in every direction by roads and paths, and containing various edifices
that were used as hunting-lodges. This vast wood affords no view,
except along the seemingly interminable path in which the spectator
stands, the vista of which, carried on with mathematical regularity,
terminates in a point. This is the case with all the great forests of
France except that of Fontainebleau, where nature is sometimes seen in
her most picturesque form. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of
Saint Germain, the wild boar still makes his savage lair; and still the
loiterer, in these lengthened alleys, is startled by a roebuck or a
deer springing across the path....
Independently of the noble satellites attached to the court, the
infinite number of official persons made its removal to Saint Germain,
or the other royal seats, seem like the emigration of a whole people.
Forty-nine physicians, thirty-eight surgeons, six apothecaries,
thirteen preachers, one hundred and forty maîtres d'hôtel, ninety
ladies of honor to the queen, in the sixteenth century! There were also
an usher of the kitchen, a courier de vin (who took the charge of
carrying provisions for the king when he went to the chase), a sutler
of court, a conductor of the sumpter-horse, a lackey of the chariot, a
captain of the mules, an overseer of roasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer
(to provide ananches for Easter), a valet of the firewood, a
paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth, and a hundred
more for whose offices we have no names in English.
The grand maître d'hôtel was the chief officer of the court. The royal
orders came through him; he regulated the expenses; and was, in short,
to the rest of the functionaries, what the general is to the army. The
maître des requetes was at the head of civil justice; the prevôt de
l'hôtel at the head of criminal justice....
When the courtiers presented themselves at the château, some in
chariots, some on horseback, with their wives mounted behind them (the
ladies all masked), they were subjected to the scrutiny of the captain
of the gate. The greater number he compelled to dismount; but the
princes and princesses, and a select few who had brevets of entrance,
were permitted to ride within the walls.
At court the men wore sword and dagger; but to be found with a gun or
pistol in the palace, or even in the town, subjected them to a sentence
of death. To wear a casque or cuirass was punished with imprisonment.
The laws of politeness were equally strict. If one man used insulting
words to another, the offense was construed as being given to the king;
and the offender was obliged to solicit pardon of his majesty. If one
threatened another by clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, he
was to be assommé according to the ordinance; which may either mean
knocked down, or soundly mauled--or the two together. If two men came
to blows, they were both assommé. A still more serious breach of
politeness, however, was the importunity of petitioners.
When the king hunted he was accompanied by a hundred pages, two hundred
esquires, and often four or five hundred gentlemen; sometimes by the
queen and princesses, with their hundreds of ladies and maids of honor,
mounted on palfreys saddled with black velvet.
St. Cloud
By Augustus J. C. Hare
[Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."]
Very near the station is the Château de St. Cloud, set on fire by the
bombs of Mont-Valèrien, in the night of October 13, 1870, and now the
most melancholy of ruins. Sufficient, however, remains to indicate the
noble character of a building partly due to Jules Hardouin and Mansart.
The château is more reddened than blackened by the fire, and the
beautiful reliefs of its gables, its statues, and the wrought-iron
grilles of its balconies are still perfect. Grass, and even trees, grow
in its roofless halls, in one of which the marble pillars and
sculptured decorations are seen through the gaps where windows once
were. The view from the terrace is most beautiful.
The name of St. Cloud comes from a royal saint, who was buried in the
collegiate church, pulled down by Marie Antoinette (which stood
opposite the modern church), and to whose shrine there is an annual
pilgrimage. Clodomir, King of Orleans, son of Clovis, dying in 524, had
bequeathed his three sons to the guardianship of his mother Clotilde.
Their barbarous uncles, Childebert and Clotaire, coveting their
heritage, sent their mother a sword and a pair of scissors, asking her
whether she would prefer that they should perish by the one, or that
their royal locks should be shorn with the other, and that they should
be shut up in a convent.
"I would rather see them dead than shaven," replied Clotilde proudly.
Two of the princes were then murdered by their uncles, the third,
Clodowald, was hidden by some faithful servants, but fright made him
cut off his hair with his own hands, and he entered a monastery at a
village then called Nogent, but which derived from him the name of St.
Clodowald, corrupted into St. Cloud.
Clodowald bequeathed the lands of St. Cloud to the bishops of Paris,
who had a summer palace here, in which the body of François I. lay in
state after his death at Rambouillet. His son, Henri II., built a villa
here in the Italian style; and Henri III. came to live here in a villa
belonging to the Gondi family, while, with the King of Navarre, he was
besieging Paris in 1589. The city was never taken, for at St. Cloud
Henri was murdered by Jacques Clément, a monk of the Jacobin convent in
Paris, who fancied that an angel had urged him to the deed in a
vision....
