THE ROUTE TO TARASCON--CASTLE OF KING
RENÉ--BEAUCAIRE--NÎMES--MONTPELLIER--AN ACCIDENT--NARBONNE,
ANCIENT AND MODERN
Leaving Arles we speed northward to Tarascon and so drop downward a
thousand years in history as Tarascon belongs to the Middle Ages.
To me these mediæval cities and fortresses are far more charming, far
more interesting than the Roman remains with which this land abounds.
The latter seem cold and the lives led in them so far different from
our own, that with it and them we can have but little sympathy, but
this does not hold with the France of the middle ages. There, all is
warmth and color and distant music. So it is to-day at Tarascon; I can
almost fancy that King René and his troop of minstrels yet hold high
revels in yonder castle and I should not be greatly astonished to see
its portals open and give egress to Margaret of Anjou on her departure
for England. How, by the way, came such a woman, as history paints her,
to be daughter of a king who cared only for music and grapes, and the
joy of laughter?
This castle of Tarascon was King René's palace of pleasure to which he
came from Aix and held high revel; here you may still see his chapel
and there are many apartments of his time, amongst them his private
rooms all of which I did not see, for the fat jailer would under no
circumstances permit my entrance. My inclination for a fight in order
to secure an entrance was strong, but then it occurred to me that the
quarters to which I would be consigned might not be those of King René
and my sojourn therein might be protracted.
It is shameful that such a place should be used for such a purpose and
our intentions to effect a change are great as we roll off to inspect
the town.
I must confess that in Tarascon it is not so much King René as Daudet's
"Tartarin" who occupies my thoughts. On the whole, the place is very
lonely or the people all asleep. Certainly it does not seem a spot to
offer much adventure, but then, who can tell? As we repass the portals
of René's fortress, the jailer sits sound asleep and his prisoners
might escape without difficulty. The river is not very wide awake. I
feel sleepy myself, and Jean and the auto are in like condition. Here,
here, now! Wake up there, get your winged wheels and let's off and away!
So we spin past the frowning towers and crossing the Rhone by a fine
bridge, pass through Beaucaire, where high above the river are the
ruins of another castle once belonging to the Count of Toulouse. Wars
and time have left nothing save its tower and the arches of a chapel,
where Saint Louis prayed on his way to the Crusade. The Castle's last
tenant was Duke François de Montmorency, the last of his line and a
victim of Richelieu's.
Our ride to Nîmes is hot and dusty and under a glaring sun. Nîmes is
another spot too well known to need mention, and, like most of the
places well known and greatly talked about, it is not so interesting
as one of which one has heard but little. Certainly Nîmes, a bustling,
prosperous city cannot approach Aix or Arles in interest of story and
romance, and she has aside from her Roman remains nothing to detain us.
I find that I am not alone in my opinion of these Roman remains. James
in his _Little Tour in France_ speaks of them as monotonous and brutal,
and not at all exquisite. He referred especially to the amphitheatres
at Nîmes and Arles. They are cold and cheerless even under a brilliant
sunlight; perhaps the memory of their wild beasts and all the blood and
slaughter have much to do with this. Certainly here at Nîmes, while one
must admire the splendid arches and sweeping lines of the whole, one
does not linger with any such pleasure as, for instance, in Heidelberg
or among the ruined abbeys of England. The Maison Carrée is beautiful
to look upon and you feel glad that there is such a gem, yet it is cold
and you soon leave it with no regret. It stands on the busy street of
a too large town, and trams rattle and rush by its door. You cannot
picture men in togas and sandals on those steps to-day.
The rest of Nîmes, while probably a comfortable city in which to live,
will not hold your interest for a moment and I roll off and away
with no desire ever to return. How different our feelings at Avignon!
Leaving Nîmes we roll southward for some hours until Montpellier is
reached at half past five. The roads have been fine but the ride not so
pleasant as that of yesterday. Montpellier is simply a place to spend
the night with nothing to see, a busy place of some sixty thousand
people. The streets and sidewalks bubble and sparkle until a late hour
with the life that is so dear to these people,--open cafés and tables
all over the sidewalks, much wine but never a case of intoxication.
No matter in what part of the world you find this nation, they will
arrange some portion of their abiding place to resemble their beloved
Paris. It is so here, it is so in Saigon, and would be so on a desert
island.
