right bank of the Célé. Then I saw before me the stony undulating
land, with the sad sentiment of which I had already grown so familiar.
An old woman, nearly doubled up with age and field labour, but who
plied her distaff as she led her black goats to browse upon the waste,
made me understand that the solitude was not altogether bereft of
human life. After walking a mile or so, we descended into a deep
hollow wooded with those dwarf oaks which, together with the juniper,
hid at one time most of the nakedness of these calcareous tracts that
stretch from gorge to gorge. One might have supposed that such a dale
would have had a spring at the bottom; but no: everywhere it was
parched, arid, and rocky. The rain that falls all around goes to swell
some deep subterranean stream that issues no one knows where. This
peculiarity of the formation explains why nearly all the _caussenards_
have no water, either for themselves or their animals, except that
which they collect from the skies in tanks sunk in the earth. Since
the failure of the vines--which formerly flourished upon the _causses_
wherever there was a favourable slope--the peasants have learnt to
make a mildly alcoholic liquor by gathering and fermenting the juniper
berries, which previously they had never put to any use.
We had nearly ascended the opposite side of this wooded hollow, when
the guide, pointing through the sunlit trees to a very dark but narrow
opening in the rocks, said, 'There it is!' We had reached the cavern.
He went first, carrying aloft a wisp of burning straw, which he
renewed from time to time from the bundle that he carried under his
arm.
The practice of burning straw, so that people may have a good flare-up
for their money, has, together with the selfish custom of throwing
stones at the stalactites, gone far to spoil all the caverns of this
region, which have been much visited. The Grotte de Robinet must have
been dazzlingly beautiful at one time, but now most of the stalagmite
and stalactite has been completely blackened by smoke. Even the rocks,
over which one has to climb, and sometimes crawl, are covered with a
sooty slime, which gives one the appearance, when daylight returns, of
having been smeared with lamp-black. I put on a blouse before
entering, and had great reason to be glad that I did so. In spite of
all the mischief that has been done to it, the Grotte de Robinet is a
very remarkable cavern, and the time spent on the somewhat arduous and
slippery task of exploring its depths is not wasted. Its length is
about half a mile, and the descent, which is almost continuous, is at
times very rapid. The passage connects a succession of vast and lofty
spaces, which are not inappropriately termed _salles_. In some of
these, the dropping water has raised from the floor of the cavern
statuesque and awful forms of colossal grandeur. Some of these have
been little changed by the smoke, but stand like white figures of
fantastic giants. While looking at them, I thought how little I should
like to be in the position of a certain _curé_ of Marcillac, who spent
three days and three nights in this weird company. He frequently
entered the cavern alone, with a scientific object, and his
familiarity with it led him to despise ordinary precautions. One day
he was far underground, with only a single candle in his possession,
and no matches. A drop of water from the roof put the candle out, and
all his efforts to return by the way he came were futile. Meanwhile,
his parishioners, hunting high and low for their _curé_, chanced to
see his _soutane_, where he had left it, hanging to a bush at the
entrance of the Grotte de Robinet, and when they rescued him, there
was very little left of his passion for studying nature underground.
The most wonderful and the most beautiful object in the cavern is to
be seen in the vast hall, which is the last of the series. This hall
has a dome-shaped roof that rises to the height of about sixty feet,
and it is supported in the centre, with every appearance of an
architectural motive, by a single slender column that seems to have
been carved with consummate skill out of alabaster. No image that I
can think of conveys the picture of this exquisite stalagmite so
justly as that of a column formed of the blossoms of lilies, each cup
resting within another.
Having left Marcillac, I passed under the mediaeval village of
Sauliac, built high up on a shelf of naked rock, and then reached
Cabrerets, which lies two or three miles above the junction of the
Célé and the Lot. The village is at the foot of towering limestone
cliffs, and many of the houses are built against the gray and yellow
stone. The most interesting structure, however, is the castellated one
that clings to the face of the rock far above all inhabited dwellings.
