there, to whom he accorded in 1293 valuable privileges and the same
protection he granted to his good city of Paris. Philip, to whom the
position was valuable as a frontier post, erected a castle there,
maintained a royal garrison, and the new settlement became known as the
New Town (Villeneuve). The walls and towers then raised were rebuilt in
1352 by John the Good, who exacted a toll, known as St. Andrew's penny,
for maintenance on all merchandise that passes through the Senechaussée
of Beaucaire.
Of these majestic ruins, restored in the sixteenth century and again in
recent times, the Tour des Masques at the west angle with its simple
battlements is the oldest portion, the massive machicolated towers that
frown over the main entrance having been raised by John the Good. The
ruined ravelin dates back to the seventeenth century. We enter and
stroll about the desolate interior, crowned by a tiny Romanesque chapel
of the twelfth century, that well deserves its name of Our Lady of the
Fair View (Notre Dame de Belvézét), with a graceful apse (restored).
From its summit, or from the tall old watch-tower of the monastery, a
marvelous view is obtained of the gaping ruins of the Charterhouse of
Avignon, the County Venaissin, the Cévennes, Mount Ventoux, and the
distant Alps.
In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed in
the fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a
young captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed
the city of Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists
who had declared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon
seized at St. André that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the
English from its harbor.
The papal soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of
Villeneuve, who dubbed them "patachines" ("pestacchina," Ital. for
slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols--a pleasantry
repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet "luzers" (lizards)
against the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning
themselves against the hot rocks of Villeneuve.
Descending the stately stairway that leads to the foot of the Rocher
des Doms, and turning to the left, we soon reach the house of the
"gardien du pont," who will admit us to all that remains of the
miraculous pontifical structure of the twelfth century. The destructive
hand of man and the assaults of the Rhone have dealt hardly with St.
Benezet's work. Ruined during the siege of 1226, it was repaired in
1234-37, and in 1349 knit to the papal fortress at the Avignon end. In
1352, when Clement VI. rebuilt four of the arches, it is described as
of stone and wood; it was cut during the siege of Benedict XIII., and
repaired, or rebuilt, in 1418 and 1430; in 1602 three arches collapsed;
in 1633 two more fell, and in 1650 the gaps were bridged by wooden
struts and planks, which were carried away in 1670 by ice-floes.
Owing to the interminable dispute between the monarchy and the papacy
as to liability for its repair, each power claiming jurisdiction over
the Rhone, all attempts to preserve it from ruin were abandoned in
1680, when Louis XIV. refused either to allow the legates to take toll
for the necesary repairs, or to undertake them himself.
Little is known of the original bridge, which consisted of twenty-two
semi-circular arches (Viollet-le-Duc gives eighteen), much lower than
the present elliptic ones, which date back to the thirteenth century,
according to Labaude--or to the fifteenth century, acording to other
authorities--when the bridge, having proved too low-pitched, was raised
to its present level, and the flood arches over the piles were built.
The four subsisting arches were, with the bridge chapel, restored
during the last century. The old bridge formed an elbow upstream on the
Villeneuve branch of the Rhone.
The chapel of St. Nicholas, too, has suffered many vicissitudes. The
primitive Romanesque building was raised to the level of the new
footway by dividing the nave into two floors and building a flight of
steps, supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower
chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored
and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was
added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of
these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque
apse, whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse and a Romanesque nave.
The "Pont d'Avignon" is known to every French-speaking child, and with
many variants the old "ronde" is sung and danced from the remotest
plains of Canada to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. The good folk of
Avignon, however, protest that their "rondes" were not danced
perilously on the narrow Pont St. Benezet, but under its arches on the
green meadows of the Isle de la Barthelasse, and that "Sur" in lieu of
"Sous" is due to northern misunderstanding of their sweet Provençal
tongue.
Orange
By Henry James
[Footnote: From "A Little Tour In France." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1884.]
I alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil
monuments. The collection consists of but two objects, but these
objects are so fine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a
triumphal arch, supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other
is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theater. But for
these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly
featureless little town, without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned,
is several miles distant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of
the oddest things that this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in
our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it
by its arches and theater, a place of some importance--should have
given its name to the heirs apparent of the throne of Holland, and been
borne by a king of England who had sovereign rights over it. During the
Middle Ages it formed part of an independent principality; but in 1531
it fell, by the marriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited
it, into the family of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that
it was made over to France by the treaty of Utrecht.
The arch of triumph, which stands a little way out of the town, is
rather a pretty than an imposing vestige of the Romans. If it had
greater purity of style, one might say of it that it belonged to the
same family of monuments as the Maison Carée at Nîmes. It has three
passages--the middle much higher than the others--and a very elevated
attic. The vaults of the passages are richly sculptured, and the whole
monument is covered with friezes and military trophies. This sculpture
is rather mixed; much of it is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed
to me ugly, tho its workmanship is praised. The arch is at once well
preserved and much injured. Its general mass is there, and as Roman
monuments go it is remarkably perfect; but it has suffered, in patches,
from the extremity of restoration. It is not, on the whole, of
absorbing interest.
