A TOUR THROUGH OLD
PROVENCE

THE “MOTOR TOUR” SERIES

A MOTOR TOUR THROUGH ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By Elizabeth Yardley. Cloth gilt, illustrated.

THE MOTOR BOOK. A complete work on the history, construction, and development of the Motor. By John Armstrong. Illustrated with 100 drawings and photographs.

A TOUR THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA. By A. S. Forrest. Profusely illustrated.

⁂ Other Volumes in preparation.

A TOUR THROUGH
OLD PROVENCE

BY
A. S. FORREST
WITH 108 ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE AND LINE
DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR
LONDON
S T A N L E Y P A U L & CO.
31 ESSEX STREET W.C.
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

FOREWORD

Southwards from Valence, the Rhone flows swiftly and silently through a fertile and picturesque valley, the river broadening as the valley widens. The undulating valley is filled with vineyards and farms, amidst which are scattered houses and villages innumerable, with here and there on rising ground the ruins of an ancient castle or the grey mass of a city or town of some importance. From the banks of the river, as far as the eye can reach in every direction, the land was known in Cæsar’s time as Provincia or The Province, although the term Provence is in these modern times only applied to the extreme south-eastern portion.

The wayfarer, in this land of sunshine and fertility, passing through its villages and visiting its towns, will continually meet with those relics, ruins, and remains which are left like footprints by races, dynasties, and empires long since passed away. Some of these footprints are nearly effaced, but others stand out to-day in clear and distinct outline, recalling whole histories of bygone days. The very appearance of the people, of their buildings, their manners and customs are as reminiscent of their remote ancestry as the ancient monuments to be found in their midst.

Heredity and environment are both important factors in the making of a race, and it may be that the blue skies and sunlit landscapes, with their lovely distant prospects, have had as large a share in moulding the character of the inhabitants of this land to-day as the traits and tendencies inherited from Phoceans, Gauls, and Romans. Whatever may be the cause, there is something about this region that makes an irresistible appeal to strangers from northern lands. Romance is written so plainly on its face that even “he who motors may read,” and every day spent among its towns, villages, and castles is filled with vivid pictures of many of the more illustrious periods of civilisation.

CONTENTS

LIST OF HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS

For Index of Illustrations in the text [see page 283].

AVIGNON

I
AVIGNON

From whatever direction Avignon is approached, the dignity of its battlements, the profusion of its belfries, and the towering majesty of its remarkable palace, call forth the unstinted admiration of the most surfeited sightseer. But it is from the river that the finest view of the City of the Popes can be obtained.

The silent gliding waters of the winding Rhone flow in their fleet course past many a noble town and castle, but in the whole of their long voyage past none to compare with the glorious town of Avignon.

The richness of the surrounding fields and vineyards dotted with foliage of varied shape and hue, the extensive plains, with many a rugged promontory, are a fit setting for the stern and rigid palace that guards the Papal town. From the eastern horizon the noble Alps look across the great fertile plain to their distant neighbours the Cevennes. These two mountain chains enclose the extensive valley of the Rhone, a valley that has been inhabited in turn by Gauls, Greeks, and Romans, all of whom have left their marks indelible upon its face. This valley has been richly prized by those who set foot upon its soil. The mild climate, the rare atmosphere, and clear blue sky of Provence, have combined to produce populations profoundly appreciative of the joys and pleasures of existence, who have each in their own way given expression to their feelings and emotions in their arts and letters. The Romans sought expression in their buildings, the Goths in rich and fanciful designs, and the mingled race of Provençals in their songs and lays.

Here is a land that teems with the works of man’s imagination, met with continually in the massed fortresses and embattled monasteries, the Roman playgrounds and places of amusement, the peaceful cloisters and places of worship.

Avignon, the Avenio of the Romans, was a Celtic city (the Sovereign of the Waters) before its conquest by the great empire-makers of the pre-Christian era; but its character was changed out of all recognition by the mediæval inhabitants of the town. It is known to-day as the City of the Popes, and its fame is inseparably connected with the seventy years during which seven of the Popes had their residence within its protecting walls. The “Babylonish Captivity,” as it was called by Petrarch, which lasted from 1305 to 1375, made history not only for Avignon but for the rest of Christendom.