From this time the house of the banker Jérôme Gondi, one of the Italian
adventurers who had followed the fortunes of Catherine de Medici, was
an habitual residence of the Court. It became the property of Hervard,
Controller of Finances, from whom Louis XIV. bought it for his brother
Philippe d'Orléans, enlarged the palace, and employed Lenôtre to lay
out the park. Monsieur married the beautiful Henriette d'Angleterre,
youngest daughter of Charles I., who died here, June 30, 1670, with
strong suspicion of poison. St. Simon affirms the person employed to
have confest to Louis XIV., having used it at the instigation of the
Chevalier de Lorraine (a favorite of Monsieur), whom Madame had caused
to be exiled. One of the finest sermons of Bossuet describes the
"disastrous night on which there came as a clap of thunder the
astonishing news! 'Madame is dying! Madame is dead!' At the sound of so
strange a wo people hurried to St. Cloud from all sides to find panic
over all except the heart of the princess."
In the following year Monsieur was married again, to the Princess
Palatine, when it was believed that his late wife appeared near a
fountain in the park, where a servant, sent to fetch water, died of
terror. The vision turned out to be a reality--a hideous old woman, who
amused herself in this way. "The cowards," she said, "made such
grimaces that I nearly died laughing. This evening pleasure paid me for
the toil of my hard day."
Monsieur gave magnificent fétes to the Court at St. Cloud, added to the
palace with great splendor, and caused the great cascade, which Jérôme
Gondi had made, to be enlarged and embellished by Mansart. It was at
St. Cloud that Monsieur died of an attack of apoplexy, brought on by
overeating after his return from a visit to the king at Marly.... The
chateau continued to be occupied by Madame, daughter of the Elector,
the rude, the original, and satirical Princess Palatine, in whom the
modern House of Orleans has its origin, and here she died during the
regency of her son....
The Régent d'Orléans, nephew of Louis XIV., received Peter the Great at
St. Cloud in 1717. In 1752 his grandson, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, gave
at St. Cloud one of the most magnificent fêtes ever seen in France.
In 1785 the Due d'Orleans sold St. Cloud for six million francs to
Queen Marie Antoinette, who made great alterations in the internal
arrangements of the building, where she resided during the early days
of the Revolution.
It was at St. Cloud that the coup d'état occurred which made Napoleon
first-consul. This led him to choose the palace of St. Cloud, which had
been the cradle of his power, as his principal residence, and, under
the first empire, it was customary to speak of "le cabinet de
Saint-Cloud," as previously of "le cabinet de Versailles," and
afterward of "le cabinet des Tuileries." Here, in 1805, Napoleon and
Josephine assisted at the baptism of the future Napoleon III....
It was also in the palace of St. Cloud that Napoleon I. was married to
Marie Louise, April 1, 1810. In this palace of many changes the allied
sovereigns met after the fall of the First Empire. Blucher, after his
fashion, slept booted and spurred in the bed of Napoleon; and the
capitulation of Paris was signed here July 3, 1815.
Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both lived much at St. Cloud, and added to
it considerably; but here, where Henry IV. had been recognized as King
of France and Navarre, Charles X. was forced by the will of the people
to abdicate, July 30, 1830. Two years after, Louis Philippe established
himself with his family at St. Cloud, and his daughter Clémentine was
married to Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg in its chapel, April 28, 1843.
Like his uncle, Napoleon III. was devoted to St. Cloud, where--"with a
light heart"--the declaration of war with Prussia was signed in the
library, July, 17, 1870, a ceremony followed by a banquet, during which
the "Marseillaise" was played. The doom of St. Cloud was then sealed.
On the 13th of the following October the besieged Parisians beheld the
volumes of flame rising behind the Bois de Boulogne, which told that
St. Cloud, recently occupied by the Prussians, and frequently bombarded
in consequence from Mont-Valérien, had been fired by French bombs.
The steamer for St. Cloud descends the Seine, passing under the Pont de
Solferino, Pont de la Concorde, Pont des Invalides, and Pont d'Alma.
Then the Champ de Mars is seen on the left, the Palais du Trocadéro on
the right. After the Pont du d'Iéna, Passy is passed on the right, and
the Ile des Cygnes on the left. Then comes the Pont de Grenelle, after
which Auteuil is passed on the right and Javel on the left. After
leaving the Pont-viaduc du Point-du-Jour, the Ile de Billancourt is
seen on the left. After the Pont de Billancourt, the steamer passes
between the Iles de Billancourt and Séguin to Bas Meudon.
III
OLD PROVENCE
The Papal Palace at Avignon
By Charles Dickens
[Footnote: From "Pictures From Italy."]
There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon,
and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-piecrust,
battlemented wall, that never will be brown, tho it bake for centuries.
The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant
oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very
narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house
to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames
of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels,
and staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was
very quaint and lovely. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses
one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy
court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It
was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The
three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors
till the street rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking
questions--the man who had the delicious purchases put into his basket
in the morning--might have opened it quite naturally.