It has a charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright
yellow color, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression;
and on that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone,
surrounded by its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying
beyond it and a low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it
made, very sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the
lateral hooks of the memory. I can take down the modest composition,
and place it before me as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles
in the hard, fair French road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of
rain; the disgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low
horizon; the solitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm,
advancing along the "chaussée;" and in the middle I see the little
ochre-colored monument, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright
and gay, as everything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning.
It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman
theater, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not
prevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through
a succession of little streets concerning which I have no observations
to record. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are more
impressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above
the place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a
citadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed
by Louis XIV.
Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six meters high,
and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone, simply laid one on
the other; the whole naked, rugged surface of which suggests a natural
cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or
even of Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger
than all Orange put together--and its permanent massiveness makes light
of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town--the top of it
garnished with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive
the staves of the "velarium"--bears the traces of more than one tier of
ornamental arches; tho how these flat arches were applied, or
incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess to explain.
You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in proportion about
as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the lodge of the
custodian, who introduces you to the interior of the theater. Here the
mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingenious Romans treated
simply as the material of their auditorium. They inserted their stone
seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and planted their
colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if
possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the
permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It
contains three doors, the middle one being the highest, and having
above it, far aloft, a deep niche, apparently intended for an imperial
statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is
mainly a confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into
the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished
castle.
The whole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any
details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the
back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the
semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather
less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very
shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers
standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent
skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and
wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the
softness of melancholy, of the theater at Arles; but it is more
extraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies being
enacted there--
"Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line."
At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immense
in height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the
other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, as you
face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous
altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The
compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the
traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to
the theater. Various fragments are visible which refer themselves
plausibly to such an establishment; the greater axis of the hippodrome
would appear to have been on a line with the triumphal arch. This is
all I saw, and all there was to see, of Orange, which had a very
rustic, bucolic aspect, and where I was not even called upon to demand
breakfast at the hotel. The entrance of this resort might have been
that of a stable of the Roman days.
Vaucluse
By Bayard Taylor
[Footnote: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
This district borders on the desert of the Crau, a vast plain of stones
reaching to the mouth of the Rhone and almost entirely uninhabited. We
caught occasional glimpses of its sealike waste between the summits of
the hills. At length, after threading a high ascent, we saw the valley
of the Durance suddenly below us. The sun, breaking through the clouds,
shone on the mountain-wall which stood on the opposite side, touching
with his glow the bare and rocky precipices that frowned far above the
stream. Descending to the valley, we followed its course toward the
Rhone with the ruins of feudal "bourgs" crowning the crags above us.
It was dusk when we reached the village of Senas tired with the day's
march. A landlord standing in his door, on the lookout for customers,
invited us to enter in a manner so polite and pressing we could not
choose but do so. This is a universal custom with the country
innkeepers. In a little village which we passed toward evening there
was a tavern with the sign "The Mother of Soldiers." A portly woman
whose face beamed with kindness and cheerfulness stood in the door and
invited us to stop there for the night. "No, mother," I answered; "we
must go much farther to-day." "Go, then," said she, "with good luck, my
children! A pleasant journey!"
On entering the inn at Senas two or three bronzed soldiers were sitting
by the table. My French vocabulary happening to give out in the middle
of a consultation about eggs and onion-soup, one of them came to my
assistance and addrest me in German. He was from Fulda, in
Hesse-Cassel, and had served fifteen years in Africa....
Leaving next morning at daybreak, we walked on before breakfast to
Orgon, a little village in a corner of the cliffs which border the
Durance, and crossed the muddy river by a suspension bridge a short
distance below, to Cavaillon, where the country-people were holding a
great market. From this place a road led across the meadow-land to
L'Isle, six miles distant. This little town is so named because it is
situated on an island formed by the crystal Sorgues, which flows from
the fountains of Vaucluse.
It is a very picturesque and pretty place. Great mill-wheels, turning
slowly and constantly, stand at intervals in the stream, whose grassy
banks are now as green as in springtime. We walked along the
Sorgues--which is quite as beautiful and worthy to be sung as the
Clitumnus--to the end of the village to take the road to Vaucluse.
Beside its banks stands the "Hôtel de Petrarque et Laure." Alas that
names of the most romantic and impassioned lovers of all history should
be desecrated to a sign-post to allure gormandizing tourists!
The bare mountain in whose heart lies the poet's solitude now rose
before us at the foot of the lofty Mount Ventoux, whose summit of snows
extended beyond. We left the river and walked over a barren plain
across which the wind blew most drearily. The sky was rainy and dark,
and completed the desolateness of the scene, which in nowise heightened
our anticipations of the renowned glen. At length we rejoined the
Sorgues and entered a little green valley running up into the mountain.
The narrowness of the entrance entirely shut out the wind, and, except
the rolling of the waters over their pebbly bed, all was still and
lonely and beautiful. The sides of the dell were covered with olive
trees, and a narrow strip of emerald meadow lay at the bottom.