The events which led up to the serious step of breaking the continuity of the Papal residence at the Holy See of Rome are worth recalling. During the latter part of the first millennium of the Christian era the power of the Papacy had assumed alarming sway over the many small States into which Europe had become divided after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The Papal Empire that had arisen had inspired the world anew with the ancient terror of the name of Rome. The occupant of St. Peter’s Chair was the maker and unmaker of kings. From the beginning of the eleventh century this power had been growing, to the great satisfaction of Churchmen and the keen chagrin of the laity. The scheming ambition of the Popes knew no bounds, and it culminated in the claim of Boniface VIII. for the absolute supremacy of the Papacy over all temporal authorities. It was just at the close of the thirteenth century that the inevitable conflict came.

Two of the most powerful kings in Europe, Philip the Fair of France and Edward the First of England, began at the same time to lay an arbitrary hand upon the revenues of the Church. The English King resisted the commands of the Pope, who was compelled to give way. Philip was not so fortunate in his quarrel with Rome, which in the first year of the next century came to a head. A legate sent by Boniface to Philip behaved himself so insolently that the French Monarch placed him under arrest. The Pope, enraged at the indignity offered to his representative, issued a series of Bulls to the King and Clergy of France, in one of which he set up the claim that the King of France was subject to Rome in temporal as in spiritual affairs. This was the first time that such a contention had been explicitly put forward in an official document, and Philip at once replied by a rude letter, by publicly burning the Papal Bulls, and by calling together the three great Orders of his Kingdom, the Nobles, Commons, and Clergy. This was the first Convocation in France of the States General, an assembly which four centuries later was to play so important a part in the Great Revolution.

Boniface strained the Papal Authority to the breaking-point, reached at last when one of Philip’s nobles, joined with some of the discontented Colonna in Italy, arrested the Pope himself when on a visit to his native town, Anagni, a few miles out of Rome. Although the townsfolk eventually came to the outraged Pope’s assistance and liberated him, the indignity was more than the choleric Boniface could stand, and he died, some say of temper, others of a broken heart. The reaction against the Papacy had set in, and Benedict XI., successor to Boniface, was neither willing nor able to continue the struggle. Anxious to reinstate the Papacy in the good opinion of France, he rescinded the excommunication of Philip and abandoned all pretensions to temporal power.

His occupancy of the pontifical chair was, however, of short duration. His death brought about a new crisis, for the French and Italian cardinals, met in conclave, could not agree; and for months the election of the successor to the chair was delayed. Eventually the powerful influence of Philip was successful in securing the election of a Frenchman, Bertrand de Goth or d’Agoust, Archbishop of Bordeaux, whom he compelled to assume the title of Clement V. and remove the court to France.

Provence about fifty years before this period had passed to Charles I. of Anjou, who inherited the kingdom through his wife, a daughter of the fourth Raymond Berenger. When their son Charles II. came into his patrimony of Anjou and Provence, with Naples, he united them, and during his reign great prosperity came to the kingdom. But upon his death, in 1305, a dispute arose amongst his son and grandsons, their rival claims being argued at great length in Avignon before Clement V. who was the feudal superior of the Neapolitan kingdom. His decision favoured Robert the son of Charles II., who therefore succeeded to the throne, but afterwards left a troubled inheritance to his granddaughter the unfortunate Joan.

History is conflicting with regard to the character of this Princess, and she has her partisans to-day, in the same way as Mary, Queen of Scots, whose tragic story is very similar.

Joan, or Joanna, reared at Naples in the midst of every luxury and refinement that the age could offer, was in her early years betrothed to her cousin Andrew (a son of Carobert, King of Hungary), who, although brought up along with his wife at the Neapolitan court, inherited the rough tastes and barbarous manners of his native country.

Their union was the foundation of tragedy and civil war, for Andrew soon grew imperious, and the princely couple drifted apart; the husband to assert an independent right to the crown which he only held by virtue of his wife. He was urging Pope Clement VI. to consent to his coronation when he was assassinated, some say at the direct instigation of Joan herself.

