Blows shivering out of scarcely cloud-flecked skies,
While warm the sunshine on the gray moss lies
And lights the crimson fires low leaves spread there.
Beyond, hills mightier far are lifted, stern
With ancient forest where wild crags break through,
And, nobler still, far laid against the blue,
Peaks, white with early snow, for heaven yearn——
Whose azure depths the quiet shadows wear——
Crowning my mountain with their distance fair.
III.—NIGHT.
The strong uplifter of the wilderness,
Holder of mighty silence voiceful made,
With bird-song drifting from the spruces’ shade,
By quivering winds that murmur in distress,
Proud stands my mountain, clothed with loneliness
That awesome grows when darkness veileth all
And south wind shroudeth with a misty pall
Of hurrying clouds that ever onward press,
As something seeking that doth e’er elude,
Flying like thing pursued that dare not rest,
By some wild, haunting thought of fear possessed——
Not drearness all, the cloud-swept solitude:——
Through changing rifts the starlit blue gives sign
Of mountain nearness unto things divine.
IV.—DAWN.
Slow breaks the daily mystery of dawn——
In far-off skies gleams faint the unfolding light,
Anear the patient hills wait with the night
Whose shadow clings, nor hasteth to be gone.
A passionate silence filleth all the earth——
No wind-swept pine to solemn anthem stirred,
No distant chirp from matin-keeping bird,
Nor any pattering sound of leafy mirth.
And seems that waiting silence to enfold
All mystery of life, all doubt and fear,
All patient trusting through the darkness here,
All perfect promise that the heavens hold.
Lo! seems my mountain a high-altar stair
Whereon I rest, in thought half-dream, half-prayer.
V.—ON FIRE.
Scarce dead the echo of our evening song
That o’er the camp-fire’s whirling blaze up-soared
With wealth of hidden human sweetness stored—
Life-thoughts that thronged the spoken words along;
Scarce lost our lingering footsteps on the moss,
When the slow embers, that we fancied slept,
With purpose sure and step unfaltering crept
The sheltering mountain’s unsmirched brow across.
Alas! for straining eyes that through long days
Of strong-breathed west wind saw the pale smoke-drift
Its threat’ning pennons in the distance lift,
So setting discord in sweet notes of praise.
Yet hath the wounded mountain in each thought
Won dearer love for wrong, unwilling, wrought.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ROC AMADOUR.
La douce Mère du Créatour,
A l’église, à Rochemadour,
Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits,
C’uns moultes biax livres en est faits.
—_Gauthier de Coinsy, of the thirteenth century._
There is not a place of pilgrimage in France without some special
natural attraction, from Mont St. Michel on the stormy northern coast to
Notre Dame de la Garde overlooking the blue Mediterranean Sea; from
Notre Dame de Buglose on a broad moor of the Landes to Notre Dame de la
Salette among the wild Alps of Dauphiné; but not one of these has the
peculiar charm of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour in Quercy, which stands on
an almost inaccessible cliff overhanging a frightful ravine once known
as the _Vallée Ténébreuse_. And not only nature, but history, poetry,
and the supernatural, all combine to render this one of the most
extraordinary of the many holy sanctuaries of France. For this is the
place where, as hoary legends tell, the Zaccheus of the Scriptures ended
his days in a cave; where the peerless Roland hung up his redoubtable
sword before the altar of the Virgin; where Henry II. of England, Louis
IX. of France, and so many princes and knights of the middle ages came
to pay their vows; where Fénelon, the celebrated Archbishop of Cambrai,
was consecrated to the Virgin in his infancy, and where he came in later
life to pray at his mother’s tomb; and which has been sung by mediæval
poets and rendered for ever glorious by countless miracles of divine
grace.
