be rendered Bonaparte, or Buonaparte.”
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF S. HONORAT]
Whether it was proposed to Napoleon at one time to circulate this
fable is uncertain. What is certain is, that, when he was emperor, he
took pains to have the registers of Ajaccio falsified or destroyed,
either in preparation for the publication of this fiction, or because
they revealed some unpleasant truths, which he was interested in
suppressing. The crucial difficulty in the way of formulating this
fable was that Saint Mars, and not any M. Bonpart, had been governor of
Ste. Marguerite whilst the Iron Mask was there.
The last celebrated prisoner at Ste. Marguerite was Marshal Bazaine,
who escaped with the assistance of his wife, it can hardly be doubted
with the connivance of the governor. Marshal François Achille Bazaine
was born at Versailles in 1811, and was destined to be a tradesman
by his very bourgeois parents. But as he did not relish the shop,
he entered the army as a private soldier in 1831, and served in
Algiers, where he sufficiently distinguished himself to be promoted
to a lieutenancy, and then become captain of the Foreign Legion in
the service of Queen Christina against the Carlists. In 1841 he again
served in Algiers, became colonel, and next general of brigade. He
was in the Crimean War, and returned from it as general of division.
Later he attended the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian to Mexico, when
he was raised to the rank of marshal. There he married a rich Creole.
His conduct in Mexico was not glorious. He left the emperor in the
most menaced position; but whether this desertion was due to himself
or to orders received from Napoleon is not known. After that, for some
time nothing was heard of him, but on the breaking out of the war with
Prussia and Germany he was appointed to the command of the Third Army
Corps. How he surrendered Metz, with 150,000 men, on October 23rd,
1870, is well known.
The questions asked of the jury at his trial were these:—
1. Is Marshal Bazaine guilty, on October 28th, 1870, of having signed
a capitulation in the open field, at the head of his army?
2. Was the consequence of this capitulation, that the army laid down
its arms?
3. Did Marshal Bazaine, both verbally and by writing, correspond with
the enemy, without having previously done all that was his duty?
4. Is Marshal Bazaine guilty, on October 28th, 1870, of having
capitulated to the enemy, and delivered over the fortress of Metz,
over which he had command, without having previously used every effort
in his power to defend it, and exhausted every means of holding out
that lay open to him in duty and honour?
The jury answered Yes, unanimously, to all these questions, and he
was sentenced to degradation and death; but the sentence of death was
commuted to imprisonment for twenty years. On December 25th—Christmas
Day—1873, he was taken from the Trianon, Versailles, in a close
carriage, to Villeneuve l’Etang, and thence conveyed to Antibes, where
he was placed on a steamboat and transferred to the fortress of Ste.
Marguerite. On August 10th, 1874, the director of the prison, named
Marchi, found Bazaine’s prison empty. The first thought in France, when
this news was spread by the telegraph, was that he had been allowed to
escape by the connivance of MacMahon. Then details were published which
put a romantic gloss on the evasion.
In the fortress of Ste. Marguerite three rooms had been placed at the
disposal of the prisoner, as well as a little terrace, which latter
was reached by a stone bridge with a wall on each side, and here stood
a sentinel, on the wall; but he could not see those who passed over
the bridge nor what went on upon the terrace, as the latter was partly
covered with an awning against the sun. On the terrace, to which led
several steps from the bridge, the Marshal had formed for himself a
little garden; and whilst working therein one day he found a choked
gutter intended for carrying off rain-water from the castle shoots; it
was bored through the rock; and he set to work to clear it. By means of
sympathetic ink he was able to maintain a correspondence with his wife;
and all was planned for his escape.
On the evening determined on he asked his gaoler, who usually
accompanied him for a stroll on the terrace after dinner, to allow him
to walk it alone, and this was readily permitted.
After a while Bazaine opened and slammed the gate, and the sentinel
supposed that he had passed out of the terrace garden, on his way back
to the prison. But that the Marshal, instead, had cleared the drain
hole and slipped through, he could not see, because the awning hid from
him all view of the terrace. In the drain was a rope, and this Bazaine
let down the face of the rock, making it fast to an iron bar crossing
the conduit. The descent was for eighty feet. Below burnt a light,
giving him notice that his wife was there awaiting him in a boat.