The rumours connecting the widow with the crime soon spread, and Louis of Hungary, brother of the murdered man, invaded Naples to seek revenge. Joan, who had taken to herself another husband, fled with him to Provence to take shelter under the Papal See and to raise money and an army for the protection of her kingdom.

The Pope, after a solemn investigation into the circumstances of the murder, acquitted Joan of the charge. Taking advantage of her pressing need, he bargained with her to sell Avignon to him for eighty thousand crowns. This transaction did little credit to Clement, for although he and his successors retained the town thus acquired, the money was never paid—possibly, as is

thought, on the ground that Joan was amply compensated by receiving the Papal absolution for the murder of her husband. Certainly Clement would have no scruples, for his Court was as licentious as it was magnificent. Amidst its regal splendour gay and beautiful women played an important part, the Pope himself not impervious to their influence. The Countess of Turenne, suspected of being one of his mistresses, and as rapacious as she was handsome, unblushingly sold positions and preferments procured by her ascendancy.

Joan’s subsequent matrimonial career, although full of variety (she had in all four husbands), was unproductive of issue; and her presumptive heir, Charles, Duke of Durazzo, offended at her last venture in matrimony, took forcible possession of Naples, and, to preclude all opposition to his newly acquired sovereignty, the deposed Joan was by his orders removed from his path by assassination.

Avignon was ancient and illustrious before the Popes descended upon it and added a fresh and brilliant page to its already voluminous history. Far back in pre-Roman times, and even before the coming of the adventurous Phoceans, it is probable that some prehistoric Celts had built a city on these same rocky foundations beside the silvery Rhone. The Phoceans from Marseilles saw its possibilities, for under them it became one of the richest cities in the Narbonne, and when, at their invitation, the Romans overran the valley and drove out the barbarians who threatened it and every other fertile spot in Europe, they added further to the fame of Avignon.

Very few vestiges of the ancient Roman town remain to-day. Successive ages quarried amongst the massive Roman constructions for material to rebuild their town according to their altering needs. In the Rue des Grottes, a narrow little street, two blocks away from the west front of the Papal Palace, the cellars of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century houses are formed by the arcades of what must have been a vast Roman building; and minute investigators of the town have fancied they could trace the foundations of a theatre near to the Place St. Pierre. But coins and fragments of marble mosaics, Greek and Latin inscriptions, have been found in plenty all through the city, and are now housed and guarded in the Calvet Museum, one of the chief attractions of the town.

That Avignon should be lacking in more important Roman monuments such as are the pride of the neighbouring towns of Arles, Nîmes, Orange, and others is quite easily accounted for. When one reads of the numerous invasions and sieges which the city suffered at the hands of vast barbarian hordes, who swept over the land like a devastating tornado during the fourth century of our era, and of the perpetual internecine strife that during the dark ages took place between Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians, and Saracens, one no longer feels astonished at the absence of Roman remains of any magnitude.

The true history of the Avignon of to-day starts in the twelfth century, when, under circumstances of which the details are now obscured by the mists of time, it became a republic with its own laws and privileges, endowments and revenues, only restricted by the overlordship of its Bishop.

The intermarriages of the feudal families, their numerous offspring, and the frequent divisions and subdivisions of territories and estates led to endless changes in the map of the southern counties of France. The quarrels and disputes of the Counts of Toulouse, Provence, and Forcalquier as to their rival rights of suzerainty over the town led to the setting up of a republic in Avignon.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms, which at first glance might be mistaken for a continuation of the great mass of buildings which constitute the Palace of the Popes, is one of the earliest monuments or buildings in the town. Standing on an elevated site, the summit of the great Rock of the Doms, it was constructed early in the twelfth century, and remains to-day a choice specimen of Romanesque architecture. Like all the buildings in Provence, it has been carefully studied and severely criticised, various and conflicting opinions have been expressed about it, and different dates assigned to it. From the apex of the small octagonal structure that surmounts the great square tower of the Cathedral, a gigantic gilded figure of the Virgin looks down upon the town and surrounding country.