On a pleasant spring morning we left Albi to visit the ancient province
of Quercy. From the fertile valley of the Tarn, overlooked by the fine
church of Notre Dame de la Drèche—the tutelar Madonna of the
Albigeois—we entered a dreary, stony region beyond Cahuzac, then came
into a charming country with wooded hills crowned with old towers and
villages, as at Najac, where the railway passes through a tunnel
directly beneath the ancient castle in the centre of the town, and
crosses the Nexos on the other side of the hill, which we found merry
with peasant women washing their linen in the clear stream and hanging
it on the rocks to bleach in the hot sun. The whole region is full of
wild ravines kept fresh by capricious streams and the shadows of the
numerous hills. The wayside grows bright with scarlet poppies, the
cherry-trees are snowy with blossoms, the low quince hedges are aflush
with their rosy blooms, and the pretty gardens at the stations are full
of flowers and shrubbery. We pass Capdenac, supposed by M. de
Champollion to be the ancient Uxellodunum whose siege is related by
Cæsar in his _Commentaries_, also on a high hill around which the river
Lot turns abruptly and goes winding on through a delicious valley, the
water as red as the soil, perhaps owing to the recent rains. Soon after
the country becomes rocky and desolate again, with stone walls instead
of flowering hedges, and flocks of sheep here and there nibbling the
scant herbage among the rocks, looking very much inclined, as well they
may, to give up trying to get a living. The whole region is flat, the
earth is ghastly with the pale stones, everything is subdued in tone,
the horizon is bounded by low, dim hills, the sky becomes sombre and
lowering. But there is something about all this desolation and silence
and monotony that excites the imagination. Even our epicurean friends
felt the strange charm, for this is the region where truffles abound,
scented out by the delicate organ of the animal sacred to St. Anthony
the Great!
We were now in Quercy, which comprises such a variety of soil and
temperature. In one part everything is verdant and flowery, the hills
wreathed with vines and the trees covered with fruit-blossoms, and over
all a radiant sun; perhaps a little beyond is a stunted vegetation, the
trees of a northern clime, and a country as rough and bleak as Scotland,
with long, desolate moors, arid and melancholy in the extreme.
Some way this side of Roc Amadour we came upon the singular gap of
Padirac, where St. Martin is said to have had a race with the devil.
They were both mounted on mules, St. Martin’s a little the worse for
wear, and, starting across the country, they flew over walls and
precipices and steep cliffs, without anything being able to arrest their
course. Satan at length turned to the saint and laid a wager he could
open a gap in the earth no unaided mortal could pass. St. Martin laughed
him to scorn. The angel of darkness then stretched forth his hand, and,
laying on the ground his forefinger, which suddenly shot out to an
enormous length, the earth instantaneously opened beneath it to the
depth of a hundred and fifty feet. “Is that all?” cried the undaunted
saint, as he spurred his beast. The mule sprang across the yawning gulf,
one hundred feet broad, leaving the impress of his hoofs in the solid
rock, as is to be clearly seen at this day. One of these foot-prints
turns out, because, we are told, St. Martin’s mule was lame. This, of
course, made his victory the more wonderful. After this feat the saint,
in his turn, challenged the demon, and, resuming their race, St. Martin
hastily thrust a cross of reeds into the fissure of a rock they came to,
whereupon Satan’s mule reared and plunged and overthrew its rider, to
the everlasting glory of St. Martin and the triumph of the cross. A more
durable cross of stone now marks the spot where this great victory was
won over the foul fiend.
Roc Amadour is in the diocese of Cahors, which is a picturesque old town
built on and around a cliff in a bend of the river Lot. It is quite
worthy of a passing glance and has its historic memories. In ancient
times it bore so imposing an appearance that one of its historians
pretends Cæsar, when he came in sight of it, could not help exclaiming
in his astonishment: “Behold a second Rome!” In the middle ages, if we
are to believe Dante, it was notorious as a city of usurers. He ranks it
with Sodom; but perhaps this was owing to his strong Italian prejudices
against the French popes, for at Cahors was born John XXII., whom he
severely consigns to ignominy. We are shown the castle where this pope
passed his childhood, at one edge of the town. Passing by the
university, we are reminded by a statue of Fénelon, in the centre of a
square called by his name, that he was once a student here. There is
likewise a street named after Clement Marot, whose version of the Psalms
became so popular among the Huguenots. He was born at Cahors, and is now
regarded as one of its chief celebrities, though not tolerated in the
place in the latter part of his life from a suspicion of heresy, then
almost synonymous with treason, which caused him to be imprisoned in the
Châtelet. He thus protested against the accusation:
“Point ne suis Lutheriste,
Ne Zuinglien, et moins Anabaptiste,
Bref, celui suis qui croit, honore et prise
La saincte, vraye, et Catholique Eglise.”[6]
Though released, he was obliged to take refuge in Geneva on account of
the use of his paraphrase of the Psalms in the conventicles, but there
he was convicted of misdemeanors, and, by Calvin’s orders, ridden on an
ass and sent out of the city. Neither fish nor flesh, he now sought an
asylum in Italy—“the inn of every grief,” as Dante calls it—and died at
Turin in 1546.
