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 and 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 afterwards, 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.
Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from the little
history I mentioned just now, a short anecdote, quite appropriate to
itself, connected with its adventures.
‘An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de Lude,
the Pope’s legate, seriously insulted some distinguished ladies of
Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young man, and horribly
mutilated him. For several years the legate kept _his_ revenge within
his own breast, but he was not the less resolved upon its gratification
at last. He even made, in the fulness of time, advances towards a
complete reconciliation; and when their apparent sincerity had prevailed,
he invited to a splendid banquet, in this palace, certain families, whole
families, whom he sought to exterminate. The utmost gaiety animated the
repast; but the measures of the legate were well taken. When the dessert
was on the board, a Swiss presented himself, with the announcement that a
strange ambassador solicited an extraordinary audience. The legate,
excusing himself, for the moment, to his guests, retired, followed by his
officers. Within a few minutes afterwards, five hundred persons were
reduced to ashes: the whole of that wing of the building having been
blown into the air with a terrible explosion!’
After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with churches just
now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat being very great, the
roads outside the walls were strewn with people fast asleep in every
little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half asleep and half awake,
who were waiting until the sun should be low enough to admit of their
playing bowls among the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road. The
harvest here was already gathered in, and mules and horses were treading
out the corn in the fields. We came, at dusk, upon a wild and hilly
country, once famous for brigands; and travelled slowly up a steep
ascent. So we went on, until eleven at night, when we halted at the town
of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to sleep.
The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the light and
heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and the town was very
clean; but so hot, and so intensely light, that when I walked out at noon
it was like coming suddenly from the darkened room into crisp blue fire.
The air was so very clear, that distant hills and rocky points appeared
within an hour’s walk; while the town immediately at hand—with a kind of
blue wind between me and it—seemed to be white hot, and to be throwing
off a fiery air from the surface.
We left this town towards evening, and took the road to Marseilles. A
dusty road it was; the houses shut up close; and the vines powdered
white. At nearly all the cottage doors, women were peeling and slicing
onions into earthen bowls for supper. So they had been doing last night
all the way from Avignon. We passed one or two shady dark châteaux,
surrounded by trees, and embellished with cool basins of water: which
were the more refreshing to behold, from the great scarcity of such
residences on the road we had travelled. As we approached Marseilles,
the road began to be covered with holiday people. Outside the
public-houses were parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards,
and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We went on,
through a long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people; having on
our left a dreary slope of land, on which the country-houses of the
Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped
without the slightest order: backs, fronts, sides, and gables towards all
points of the compass; until, at last, we entered the town.
I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and foul; and I
am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and disagreeable place.
But the prospect, from the fortified heights, of the beautiful
Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks and islands, is most delightful.
These heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque reasons—as an
escape from a compound of vile smells perpetually arising from a great
harbour full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable
ships with all sorts of cargoes: which, in hot weather, is dreadful in
the last degree.
There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets; with red
shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of orange
colour; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards, and no
beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and Neapolitan
head-dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in clusters on the
pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of their houses, or walking up
and down the closest and least airy of Boulevards; and there were crowds
of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up the way,
constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and uproar, was the
common madhouse; a low, contracted, miserable building, looking straight
upon the street, without the smallest screen or court-yard; where
chattering mad-men and mad-women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at
the staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into
their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if
they were baited by a pack of dogs.
We were pretty well accommodated at the Hôtel du Paradis, situated in a
narrow street of very high houses, with a hairdresser’s shop opposite,
exhibiting in one of its windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling
round and round: which so enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he and
his family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool undresses, on the pavement
outside, enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity.
The family had retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight; but the
hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting there,
with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently couldn’t bear to
have the shutters put up.
Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of all nations
were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds: fruits, wines, oils,
silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of merchandise. Taking one of a
great number of lively little boats with gay-striped awnings, we rowed
away, under the sterns of great ships, under tow-ropes and cables,
against and among other boats, and very much too near the sides of
vessels that were faint with oranges, to the _Marie Antoinette_, a
handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the mouth of the harbour.
By-and-by, the carriage, that unwieldy ‘trifle from the Pantechnicon,’ on
a flat barge, bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a
prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and
by five o’clock we were steaming out in the open sea. The vessel was
beautifully clean; the meals were served under an awning on deck; the
night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky
unspeakable.
We were off Nice, early next morning, and coasted along, within a few
miles of the Cornice road (of which more in its place) nearly all day.
We could see Genoa before three; and watching it as it gradually
developed its splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above terrace, garden
above garden, palace above palace, height upon height, was ample
occupation for us, till we ran into the stately harbour. Having been
duly astonished, here, by the sight of a few Cappucini monks, who were
watching the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, we drove off to
Albaro, two miles distant, where we had engaged a house.
The way lay through the main streets, but not through the Strada Nuova,
or the Strada Balbi, which are the famous streets of palaces. I never in
my life was so dismayed! The wonderful novelty of everything, the
unusual smells, the unaccountable filth (though it is reckoned the
cleanest of Italian towns), the disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one
upon the roof of another; the passages more squalid and more close than
any in St. Giles’s or old Paris; in and out of which, not vagabonds, but
well-dressed women, with white veils and great fans, were passing and
repassing; the perfect absence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or
shop, or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen before;
and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay; perfectly confounded
me. I fell into a dismal reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and
bewildered vision of saints and virgins’ shrines at the street corners—of
great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers—of vast red curtains, waving
in the doorways of the churches—of always going up hill, and yet seeing
every other street and passage going higher up—of fruit-stalls, with
fresh lemons and oranges hanging in garlands made of vine-leaves—of a
guard-house, and a drawbridge—and some gateways—and vendors of iced
water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the kennel—and this
is all the consciousness I had, until I was set down in a rank, dull,
weedy court-yard, attached to a kind of pink jail; and was told I lived
there.
I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have an attachment
for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look back upon the
city with affection as connected with many hours of happiness and quiet!
But these are my first impressions honestly set down; and how they
changed, I will set down too. At present, let us breathe after this
long-winded journey.