It is, as the French writers would say, “in the taste of the eighteenth century,” hideous and out of place, a blatant, gaudy anachronism that vividly illustrates the truth of the old adage, “Tastes differ.” Fragments of an old Latin inscription, removed from its porch and now in the Calvet Museum, have been cited by some as giving a history of this building. This stone document claims that the church was “founded by St. Martha, consecrated by St. Ruf, enlarged by the first Christian Emperor Constantine, destroyed by the Saracens, saved by Charles Martel, and restored by the munificence of Charlemagne, and that Jesus Christ came to consecrate it with His own hand.”

But this legend has been proved to be as unreliable as so many other ecclesiastical traditions of mediæval times. The porch has also been the subject of controversy. The pillars with their beautiful Corinthian capitals are either the remains of some more ancient building, probably a classic temple, or perhaps mediæval copies of the antique. Above the door are the faded and damp-stained remains of a fresco of the fourteenth century. The figures of God the Father and two supporting angels can be made out, and bear strong traces of Byzantine mannerisms. If they are, as has been suggested, the work of Simone Martini of Siena, he displays in this work little of the genius of his great contemporaries in art.

And here it must be said that Avignon is not so rich in early paintings or frescoes of the first order as one would expect so mediæval a town to be.

The church is lit entirely from the dome, and the light that streams down from the eight windows above the choir is hardly sufficient to penetrate into the five deep vaulted bays of the nave. The style of the whole interior, for want of a better name, is called Romanesque, a style of the transition period between the rigid simplicity of the Roman times and the flowing ornamentation of the Middle Ages. Many of the most cherished monuments of the Cathedral were desecrated, pillaged, and destroyed during the Revolution, Spanish prisoners were lodged in it, and generally it was about as badly used as any of the religious buildings in Provence.

It, however, still retains the fine marble chair which is assumed to be the ancient Papal throne, with the lion of St. Mark and the ox of St. Luke carved in deep relief on either side of it.

In the small chapel to the right of the choir stands the lovely tomb of Pope John XXII., an excellent piece of fourteenth-century pointed Gothic work which suffered much mutilation during the Revolution, when it was dislodged from its place and the statue of its occupant stolen together with the statuettes that adorned the niches round its base. The tomb was restored in the middle of the last century, and is now at rest in its original position within the little chapel founded by John XXII. himself. It is a work of great beauty, of slender spires and delicate mouldings, of pillared niches with finely pierced canopies, of tapering columns and richly crocketed and perforated gables: a monument all too elegant for the mentally and physically deformed Pontiff to whose memory it is erected.

John XXII. was a man of humblest origin, Jacques d’Euse by name, born in 1244 at Euse. Son of a shoemaker, he rose to the most elevated position of his time; his talents, opportunities, and craftiness combining to bring about his elevation to the Papal Chair. Superstitious and cruel, he stooped to methods of revenge that match in diabolic ferocity the most sanguinary reprisals of the buccaneers. One of his clergy, a bishop, was by his command flayed alive and torn to pieces by wild horses.

In his later years John got into sore trouble with the theological authorities by promulgating the heretical doctrine “that the Saints at death fell asleep and did not enjoy the beatific vision till after the resurrection.” Whether this was a genuine conviction with him or no, he was forced by the religious opinion of his contemporaries to make a semblance of retracting it, but his monument seems to suggest that he believed it was to be his only resting-place until the last great day. His religious intolerance brought the Papacy into grave disrepute, but his grasping avarice greatly benefited its treasury, for at his death it was found that he had amassed for it eighteen millions of gold florins in bullion and about seven millions in plate and jewels.

From the garden of the Rocher des Doms, which rises abruptly to a height of three hundred feet above the river and looks across the island of Barthelasse to the town of Villeneuve, there stretches far into the distance a landscape which excites the imagination of the romantic poet, delights the eye of the artist, and even moves the prosaic to express themselves in superlatives.

The old bridge of St. Benezet, or, to be more exact, the three arches that remain of it, is a distinguished relic of

the twelfth-century Avignon. It ends abruptly about two-thirds of the distance across the left branch of the river, which at this point is divided by the low-lying island of Barthelasse. Grey in colour, desolate, for traffic has long ceased to clank and rattle over its narrow causeway, this “fragment” gives a very good idea of what the ancient bridge must have been when it extended completely over the two channels of the river, and the island that divides them, right up to the foot of the menacing square tower of Philip the Fair that guards the opposite bank.