It goes by the name of the Château du Diable, and it is the most
considerable of all the rock-fortresses in the valleys of the Célé and
the Lot which are attributed to the English companies. It possesses
towers and embattlements, and it was evidently intended to defend the
defile from any force advancing from the wider valley. Here,
doubtless, many a desperate struggle occurred before the companies
were dispersed and English influence was finally overcome in these
wilds of the Quercy. At a little distance from it, the long iron of a
mediaeval arrow, having fastened its head in a cleft of the rock,
remained sticking there for centuries, and was only recently removed.
The Prefect of the Department took a fancy to it, and had not the good
judgment to leave it where it had so long been an object of curiosity.
There, resting in the place where the arm of the archer had cast it,
it told a story of the old wars, and set the imagination working; but
in a collection of local antiquities it is as dumb and almost as
worthless as any other piece of old iron.
IN THE ALBIGEOIS.
A long dull road or street, a statue of the navigator La Perouse, a
bandstand with a few trees about it, and plain, modern buildings
without character, some larger and more pretentious than others, but
all uninteresting. Is this Albi? No, but it is what appears to be so
to the stranger who enters the place from the railway-station. The
ugly sameness is what the improving spirit of our own times has done
to make the ancient town decent and fit to be inhabited by folk who
have seen something of the world north of Languedoc and who have
learnt to talk of _le comfortable_. The improvement is undoubted, but
so is the absolute lack of interest and charm; at least, to those who
are outside of the _persiennes_ so uniformly closed against the summer
sun.
Albi, the veritable historic Albi, lies almost hidden upon a slope
that leads down to the Tarn. Here is the marvellous cathedral built in
the thirteenth century, after the long wars with the Albigenses; here
is the Archbishop's fortified palace, still capable of withstanding a
siege if there were no artillery; here are the old houses, one of
pre-Gothic construction with very broad Romanesque window, slender
columns and storied capitals, billet and arabesque mouldings; another
of the sixteenth century quite encrusted with carved wood; and here
are the dirty little streets like crooked lanes, where old women, who
all through the summer months, Sundays excepted, give their feet an
air-bath, may be seen sitting on the doorsteps clutching with one bony
hand the distaff and drowsily turning the spindle with the other.
To live in one of these streets might disgust the unseasoned stranger
for ever with Southern life; but to roam through them in the early
twilight is the way to find the spirit of the past without searching.
Effort spoils the spell. Strange indeed must have been the procession
of races, parties and factions that passed along here between these
very houses, or others which stood before them. Romans, Romanised
Gauls, Visigoths, Saracens and English; the Raymonds with their
Albigenses, the Montforts with their Crusaders from the north, the
wild and sanguinary _pastoiureux_ and the lawless _routiers_, the
religious fanatics, Huguenots and Catholics of the sixteenth century,
and the revolutionists of the eighteenth. All passed on their way, and
the Tarn is no redder now for the torrents of blood that flowed into
it.
Notwithstanding that the name Albigenses was given after the council
of Lombers to the new Manichaeans, Albi was less identified with the
great religious and political struggle of Southern Gaul in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries than were Castres and other neighbouring
towns. If, however, it was comparatively fortunate as regards the
horrors of that ferocious war, it was severely scourged by the most
appalling epidemics of the Middle Ages. Leprosy and the pest had
terrors greater even than those of battle. The cruelty of those feudal
ages finds one of its innumerable records in the treatment of the
miserable lepers at Albi. Having taken the disease which the Crusaders
brought back from the East, they were favoured with a religious
ceremony distressingly similar to the office for the dead. A black
pall was thrown over them while they knelt at the altar steps. At the
close of the service a priest sprinkled some earth on the condemned
wretches, and then they were led to the leper-house, where each was
shut up in a cell from which he never came out alive. The black pall
and the sprinkled earth were symbols which every patient understood
but too well.
[Illustration: PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI.]