In passing through Quercy we are struck by the constant succession of
old castles bearing some historic name like that of Turenne. Among
others is Castelnau de Bretenoux, associated with Henry II. of England,
on a lofty eminence on the left shore of the Dordogne, overlooking one
of the most beautiful valleys of France, which is said to have inspired
Fénelon with his description of the island of Calypso. A few years since
this vast château was one of the finest specimens of feudal architecture
in France. Its embattled walls and massive towers; the long gallery,
with its carvings and gildings, where the fair ladies of the time of
Louis Treize used to promenade in their satins and rich Mechlin laces,
admiring themselves in the rare Venetian mirrors; the spacious cellars
with their arches; the vaulted stables, and the vast courts with their
immense wells, have been greatly injured by fire and now wear an aspect
of desolation melancholy to behold. Galid de Genouilhac, a lord of this
house, who was grand écuyer in the time of Francis I., and would have
saved his royal master the defeat of Pavia had his advice been listened
to, was disgraced for presuming to admire the queen, and, retiring to
this castle, he built a church, on which he graved the words still to be
seen: _J’aime fort une_.
“Roc Amadour!” cried the guard, as he opened the door of our
compartment, disturbing our historic recollections. We looked out. There
was nothing to correspond with so poetical a name. No village; no
church. Nothing but a forlorn station-house on a desolate plain. Behind
it we found an omnibus waiting to catch up any stray pilgrim, and we
availed ourselves of so opportune a vehicle, rude as it was. We could
not have asked for anything more penitential, so there was no occasion
for scruples. It leisurely took us a few miles to the west, and finally
dropped us mercifully in the middle of the road before a rough wayside
inn that had a huge leafy bough suspended over the door to proclaim that
poor wine only needed the larger bush. We were not tempted to enter. The
driver pointed out the way, and left us to our instinct and the
pilgrim’s staff. There was nothing to be seen but the same dreary
expanse. But we soon came to a chapel in the centre of a graveyard,
where once stood a hospice with kind inmates to wash the bleeding feet
of the pilgrim. Then we began to descend diagonally along the side of a
tremendous chasm that suddenly opened before us, passing by a straggling
line of poor rock-built huts, till we came to the archway of an old
gate, once fortified, that stands at the entrance of a village. This was
Roc Amadour.
Imagine a mountain suddenly cleft asunder, disclosing a frightful abyss
several hundred feet in depth, lined with gray rocks that rise almost
perpendicularly to the very clouds, and, far down at the bottom, a
narrow stream winding sullenly along, looking like one of the fabled
rivers of the _abisso doloroso_ of the great Florentine. Half way up one
side of this _Vallée Ténébreuse_, as it was once called, hangs the
village of Roc Amadour like a cluster of birds’ nests along the edge of
a precipice, over which are suspended several churches, one above the
other, that seem hewn out of the very cliff. These are the famous
sanctuaries of Roc Amadour that have been frequented from time
immemorial.
Several hundred feet above these churches, on the very summit of the
mount, is the old castle of La Charette, with its ramparts overlooking
the whole country. This served in the frequent wars of the middle ages
not only for the defence of the sanctuary below, but of the town of Roc
Amadour, which was then a post of strategic importance, and has its page
in history, as every reader of Sir John Froissart knows.
The sight of this mountain, that looks as if rent asunder by some awful
convulsion of nature, with the castle on its summit; its rocky sides
once peopled with hermits, and still alive with the voice of prayer; the
churches that swell out of the cliff like the bastions of a fortress;
the village on the ledge below; and the dizzy ravine in the depths, is
truly astonishing.
The town looks as if the breath of modern progress had never reached it.
It is the only place in all Europe where we did not meet an Englishman
or an American. One would think the bivalve in which it is lodged just
opened after being closed hundreds of years. There is the Rue de la
Couronnerie, where Henry Court-Mantel was crowned King of Aquitaine.