The silent flowing river with unruffled surface breaks into sound as it rushes past these remaining piers. The gurgling swish of the hurrying waters and the sparkling little ripples occasioned by the resistance of the solid masonry, are the only breaks in the calm monotonous silence with which the river makes its way down the great flat valley to the sea. The ancient bridge is deserted, “all the world” no longer dances, if ever it did attempt such a feat, upon the parapetless ten-foot way; and the ancient rhyme—

“Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse, danse,
Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse en rond,”

would to-day be more applicable to the little white ripples that dance and sparkle in the sunlight as they burst forth from under the venerable archways. Fifteen other arches continued the bridge in days gone by, but the townsfolk got tired at last of continually making good the damage unceasingly inflicted by their enemies upon this highway, and since the latter part of the eighteenth century it has remained the fragment that one sees to-day.

The Bridge of Avignon when it completely spanned the Rhone was not complete without its legend, a pretty little Provençal story that has lasted until to-day. The simple folk of Avignon relate how a little shepherd boy from Viverais, higher up the river, heard of the many accidents which befell the inhabitants, who had no other means of crossing the Rhone save by boats, accidents which resulted in great loss of life. This little shepherd, highly favoured by the Saints, was, like Joseph of old, a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions—dreams and visions that roused and inspired him to go to the rescue of the hapless folk whose lives were in peril every time they crossed the rapids of the Rhone in their frail craft. Making his way on foot along the river bank to Avignon, he presented himself to the Bishop of the town; told him of his dreams and urged him to construct a bridge. Unfavourably received both by the Bishop and the Provost, the former laughing at and the latter chastising him, he demonstrated the inspired nature of his mission by carrying to the river bank with his unaided hands a huge boulder of rock to serve as the foundation-stone.

This miraculous act, together with his passionate pleading, roused the townspeople, and without further delay the bridge was commenced. Poor Benezet, dying before his life-work was completed in 1177, was canonised by the grateful inhabitants, who have since done full justice to the little shepherd boy to whom the town owed one of its most useful glories and lasting treasures. A tiny chapel dedicated to St. Benezet stands upon the first pier of the ancient bridge, and mass is still said there every 14th of April, the Saint’s Day.

A lot of water has flowed under the arches of the bridge since the days when brave knights in shining armour, proud priests in sumptuous robes, poets, painters, soldiers, courtiers, and the thousand and one mortals of commoner clay passed over the realised dream of the shepherd lad. It has served its turn, and now belongs entirely to the bygone age of chivalry and romance.

One of its contemporaries still exists near the Avignon of to-day—the ruined church of St. Ruf that stands on the Tarascon road just outside the city walls. It is all that is left of a twelfth-century monastery, built by some canons of the Cathedral, who, on separating from their brother clergy, retired to this spot, whither an ancient oratory, said to have been founded by St. Ruf, attracted them. The Sanctuary and tower, or belfry, are all that remain of the once extensive series of buildings, but the carved capitals of the columns and fine bold apse bear evidence that it was a church equal in beauty of workmanship to the Cathedral itself.

The buildings already mentioned are the oldest in Avignon, for the ramparts that exist to-day replace the older ones which were destroyed after the great siege in 1226. This siege was one of the last incidents in a war which for wellnigh twenty years wrought devastation throughout the southern provinces of France.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century there existed a sect known as the Valdenses, or Albigenses, which had become so strong that Princes and Nobles were embracing its tenets to the vexation of the Papacy. What exactly were the beliefs of these heretics it is difficult to determine, as the accounts handed down to us come from prejudiced sources.

There were those who alleged that the Albigenses professed a distorted Christianity, grafted on to a degraded pagan mysticism, whilst others, and amongst these were some of the persecutors, averred that nothing could be more Christianlike than their behaviour or more blameless than their lives. Claud, Archbishop of Turin, testifies that they were “perfect, irreproachable, without reproach among men, addicting themselves with all their might to the service of God.”