After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a
delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk
delightful, tho the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and
houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.
We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral, where Mass
was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several
old women, a baby, and a very self-possest dog, who had marked out for
himself a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the
altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which constitutional
walk he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any
old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings
in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was
shining in, splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and
glittering on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful
as need be.
Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which
one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack; while
gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own
old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither
went there to see state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common
jail, tho we dropt some money into a prisoners' box outside, while the
prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high, up, and
watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in
which the Inquisition used to sit.
A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proof
that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, tho it had
had between sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the
Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in
her hands, and marshaled us the way that we should go. How she told us,
on the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais
apostolique), and had been, for I don't know how many years; and how
she had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of
dungeon demonstrators; and how she had resided in the palace from an
infant--had been born there, if I recollect right--I needn't relate.
But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I
never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was
violent in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for
the purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung
herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere
emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now
shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious,
hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some
new horror--looking back and walking stealthily and making horrible
grimaces--that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a
sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through
a whole fever.
Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned
off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and
locked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower
by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth
of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to
have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river.
Close to this courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another
minute--in the dismal tower of oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned,
fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but
shut out from the sky which now looks down into it.
A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the
Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture,
without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even
before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not
got in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four
unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively
doored and fastened, as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a
vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy
Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might
have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good
Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition
chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.
High up in the wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the
accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of
the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone
passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when
Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but
the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to
follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged
room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the
bright day, I ask her what it is. She folds her arms,, leers hideously,
and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little
company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her
arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la Question!"
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle
the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in
silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame
out again.... A cold air, with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of
Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall.
Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a
steep, dark lofty tower; very dismal, very dark, very cold. The
Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look
down also, flung those who were past all further torturing, down here.
"But look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance,
over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would
without the aid of the directing-key--where they are. "What are they?"
"Blood!"
In October, 1791, when Revolution was at its height here, sixty
persons; men and women ("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"); were
murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit,
where a quantity of quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those
ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone
of the strong building in which the deed was done, remains upon
another, there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to see as
the splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.... Goblin's finger
is lifted; and she steals out again, into the Chapel of the Holy
Office. She stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her great effect
is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave courier, who
is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the hat with the
largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us all, round a
little trap-door in the floor, as round as grave.
"Voilà!" she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a
crash, in her goblin energy, tho it is no light weight. "Voilà les
oubliettes! Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black!
Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!"
My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where
these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside--of
wives, friends, children, brothers--starved to death, and made the
stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on
seeing the accurst wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun
shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and
triumph.
I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these degenerate
times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! The
light in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed
in, on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon!
It can not look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight,
than to a traveler who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down
the darkness of that Infernal Well.
Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was
struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her
arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.
When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the
outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building.
Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the
thick wall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its
little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its
household implements are scraps of dress against the wall; and a sober
looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin)
knitting at the door--looked exactly like a picture by Ostade.
I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yet
with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which the
light, down in the vaults, had given, me the assurance. The immense
thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the
massive towers, the great extent of the building, its gigantic
proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe
and wonder.
The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, a
luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of
the Inquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting,
fighting, religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a
fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. I could
think of little, however, then, or long afterward, but the sun in the
dungeons.
The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and
being forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have
their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some reduction of
its state, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and
the sky for the roof of its chambers of cruelty--that was its
desolation and defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to
rampart, I should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in
all the fire that burns, could waste it, like the sunbeams in its
secret council-chamber and its prisons.
The Building of the Great Palace
By Thomas Oakey
[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]
It will now be convenient briefly to trace the growth of that
remarkable edifice, at once a castle and a cloister, a palace and a
prison, which constitutes the chief attraction of Avignon to-day, and
which, altho defaced by time and by modern restorers, remains in its
massive grandeur a fitting memorial of the great line of pontiffs who
have made that little city famous in the annals of Christendom.
We have seen that Pope John XXII., having allotted a piece of land to
his nephew, Arnaud de Via, for the erection of a new episcopal palace,
was content to modify and enlarge the old one for pontifical uses, and
that Benedict XII., with characteristic straightforwardness, purchased
the new fabric from Arnaud's heirs and, having handed it over to the
diocesan authorities, proceeded to transform the old building into a
stately and spacious apostolic palace for the head of Christendom.
He was moved to this purchase after mature reflection, for it was a
matter of urgent importance that the pontiff of the church of Rome
should possess a palace of his own at Avignon as long as it might be
necessary for him to remain there. The relation between Curia and
Episcopate being thus clearly defined, Benedict appointed a compatriot,
Pierre Poisson de Mirepoix, master of the works, and, since about
two-thirds of the existing palace dates from Benedict's reign, Pierre
Poisson may be regarded as its first architect.