There are the remains of the house occupied by his father, Henry II. of
England, with the huge well he caused to be dug, from which the
inhabitants still draw water. And there are the remains of the four
fortified gates ruined in the wars of the sixteenth century.
We stopped at the Grand Soleil—a hostel of the ancient time, with an
immense kitchen that would have delighted Jan Steen, with beams black
with the smoke of a thousand fires, hung with smoked hams, and gourds,
and strings of onions, and bright copper kettles—the very place for
roistering villagers such as he loved to paint. It looked ancient enough
to have been frequented by King Henry’s soldiers. It had a very cavern
for a fireplace, with seats at the yawning sides beneath the crook, with
which M. Michelet says the sanctity of the fireside was identified in
the middle ages far more than with the hearth, and curious old andirons,
such as are to be seen at Paris in the Hôtel de Cluny, with a succession
of hooks for the spits to rest on, and circular tops for braziers and
chafing-dishes. Stairs led from the kitchen to the story above, well
enough to mount, but perilous in descent, owing to their steepness.
Everything is rather in the perpendicular style at Roc Amadour. An
invocation to _Marie conçue sans péché_ was pasted on the door of our
chamber, and a statuette of the Blessed Virgin stood on the mantel. The
windows looked out on a little terrace dignified with the name of
Square, where children were playing around the great stone cross. At
table we found the sacrifice of Abraham and other sacred subjects
depicted on our plates, and a cross on the salt-cellar. Roast kid and
goat’s milk were set before us with various adjuncts, after which
patriarchal fare we issued forth to visit the celebrated chapel of Our
Lady of Roc Amadour. We found we had done well in fortifying the outer
man for such an ascent, particularly as the day was far advanced, and
the morning supplies at Albi had been of the most unsubstantial nature.
We passed several houses with old archways of the thirteenth century,
but the most imposing house in the place is a seigneurial mansion of the
sixteenth century, now occupied by the Brothers of the Christian
Doctrine. We soon came to the foot of the staircase leading up the side
of the cliff to the sanctuaries. It consists of about two hundred and
forty steps, partly hewn out of the rock, and is generally ascended by
the devout pilgrim on his knees and with prayer—an enterprise of no
trifling nature, as we are prepared to vouch. On great festivals this
sacred ladder is crowded with people ascending and descending. Their
murmured prayer is a gradual Psalm indeed. The first flight of one
hundred and forty steps leads to a platform around which stood formerly
the dwellings of the fourteen canons consecrated to the service of Mary.
A Gothic portal, with a stout oaken door covered with fine old
scroll-work of iron, leads by another flight of seventy-six steps to the
collegiate church of Saint-Sauveur, one of the six remaining
sanctuaries. Formerly there were twelve chapels built among the rocks in
honor of the twelve apostles, but these all disappeared in the time of
the unsparing Huguenots. Twenty-five steps more, at the left, bring you
to a terrace with the miraculous chapel of Our Lady on one side and that
of St. Michael on the other. Between them, directly before you, is the
cave-like recess in which Zaccheus is said to have ended his days, and
where he still lies in effigy on his stone coffin. _Rupis amator_ he was
called—the lover of the rock—whence St. Amateur, and St. Amadour, the
name given him by the people. _Amadour quasi amator solitudinis_, say
the old chronicles. His body remained here from the time of his death,
in the year of our Lord 70 (we adhere to the delightful old legend),
till 1166, when, according to Robert de Monte, who wrote in 1180, his
tomb was opened at the request of a neighboring lord who was extremely
ill and felt an inward assurance he should be healed by the sacred
relics. His faith was rewarded. The body was found entire, and, on being
exposed to public veneration, so numerous and extraordinary were the
miracles wrought that Henry II. of England, who was at Castelnau de
Bretenoux, came here to pay his devotions. It was now enshrined in the
subterranean church of St. Amadour, where it remained several ages so
incorrupt as to give rise to a common proverb among the people: _Il est
en chair et os, comme St. Amadour_. But when the country was overrun by
the Huguenots, his _châsse_ was stripped of its silver mountings, his
body broken to pieces with a hammer and cast into the fire. Only a small
part of these venerable remains were snatched from the flames.