This afternoon, during an enforced stoppage of fifteen minutes, I saw
Jean smile, and looking round beheld a group for a picture. In the
middle of the long dusty highway stood my little Jap servant gazing up
into the face of an old French woman perched high on a pile of rubbish
which loaded a small cart almost to the breaking point, the whole being
drawn by the most diminutive donkey I have ever seen. Surely there was
a strange juxtaposition; she who might have been a descendant of the
Vixen in Dickens' _Two Cities_ gazing down upon a representative of the
far-off rising Empire. Yama is greatly amused by the carts drawn by
small dogs, and in many ways he finds France different from the Land of
the Morning.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ AT TARASCON
From a photograph]
This is our third day and we are leaving Montpellier, having passed
from Aix to Arles, Tarascon, and Nîmes, and thence here, and have had
but one mishap, not at all our fault. In a long, straight stretch of
the Corniche, between Nice and Cannes, two men were walking away from
us and we fortunately were not moving at high speed. Our horn was blown
constantly and there were no other machines in sight. One of the men,
knowing we should follow the law of the land and pass him on his left,
kept his side of the road, but the other completely lost his head, and
dodging from one side to the other like a chicken, forced us either
to run over him or into the ditch. Of course we did the latter. Jean
managed the auto so well that no injury was done, as the ditch was but
a few inches deep, but then came the problem, how to get out. The soft
mud rendered our own power useless, we simply churned holes. Finally a
van came along, drawn by two stately Normandy horses, the driver, after
a moment's inspection of our plight, calmly hitched on to our springs
and drew us on to the high-road, after which the horses stood nodding
their great heads at us as though to say, "After all you have to come
to us when in trouble, as you are most of the time." A few francs
called down a benediction upon us from the old driver and we skimmed
away, the horses still holding converse concerning us as we vanished in
a cloud of dust.
Jean takes as much interest in this auto as one does in a horse. He
knows all its good points and one discovers its bad ones only by noting
his watching of certain parts. The tire of the right hand rear wheel
seems to bother him and late in the day that tire collapses. He claims
that that wheel, being mostly off the crown of the road, or rather
being forced off when we meet or pass anything is subject to a greater
strain than the others, and we have some trouble until at Montpellier
he buys some new ones, and to-day towards Carcassonne there has been no
trouble--but I anticipate.
The ride from Montpellier to Narbonne, where we have luncheon, is
pleasant but not of much interest. In one village the people are _en
fête_ for the return of Monseigneur, and we shortly meet his Reverence
in a coupé, the only sign of affluence I have noted in all the land.
When I ask Jean who is with his reverence, he suggests "his niece," and
adds that it is marvellous how many "nieces" these priests have. Now
that is the suggestion of Jean, who, as I have before stated, is not a
good Catholic and does not go to Mass. I know, for I saw him, that the
black-robed figure beside the one in purple was a priest.
Narbonne is only five miles from the sea, and one may scent the salt
marshes even in her streets. In the days of her birth, five centuries
before our era, she was surrounded by lakes and so connected with the
sea, making her one of the most important ports of the great Roman
Empire. She is described as beautiful in the year 95, possessed of
theatres, temples, baths, a superb capitol, and all that in those days
made the splendour of a Roman city. All this has vanished utterly in
the passage of Visigoths, and Saracens,--who defied Charles Martel
and Pépin until treason aided the latter. Its history onward is that
of France, but its decay began one hundred years before day dawned on
America, at which time the Jews were expelled and the port began to
fill up through the bursting of a dike.
To-day we roll into a commonplace town with but two relics even of
the middle ages, and nothing at all of the more ancient periods. A
fragment of a cathedral and a bishop's palace alone attract the eye.
Of the former there is little of interest, though it would have been a
great shrine if completed. The palace has a stately façade, but nothing
inside worthy of note.
We find a comfortable hotel here with a garrulous old lady seated near
its door, who immediately asks me where Madame is, and on my telling
her that I am not married, offers to bring forth several applicants for
the empty post, adding that I am none too old, as she herself married
again but lately at sixty-five, and I am but a boy. However, I decline
the proffered assistance, and we roll away out of the very ancient
city, leaving the old dame shaking her head at the "queer ideas of
those Americans."