In nothing is the stern spirit of those ages expressed more forcibly
than in the religious buildings of Languedoc. The cathedral of St.
Cecilia at Albi is the grandest of all the fortified churches of
Southern France, although in many others the defensive purpose has
made less concession to beauty. Looking at it for the first time, the
eye is wonder-struck by its originality, the nobleness of its design,
and the grandeur of its mass. The plan being that of a vast vaulted
basilica without aisles, the walls of the nave, rise sheer from the
ground to above the roof, and are pierced at intervals with lofty but
very narrow windows, the arches slightly pointed and containing simple
tracery. The buttresses which help the walls to support the vaulting
of the nave and choir are the most remarkable feature of the design,
and, together with the tower, which rises in diminishing stages to the
height of 260 feet and there ends in an embattled platform, account
for the singularly feudal and fortress-like character of the building.
The outline of the buttresses being that of a semi-ellipse, they look
like turrets carried up the entire face of the wall. The floor of the
church is many feet above the ground, and the entrance was originally
protected by a drawbridge and portcullis; but these military works
were removed in the sixteenth century, and in their place was raised,
upon a _perron_ reached by a double flight of steps, a baldachino-like
porch as airily graceful and delicately florid as the body to which it
is so lightly attached is majestically stern and scornful of ornament.
The meeting here of those two great forces, the Renaissance and
feudalism, is like that of Psyche and Mars. But in expression the
porch is Gothic, for although the arches are round-headed, they are
surmounted by an embroidery of foliated gables and soaring pinnacles.
It can scarcely be said that the style has been broken, but the
contrast in feeling is strong.
Enter the church and observe the same contrast there. Gothic art
within the protecting walls and under the strong tower puts forth its
most delicate leaves and blossoms. Across the broad nave, nearly in
the centre, is drawn a rood-screen--a piece of stonework that has
often been compared to lace, but which gains nothing by the
comparison. The screen, together with the enclosure of the choir, with
which it is connected, is quite bewildering by the multiplicity of
arches, gables, tabernacles, pinnacles, statues, leaves, and flowers.
The tracery is flamboyant, and the work dates from the beginning of
the sixteenth century. The artificers are said to have been a company
of wandering masons from Strasburg.
Two vast drum-shaped piers, serving to support the tower, are exposed
to view at the west end of the nave; but, for the bad effect thus
produced, compensation is offered by the very curious paintings,
supposed to be of the fifteenth century, with which the surfaces of
these piers are covered. They represent the Last Judgment and the
torments of the damned. Each of the seven capital sins has its
compartment, wherein the kind of punishment reserved for sinners under
this head is set forth in a manner as quaint as are the inscriptions
in old French beneath. The compartment, illustrating the eternal
trouble of the envious has this inscription:
'_La peine des envieux et envieuses_. Les envieus et envieuses sont
en ung fleuve congelé plongés jusques au nombril et par dessus les
frappe un vent moult froid et quant veulent icelluy vent éviter se
plongent dedans ladite glace.'
All the wall-surfaces, the vaulting included, are covered with
paintings. The effect clashes with Northern taste, but the absence of
a columnar system affords a plausible reason for relieving the
sameness of these large surfaces with colour. The Gothic style of the
North, holding in itself such decorative resources, gains nothing from
mural paintings, but always loses something of its true character when
they are added. Apart from such considerations, the wall-paintings in
the cathedral of Albi have accumulated such interest from time that no
reason would excuse their removal.
This unique church was mainly built at the close of the thirteenth
century, together with the Archbishop's palace, with which it was
connected in a military sense by outworks. These have disappeared, but
the fortress called a palace remains, and is still occupied by the
Archbishop. It is a gloomy rectangular mass of brick, absolutely
devoid of elegance, but one of the most precious legacies of the
Middle Ages in France. It is not so vast as the papal palace at
Avignon, but its feudal and defensive character has been better
preserved, for, unlike the fortress by the Rhône, it has not been
adapted to the requirements of soldiers' barracks. At each of the
angles is a round tower, pierced with loopholes, and upon the
intervening walls are far-descending machicolations. The building is
still defended on the side of the Tarn by a wall of great height and
strength, the base of which is washed by the river in time of flood.