Whatever were their beliefs they held them strongly, and were prepared to suffer for them even to the death; but more probably it was their determined opposition to and contempt for the Papal Hierarchy that brought down upon them its most bitter hatred and unrelenting oppression. The sect was particularly strong in Languedoc, and from the town of Albi in that province they took their name. The conflict of the faiths at last reached such a pitch that the imperious Pope Innocent III. found it necessary to take steps to preserve his spiritual authority.

A crusade was proclaimed, and all Christendom was urged to take up arms under the Pontifical banner for the suppression of the heretics. Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, an independent sovereign, who, whilst in no way sharing their beliefs, was averse to joining Rome in a war upon his own subjects, refused the Papal appeal for assistance, and was promptly excommunicated. The awful Ban of the Church was pronounced upon him by a Legate named Peter of Castelnau, and one of Raymond’s followers, in an excess of loyalty, put an end with his sword to any such utterances from the same source in the future. The assassination of his representative thoroughly enraged the Pope, who issued a Bull imputing that Raymond was influenced by the devil, and urging all the counts, barons, and knights of Southern France to pursue his person and occupy and retain his domains.

Thus was the cupidity of adventurous knights appealed to, and whilst the legions of the Church ostensibly fought for the upholding of the faith, Raymond of Toulouse was forced into the position of defending his inheritance. Prompted by fear or contrition, or perchance a mixture of both, Raymond underwent a most humiliating penance in his anxiety to propitiate the enraged Innocent. Strong indeed must have been the motive which induced so powerful a prince to submit to being stripped naked from head to foot, save for a linen cloth round his waist for decency’s sake, and being thus led nine times round the pretended Martyr’s grave in the Church at St. Gilles, his naked shoulders chastised the while with rods. The penance was accepted and Raymond was absolved, but his possessions had already been divided amongst the crusaders, of whom Simon de Montfort was Chief. The Comtat Venaissin was made over to the Papal See, a transfer in which the inhabitants of the independent town of Avignon who sided with Raymond did not concur.

Through endless sieges the fortunes of the contending factions continually fluctuated. Simon de Montfort, now Count of Toulouse, succeeded in obtaining the re-excommunication of Raymond; but the latter never forsook the practices of the Holy Church, and with true humility continued to perform his devotions at the doors of edifices whose thresholds he was forbidden to cross. At the siege of Toulouse in 1216, death put an end to the crusading career of de Montfort, but the struggle went on as bitterly as ever. Every victory of the Papal forces continued to be celebrated by a massacre of the vanquished.

Raymond VII., a more resolute and energetic man than his father, ultimately regained the whole of Languedoc, and Amaury de Montfort sought the protection of his ally Louis VIII. of France, to whom he ceded the territorial rights acquired by his father. It was whilst on his way to take possession of his new domain that Louis advanced with a powerful army upon Avignon, demanding a passage through the town that he might cross the Rhone by St. Benezet’s bridge. The inhabitants rightly distrusted the wily pretext, and submitted to a siege rather than open their gates. After a spirited defence of three months’ duration the town surrendered, with the stipulation that only the Legate, Romain de St. Ange, and the chief lords of the crusaders should come within its walls.

On the principle probably that faith need not be kept with heretics the pledge was broken, and the invading army entered the town, put its defenders to the sword, filled up its trenches, demolished its ramparts and towers, and pulled down its strongholds. Moreover, the citizens of Avignon were heavily fined for their adherence to a heresy which they were solemnly sworn to abjure for the future; and, as if this were not enough, they were further compelled to maintain an armed and equipped body of thirty men in the Holy Land to assist in the recovery of the sacred tomb from the Saracens.

When Clement V., coerced by Philip the Fair, removed the Papal See from the Holy City and established his court in Avignon, he arrived in a town as unlike the existing one as it is possible to imagine, and took up his abode in the Monastery of the Dominican Friars. For Avignon was to him merely a stop-gap, and he never relinquished the idea of reinstating the Papal Chair in Rome.