The descent was not a little arduous, and he scratched and bruised his
knuckles and knees against the rock, as a high wind was blowing at the
time. When he reached the bottom a voice across the water asked who was
there, and he struck a match and showed his face. The boat could not
come up under the cliff, and he was obliged to plunge into the water to
reach it. In the boat were his Creole wife and his nephew, a Mexican,
Don Alvarez de Rull. Mme. Bazaine had been in Genoa from August 3rd,
and had there hired a pleasure steam-yacht, the _Baron Ricasoli_, and
in this she had either remained in the harbour of Genoa or had gone
cruises in it, and had penetrated more than once to the Gulf of Saint
Juan. At La Croisette she and her nephew had been set ashore, nominally
that she might look at a villa, that she pretended she had an idea of
renting. There they hired a boat, and in this they rowed to the foot
of the cliff under the foot of the fortress, and awaited the arrival
of the Marshal. No sooner was he in the boat than they rowed to the
vessel, which had all steam up, and started at full speed for Genoa.
In a letter written by Mme. Bazaine to the French Minister of the
Interior, General Chabaud-Latour, dated August 16th, she stated that
she had had no confederates. Bazaine also made the same assertion in a
letter from Cologne. But no one believed this except the Ultramontane
editor of the _Univers_, who attributed the happy escape to the
merits of a consecrated scapular and a thread of the Blessed Virgin’s
smock, which Bazaine wore about his neck. Colonel Villette, who had
voluntarily shared the Marshal’s imprisonment, and who quitted Ste.
Marguerite the day after his escape, was arrested at Marseilles and
brought before the magistrates. During the investigation it became
clear enough that Bazaine had not been without confederates.
The rope by which Bazaine had let himself down had been woven partly
out of the cord that had tied up his boxes, partly out of a swing that
his children had used, when allowed to share his imprisonment for
awhile. Bazaine himself was not skilful enough to have made this rope;
it was woven by Villette. The iron bar to which it was asserted that
the rope had been fastened was not to be found in the drain; and it was
evident that some one must have held the end when the Marshal was let
down.
Marchi, the gaoler, protested that he had only allowed Bazaine the
liberty he enjoyed, because the latter had given his word of honour
not to attempt an escape. Bazaine’s valet, Barreau, was certainly
implicated in the matter; so was a Colonel Doineau, who, as head of the
_Bureaux Arabes_ in Algeria, had been sentenced to death for murder
and robbery, but had been pardoned by Napoleon II. He had managed the
correspondence between Bazaine and his wife. Several of the warders
were guilty at least of negligence, but were let off very easily with
one, two, or six months’ imprisonment.
The island of S. Honorat is smaller than Ste. Marguerite. It is a poor
little stony patch in the sea, a miniature of the larger isle, a bank
of rocks covered with a thin bed of soil, and rising not above four
feet over the sea level. And yet this isle, whose meagre clumps of
pines and whose battered tower hardly attract the attention of the
tourists, played a considerable part, through long centuries, in the
history of intellectual and religious growth in Europe. In 375 S.
Honoratus founded there his religious community, and grouped about him
a little family of earnest and intellectual men. In a few years it grew
in power, not the power of the sword, but of brain and earnestness
of purpose; and this island saved Western Christendom from a grave
disaster.
The Mussulman has a legend of Creation. According to that, when God
was creating man, He took a pellet of clay in His left hand, moulded
it into human shape, cast it aside to the left, and said, “This goes
to hell, and what care I?” In like manner He worked another ball of
clay with His right hand, flung that aside, and said, “And this goes to
heaven, and what care I?”
Now the master mind of Western Christendom, Augustine of Hippo, had
devised the same theory of caprice in the Most High, predestinating
to good or ill without reason, and that before Mohammed was born.
Divine Grace, he held, was paramount and irresistible, carrying man
to happiness or damnation without man being able to determine his
course one way or the other. Man, according to Augustine, was a mere
“Lump” of sin, damnable, utterly damnable. But God, in His inscrutable
providence, indistinguishable from wantonness, chose to elect some
to weal, and leave the rest to woe. This was a doctrine that did
away with the necessity of man making the smallest endeavour after
righteousness, from exercising the least self-control; of man feeling
the slightest compunction after committing the grossest sins. Augustine
sent his treatise to Abbot Valentine of Adrumetium. Valentine, in
calm self-complacency, sitting among the ashes of dead lusts, highly
approved of this scheme of Predestination. But a monk, Felix, when he
heard it read, sprang to his feet and uttered his protest. This protest
was reported to Augustine, who boiled over with bad temper at any
opposition; and he wrote a violent rejoinder “On Grace and Freewill,”
in which he insisted again on his doctrine of Fatalism.
The theses of Augustine reached Lerins, the nursery of the Bishops
of Gaul, and were read there with indignation and disgust. The monks
drew up a reply to Augustine that was temperate in tone and sound in
argument. Grace, they said, was mighty, but man had freewill, and could
respond to it or rebel against it.