This rampart, with its row of semi-elliptical buttresses corresponding
to those of the church and its pepper-box tower at one end, the
fortress a little above, and the cathedral on still higher ground, but
in immediate neighbourhood, make up an assemblage of mediaeval
structures that seems as strange in this nineteenth century as some
old dream rising in the midst of day-thoughts. And the rapid Tarn, an
image of perpetual youth, rushes on as it ever did since the face of
Europe took its present form.
As I write, other impressions come to mind of this ancient town on the
edge of the great plain of Languedoc. A little garden in the outskirts
became familiar to me by daily use, and I see it still with its almond
and pear trees, its trellised vines, the blue stars of its borage, and
the pure whiteness of its lilies. A bird seizes a noisy cicada from a
sunny leaf, and as it flies away the captive draws out one long scream
of despair. Then comes the golden evening, and its light stays long
upon the trailing vines, while the great lilies gleam whiter and their
breath floods the air with unearthly fragrance. A murmur from across
the plain is growing louder and louder as the trees lose their edges
in the dusk, for those noisy revellers of the midsummer night, the
jocund frogs, have roused themselves, and they welcome the darkness
with no less joy than the swallows some hours later will greet the
breaking dawn.
I left Albi to ascend the valley of the Tarn in the last week of June.
I started when the sun was only a little above the plain; but the line
of white rocks towards the north, from which Albi is supposed to take
its name, had caught the rays and were already burning. The straight
road, bordered with plane-trees, on which I was walking would have had
no charm but for certain wayside flowers. There was a strange-looking
plant with large heart-shaped leaves and curved yellow blossoms ending
in a long upper lip that puzzled me much, and it was afterwards that I
found its name to be _aristolochia clematitis_. It grows abundantly on
the banks of the Tarn. Another plant that I now noticed for the first
time was a galium with crimson flowers. I soon came to the cornfields
for which the Albigeois plain is noted. Here the poppy showed its
scarlet in the midst of the stalks of wheat still green, and along the
borders were purple patches of that sun-loving campanula, Venus's
looking-glass.
Countrywomen passed me with baskets on their heads, all going into
Albi to sell their vegetables. Those who were young wore white caps
with frills, which, when there is nothing on the head to keep them
down, rise and fall like the crest of a cockatoo; but the old women
were steadfast in their attachment to the bag-like, close-fitting cap,
crossed with bands of black velvet, and having a lace front that
covers most of the forehead. When upon this coif is placed a great
straw hat with drooping brim, we have all that remains now of an
Albigeois costume. As these women passed me, I looked into their
baskets. Some carried strawberries, some cherries, others mushrooms
(_boleti_), or broad beans. The last-named vegetable is much
cultivated throughout this region, where it is largely used for making
soup. When very young, the beans are frequently eaten raw with salt.
Almost every taste is a matter of education.
The heat of the day had commenced when I reached the village of
Lescure. This place is of very ancient origin. Looking at it now, and
its agricultural population numbering little more than a thousand, it
is difficult to realize its importance in the Middle Ages. The castle
and the adjacent land were given in the year 1003 by King Robert to
his old preceptor, the learned Gerbert, who became known to posterity
as Pope Sylvester II. In the eleventh century, Lescure was, therefore,
a fief of the Holy See; and in the time of Simon de Montfort the
inhabitants were still vassals of the Pope. In the fourteenth century
they were frequently at war with the people of Albi, who eventually
got the upper hand. Then Sicard, the Baron of Lescure, was so
completely humiliated that he not only consented to pay eighty gold
_livres_ to the consuls of Albi, but went before them bareheaded to
ask pardon for himself and his vassals. Already the feudal system was
receiving hard blows in the South of France from the growth of the
communes and the authority vested in their consuls. What is left of
the feudal grandeur of Lescure? The castle was sold in the second year
of the Republic, and entirely demolished, with the exception of the
chapel, which is now the parish church. Of the outer fortifications
there remains a brick gateway, with Gothic arch carrying a high
machicolated tower, connected to which is a fragment of the wall. To
this old houses, half brick, half wood, still cling, like those little
wasps' nests that one sees sometimes upon the sides of the rocks.