His successor, John XXII., the shoemaker’s avaricious son, was not new to Avignon, having been its bishop before his elevation. He at once enlarged the small palace he had previously occupied; but this edifice was completely swept away by the building operations of Benedict XII., who succeeded him. This Pope it was who erected the greater part of the mass of buildings which to-day form the most conspicuous and enduring feature of the town. To call it a palace was a misnomer; it was a fortress, and one of the best examples of its period. It was a town within a town, and its designers were not so much concerned with creating a thing of beauty as in devising a refuge of irresistible strength. And yet its great plain walls have a beauty all their own, and the eye never tires of wandering over its various surfaces, unexpected, irregular, and vast. Its plan follows the irregular shape of the rock upon which it is founded, and was the work of succeeding Popes and their architects.

Of the seven exiled Popes, two, Benedict XII. and Clement VI., were most ambitious builders, and we are only to-day beginning to discover the true merit of the work carried out under their direction. For during the whole of the nineteenth century the buildings were in the hands of the military, who transformed and mutilated them in adapting them to their requirements, and it is only recently that the walls with which they blocked up doors, windows, and staircases have been removed, as also the floors and partitions with which they divided the vast chapel and audience chambers.

Most of the beautiful windows, specimens of early Gothic, which originally gave character to the whole building and more particularly to the courtyard into which they looked, disappeared when the place became a barracks, and were replaced by ugly square openings, totally out of keeping with the surrounding masonry.

The utilitarian engineer had but little regard for the architectural and archæological amenities of this monument, and with ruthless hands desecrated rich carvings and rare frescoes, timbered ceilings and vaulted roofs; therefore a large expenditure of money, time, and skill will be required to restore the Palace of the Popes to anything like its former splendour.

The work of restoration is being carried out under the auspices of a Government which is animated by a spirit very different from that of many of its predecessors, and already the imposing audience hall and the magnificent

chapel above it have recovered much of their original appearance.

In the Tour Saint Jean are two chapels, one above the other, the upper dedicated to Saint Martial, a bishop of Limoges, and the lower to the Saint after whom the tower itself is named. These little chapels were decorated in the time of Clement VI., about the year 1342.

In the ceiling of the chapel of Saint Martial the vaults are covered with a series of pictures illustrating the life of the Saint. The colour is in a brilliant state of preservation, the blues and warm browns being contrasted so as to give a very rich yet soothing effect. The irregularity of the designs, placed in an arbitrary fashion in the spaces between the ribs, strikes one at first as being strangely affected; but the figures are free and expressive in their action, some of them being finished with a searching minuteness worthy of the Sienese School at its best period. The ribs of the vault are decorated with most beautiful Arabesque patterns, very suggestive of Byzantine mosaics.

In the lower chapel the ribwork is similar but not so elaborate in detail, whilst the figures illustrating the life of St. John are on a much larger scale. Unfortunately most of them are headless, a piece of vandalism attributed to a Corsican regiment under the command of Colonel Sebastiani, which was quartered in this part of the Palace. The incentive was not mere wanton disfigurement of the paintings, for the heads have all been neatly cut round, and most carefully removed, and the assumption is, that the soldiers earned considerable pocket-money by disposing of them to collectors. The Colonel has not been held blameless in the matter, but probably overlooked the depredations of his men because he enriched his own collection from the same source.

The frescoes in the Garde Robe, a chamber of considerable importance, have recently been brought to light. The roof of the chamber is not vaulted, but has heavy wooden beams resting upon stone corbels and supporting the floor above. The walls of this interesting room are completely covered with paintings of the fourteenth century by an unknown artist. These have been restored, and one gets a very good idea of the original state of the apartment. On a background of grass and foliage figures in fourteenth-century costumes are depicted, engaged in the pastimes of the period, hunting, fishing, falconry, and bathing. The restoration of the

background has not been very happy, the chalky colour of the new work being a little too conspicuous.