Augustine answered. He attempted to browbeat these insignificant monks
and clergy on a petty islet in the sea. But they were not men to be
intimidated by his great name and intellectual powers, not even by his
sincere piety.
They argued that if his doctrine were true, then farewell for ever and
a day to all teaching of Christian morality. Man was but a cloud, blown
about by the wind, where the wind listed to carry it.
But for these stubborn monks of Lerins it is possible enough that
Western Christendom would have accepted a _kismet_ as fatal as that of
Mohammedanism, and that, indeed, it would have differed in name and
certain outside trimmings only from the Moslem religion. Rome was much
inclined to accept Augustine’s view, and give it definite sanction. But
the Gaulish bishops, bred in the nursery of Lerins, would not hear of
this. Finally, in the Council of Orange, in 529, they laid down the
main principle: “We do not believe,” they boldly said, “that God has
predestined any men to be evil.”
S. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was at one time a pupil at Lerins.
The “Confessions of Augustine” are indeed a beautiful picture of the
workings of a human soul; but not more tender and beautiful than that
revelation of a noble heart given to us in the “Confession of Patrick.”
Lerins—that is, especially Saint Honorat—was the refuge of the
intellect, the science, the literature, of a civilised world going to
pieces into utter wreckage.
As Guizot well said:—
“For culture of mind, one thing is requisite, and that is quiet. When
the social condition of the world is in convulsion, and all about is
barbarity and misery, then study suffers, is neglected and declines.
Taste for truth, the sentiment for what is beautiful, are plants as
delicate as they are noble. For their cultivation a sweet atmosphere
is necessary; they bow their heads and are blighted by storm. Study,
literature, intellectual activity, could not battle against general
discouragement, universal disaster; they must have a holdfast
somewhere, attach themselves to popular convictions, or perish. The
Christian religion furnished them with the means of living. By allying
themselves to that, philosophy and literature were saved from the
ruin that menaced them. One may say, without exaggeration, that the
human mind, proscribed, storm-tossed, found its only possible refuge
in churches and monasteries. It clung as a suppliant to the altars,
and pleaded to be allowed to live under their shelter, and at their
service, till better times should arrive, when they would expand in
the open air.”
Lerins suffered repeatedly and frightfully from the Saracens. Again and
again was it ravaged. In 725, Porcarius, the abbot, and five hundred
monks, were butchered by the Moors.
[Illustration: LA NAPOULE]
The interesting fortress, with its cloister and quadrangle in the
centre, was erected by the monks as a place of refuge from the Moors
and Algerine pirates.
But worse times were in store, when the Crown came to look on the great
abbeys as fiefs, to be given _in commendam_ to laymen, to bastards,
to favourites, to harlots, who might enjoy the revenues and ignore
the duties. Naturally enough, in such a condition of affairs, Lerins
declined. It became a place to which younger sons were relegated,
vicious monks were banished; it was resolved into a bastille for
evildoers, and sank to so low an ebb that, as a scandal, the abbey was
suppressed the year before the Revolution came, and swept all monastic
institutions away.
To the west of the Île Ste. Marguerite, in the sea pours up a copious
spring of fresh water. When the surface of the sea is calm, the upflow
can be easily distinguished by the undulations. There are other such
springs in the Gulf of Jouan, near Antibes, also at the mouth of the
Var; near the shore at Portissol, west of S. Nazaire; another again
near Bandol. In 1838, a M. Bazin tapped this latter when sinking a well
at Cadière, and such an abundance of water poured forth that the well
had to be abandoned. Off Cassis is a very considerable spring in the
sea, so strong that it carries floating bodies for a couple of miles
from its source. But the largest of all is in the Gulf of Spezzia, and
is called La Polla. This has been enclosed by the Italian government,
and vessels supply themselves with fresh water from it.
The rain which falls on the limestone causses, that form the terrace
to the Maritime Alps, is at once absorbed, and descends through
fissures to deep channels, where the accumulated water flows and breaks
forth in what are locally called _foux_, often in large volume, and
feed the rivers. Sometimes the streams drop into pot-holes; these are
called _embues_. The Siagne has its source in the Place de la Caille,
an ancient lake bed, but sinks, and comes forth 1,500 feet below in the
_foux_ of the Siagne. This river receives the Siagnole, which derives
its water from a number of these springs that spout out of the rock.
But in some cases the rain-water sinks to a level still lower, and then
breaks forth in the sea itself.
[Illustration: THE CASCADE DU CHATEAU, NICE]