On entering the small fourteenth-century church, I found that it had
been decorated for a funeral. A broad band of black drapery, upon
which had been sewn at intervals Death's heads and tears, cut out of
white calico, was hung against the wall of the apse, and carried far
down each side of the nave. To me all those grinning white masks were
needless torture to the mourners; but here again we are brought to
recognise that taste is a matter of education.
More interesting than anything else in this church is the Romanesque
holy-water stoup, with heads and crosses carved upon it, and possibly
belonging to the original chapel of the castle. The chief
archaeological treasure, however, of Lescure is a church on a little
hill above the village, and overlooking the Tarn. It is dedicated to
St. Michael, in accordance with the mediaeval custom of considering
the highest ground most appropriate to the veneration of the
archangel. It is Romanesque of the eleventh century, and belonged to a
priory of which no other trace is left. The building stands in the
midst of an abandoned cemetery; and at the time of my visit the tall
June grasses, the poppies and white campions hid every mound and
almost every wooden cross. Over the gateway, carved in the stone, is
the following quaint inscription, the spelling being similar to that
frequently used in the sixteenth century:
'Sur la terre autrefois nous fûmes comme vous.
Mortels pensés y bien et priés Dieu pour nous.'
Beneath these lines are a skull and cross-bones, with a tear on each
side.
Facing the forgotten graves, upon this spot removed from all
habitations, is the most beautiful Romanesque doorway of the
Albigeois. The round-headed arch widening outwards, its numerous
archivolts and mouldings, the slender columns of the deeply-recessed
jambs, the storied capitals with their rudely-proportioned but
expressive little figures, and the row of uncouth bracket-heads over
the crowning archivolt, represent the best art of the eleventh
century. They show that Romanesque architecture and sculpture had
already reached their perfect expression in Languedoc. The figures in
the capitals tell the story of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, and of
fiends busily engaged in tormenting mortals who must have been in
their clutches now eight hundred years. The nave has two aisles, and
massive piers with engaged columns support the transverse and lateral
arches. The columns have very large capitals, displaying human
figures, some of which are extraordinarily fantastic, and instinct
with a wild imagination still running riot in stone. How far are we
now from the minds that bred these thoughts when Southern Gaul was
struggling to develop a new Roman art by the aid of such traditions
and models as the Visigoth, the Frank, and the Arab had not destroyed
in the country, and such ideas as were brought along the Mediterranean
from Byzantium!
Lastly, I came to the apse, that part of a Romanesque church in which
the artist seizes the purely religious ideal, or allows it to escape
him. Here was the serenity, here the quietude of the early Christian
purpose and hope. Perfect simplicity and perfect eloquence! Nothing
more is to be said, except that there were stone benches against the
wall and a piscina--details interesting to the archaeologist. Then I
walked round the little church, knee-deep in the long grave-grass, and
noted the broad pilaster-strips of the apse, the stone eaves
ornamented with billets, the bracket or corbel heads just beneath,
fantastic, enigmatic, and not two alike.
Leaving this spot, where there was so much temptation to linger, I
began to cross a highly-cultivated plain towards the village of
Arthez, where the Tarn issues from the deep gorges which for many a
league give it all the character of a mountain-river. I thought from
the appearance of the land that everybody who lived upon it must be
prosperous and happy, but a peasant whom I met was of another way of
thinking. He said:
'By working from three o'clock in the morning until dark, one can just
manage to earn one's bread.'