It grew more hidden and sequestered as we approached the little village
of Vaucluse. Here the mountain towers far above, and precipices of gray
rock many hundred feet high hang over the narrowing glen. On a crag
over the village are the remains of a castle; the slope below this, now
rugged and stony, was once graced by the cottage and garden of
Petrarch. All traces of them have long since vanished, but a simple
column bearing the inscription. "A Petrarque" stands beside the Sorgues.
We ascended into the defile by a path among the rocks, overshadowed by
olives and wild fig-trees, to the celebrated fountains of Vaucluse. The
glen seems as if stuck into the mountain's depths by one blow of the
enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested
in its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming
fulness gives birth to the Sorgues. We climbed up over the mossy rocks
and sat down in the grotto beside the dark, still pool. It was the most
absolute solitude.
The rocks towered above and over us to the height of six hundred feet,
and the gray walls of the wild glen below shut out all appearance of
life. I leaned over the rock and drank of the blue crystal that grew
gradually darker toward the center till it became a mirror and gave
back a perfect reflection of the crags above it. There was no bubbling,
no gushing up from its deep bosom, but the wealth of sparkling waters
continually welled over as from a too-full goblet.
It was with actual sorrow that I turned away from the silent spot. I
never visited a place to which the fancy clung more suddenly and
fondly. There is something holy in its solitude, making one envy
Petrarch the years of calm and unsullied enjoyment which blest him
there. As some persons whom we pass as strangers strike a hidden chord
in our spirits, compelling a silent sympathy with them, so some
landscapes have a character of beauty which harmonizes thrillingly with
the mood in which we look upon them, till we forget admiration in the
glow of spontaneous attachment. They seem like abodes of the beautiful
which the soul in its wanderings long ago visited and now recognizes
and loves as the home of a forgotten dream. It was thus I felt by the
fountains of Vaucluse; sadly and with weary steps I turned away,
leaving its loneliness unbroken as before.
We returned over the plain in the wind, under the gloomy sky, passed
L'Isle at dusk, and after walking an hour with a rain following close
behind us stopt at an auberge in Le Thor, where we rested our tired
frames and broke our long day's fasting. We were greeted in the morning
with a dismal rain and wet roads as we began the march. After a time,
however, it poured down in such torrents that we were obliged to take
shelter in a remise by the roadside, where a good woman who addrest us
in the unintelligible Provençal kindled up a blazing fire. On climbing
a long hill when the storm had abated, we experienced a delightful
surprise. Below us lay the broad valley of the Rhone, with its meadows
looking fresh and spring-like after the rain. The clouds were breaking
away; clear blue sky was visible over Avignon, and a belt of sunlight
lay warmly along the mountains of Languedoc. Many villages with their
tall picturesque towers dotted the landscape, and the groves of green
olive enlivened the barrenness of winter.
The Pont du Gard--Aigues-Mortes-Nîmes
By Henry James
[Footnote: From "A Little Tour in France." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1884.]
It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again--the land where
the silver-gray earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To
celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nîmes I engaged a calèche
to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young, and it was
perfectly fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take
advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I
became more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had already
enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet
sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs of the
little olives.
The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither so
tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the
Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the
country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is
superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a
dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which suggest a kind
of harmony; and in the curves it makes through the wide, free country,
where there is never a hedge or a wall, and the detail is always
exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. You are
very near (the Pont du Gard) before you see it; the ravine it spans
suddenly opens and exhibits the picture. The scene at this point grows
extremely beautiful. The ravine is the valley of the Garden, which the
road from Nîmes has followed some time without taking account of it,
but which, exactly at the right distance from the aqueduct, deepens and
expands, and puts on those characteristics which are best suited to
give it effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still, and solitary, and,
with its white rocks and wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear, colored
river, in whose slow course there is here and there a deeper pool. Over
the valley, from side to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the
three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing,
and nothing could well be more Roman.
The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental
rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say--at the time--and
make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect,
that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the
highway, descends to the level of the river and passes under one of the
arches. This road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones, which
slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may sit here as long as
you please, staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is
extremely natural, tho two or three stone benches have been erected on
it.
I remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was
perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid
afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object
I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered
in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely
absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaption of
the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so
much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the
mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective
as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du
Gard is an admirable example.
It would be a great injustice, however, not to insist upon its
beauty--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not to
please but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which it
carries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier is
different; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The
preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled or
collapsed; every feature remains; and the huge blocks of stone, of a
brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provençal sun for
eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, as
evenly as the day they were laid together.
All this to carry the water of a couple of springs to a little
provincial city! The conduit on the top has retained its shape and
traces of the cement with which it was lined. When the vague twilight
began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the
shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty empire were still as erect
as the support of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist,
sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has ever been, or
will ever be, as great as that, measured, as we measure the greatness
of an individual, by the push they gave to what they undertook. The
Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have
left; it speaks of them in a manner with which they might have been
satisfied....