The terrace between the chapel of Our Lady and that of St. Michael is
called in ancient documents the Platea S. Michaelis. Here all official
acts relating to the abbey were formerly drawn up. The overhanging
cliff, that rises above it to the height of two hundred and twenty feet,
gives it the appearance of a cavern. Built into it, on the left, is the
chapel of St. Michael, on the outer wall of which, suspended by an iron
chain, is a long, rusty weapon popularly known as the sword of Roland.
Not that it is the very blade with which the Pyrenees were once cleft
asunder and so many kingdoms won. That shone as the sun in its golden
hilt, the day the mighty Paladin came, on his way to Spain, to
consecrate it to the Virgin of Roc Amadour and then redeem it with its
weight in silver; whereas this is as dim and uncouth as the veriest spit
that ever issued from a country forge. The wondrous Durandel, to be
sure, was brought back after Roland’s death and hung up before the altar
of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, to whom it had been vowed, where it
remained till carried off by Henry Court-Mantel, who, adding sacrilege
to hypocrisy, came here in 1183 on the pretext of a pilgrimage, and, in
order to pay the soldiers who served him in his rebellion against his
father, pillaged the holy chapel so revered by King Henry. But his crime
did not remain unpunished. He was soon after seized with a fatal
illness, and died, but not unabsolved, in the arms of Gerard III.,
Bishop of Cahors.
Over Roland’s sword hang the fetters of several Christians delivered
from a terrible slavery on the coast of Barbary by Our Lady’s might.
Among these was Guillaume Fulcheri of Montpellier, whose mother came to
Roc Amadour on the eve of the Assumption to offer a cake of wax to burn
before the image of Mary for the redemption of her son. That same night,
while she was keeping vigil with prayers and tears before the altar of
the Virgin, his fetters were loosened in a mysterious manner, and he
made his escape. One of his first acts on his arrival in France was to
come to Roc Amadour with an offering of gratitude.
So, too, Guillaume Rémond of Albi, being unjustly confined in prison,
with no other hope of liberty but his trust in the power of the glorious
Virgin of Roc Amadour, while he was persevering in prayer during the
night-watches his chains suddenly fell off about the ninth hour, to the
utter amazement of the jailer, who became too powerless to hinder his
escape. He took his fetters with him to hang up before the altar of his
potent protectress.
On the pavement beneath these and other trophies of divine grace is an
old chest with iron bands, fastened with a double lock of singular
mechanism, in which pilgrims centuries ago deposited their offerings.
Just beyond is a doorway over which is painted St. Michael holding the
balance of justice in which we must all be weighed. This door leads by a
winding stone staircase up to St. Michael’s chapel, the oldest of the
existing edifices of Roc Amadour. This singular chapel is built against
the rough cliff which constitutes one side of it, as well as the vault.
It is chilly, and cave-like, and dripping with moisture. A niche at one
end, like an arcosolium in the catacombs, is lined with faded old
frescos of Christ and the evangelists. The windows are low and narrow,
like the fissures of a cave, being barely wide enough for an angel in
each—Michael with his avenging sword, Gabriel and his _Ave_, and Raphael
looking protectingly down on Tobias with his fish. On one side is a
spiral ascent to a balcony over the Platea S. Michaelis, from which the
abbot of Roc Amadour used to bestow his solemn benediction on the crowd
on the great days of pardon.
Descending to the Platea, we stop before the entrance to Our Lady’s
chapel to examine the half-effaced mural paintings of the great
mysteries of her life around the door. Near these can be traced the
outlines of a knight pursued by several spectres, popularly believed to
be the _ex-voto_ of a man who sought to be delivered from the ghosts of
those whose graves he had profaned. But the learned say this fresco
refers to the famous old _Lai des trois Morts et des trois Vifs_ of the
thirteenth century, in which three young knights, gaily riding to the
chase, with no thought but of love and pleasure, meet three phantoms,
who solemnly address them on the vanity of all earthly joys. This
painting was a perpetual sermon to the pilgrims, enforced, moreover, by
the numerous tombs that surrounded the sanctuaries of Roc Amadour. For
many noble families of the province, as well as pilgrims from afar,
wished to be buried near the altar where their souls had gotten grace.
So great was the number buried here in the middle ages that the monks
became alarmed, and refused to allow any more to be brought from a
distance. But Pope Alexander III. issued a bull declaring this place of
burial free to all except those under the ban of the church.