The question of the restoration of ancient pictures, sculptures, and buildings is rather a vexed one, but the advocates of the “let alone” policy seem to overlook the fact that ultimately little would remain, as only such massive monuments as the Pyramids can resist the ceaseless ravages of time and the elements. The difficulty is to determine the right moment to set about repairs which should be neither too long delayed nor undertaken prematurely; but the process must be a perpetual one if posterity is to retain the structures and works of earlier times. The most zealous opponent of restoration could hardly take exception to the work that has been carried out in the two most important parts of the building—the great Audience Hall and the beautiful Chapel above it. The extraordinary plan of placing these two lofty buildings one above the other was a daring feat of building construction.

The internal structure of both hall and chapel is unexpectedly beautiful, for the outside of this frowning fortress gives no indication whatever of the delicate refinement of the roof vaulting, the clustered pillars, the carved capitals and corbels that it contains. The Audience Hall, or lower chamber, is divided into two naves by five clustered pillars, from which the elegant ribs of the vaulted roof outspread themselves.

This Hall, which was for half a century the chief tribunal of Christendom, is about 150 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 34 feet high, and is lit by eleven tall ogival windows, in graceful harmony with the airy vaulting of the roof. At the top of the great staircase that ascends from the entrance of the Audience Chamber there was recently “unearthed,” or unwalled, the main doorway to the chapel above. This had been built over so completely by the military that its presence was for years unsuspected. It has suffered much damage, but what remains gives indication of the rich beauty it once possessed. The Chapel has no pillars, being one great nave, its vault springing from engaged clustered columns, that run up the walls between the windows. The capitals of these columns are the only carving in this vast airy hall.

The original builders, in the flights of their imagination after spaciousness, gave so little heed to the constructional problems involved in its achievement, that less inspired but more practical successors found it imperative to prop the outside wall with a great flying buttress which arches over a street running past the south side of the building, and seems to form a portion of the main building.

On the vaults of the upper bay of the Audience Hall there are fragmentary remains of the frescoes that were executed by some artist or artists of the Sienese school. The records of a hundred years ago show that the subjects which could be seen on the walls at that time were a “Last Judgment,” “The Prophets,” and a “Crucifixion.”

The military gentlemen of the last century are again the culprits: they could not see the merit or use of preserving such works, preferring to see the dormitories of their men whitewashed, clean, and bare, as befitted their occupation.

These few traces of early Italian artists, who were employed by the wealthy court of the Papacy, are all that now remain of what was one of the chief glories in the fourteenth century.

As one wanders through the courts, chambers, passages, prisons, and chapels of the fortress palace, the historical associations they possess fill the mind more than their present state. Page after page of history is opened up at every turn, and the Past rises before us, with its romance and war, cruelty and beauty, voluptuousness and spirituality, joys and sorrows, ambitions and disappointments, all mixed together like colours in a kaleidoscope.

The inscription that was found on the porch of the

ancient Cathedral might well be paraphrased into one that could be placed upon the Palace.

“Clement V. thought of it; John XXII. founded
it; Benedict XII. built it; Clement VI. enlarged
and enriched it; Innocent VI. added to its glory;
Urban V. chastened it; Gregory XI. abandoned
it; the Anti-pope, Pierre de Luna, defended and
jeopardised it; the Legates vandalised it; the
Brigands of Avignon desecrated it; the Military
transformed it out of all knowledge; and now a
thoughtful Republic is endeavouring to restore it
to its former state.”

Such an inscription would briefly set out the main facts of its long history for the last six hundred years.

The worldly splendour of the Papal Court at Avignon, under the Pontificates of Benedict XII. and Clement VI., was notorious throughout Christendom, and when one reads of the indolent voluptuousness and dissipations of the debauched clergy who surrounded the Papal throne, one is quite prepared to learn that the grave scandals shocked even the lax moralities of the period. It was in vain that the last three occupants of St. Peter’s Chair in Avignon sought to suppress the excessive pomp and luxury of their courts. Clement VI. had left behind him a reputation for being “a fine gentleman, a prince munificent to profusion, a patron of the arts, but no Saint,” and it is not difficult to imagine that the example of one in such exalted station was well calculated to encourage the wealthy churchmen to emulate his dissipations.

Reformers and disciplinarians were bound to be unpopular with such a society, and one cannot help feeling that when (urged by the supplications of the Italians and the fanatical entreaties and vehement persuasions of St. Catharine, who went in person to plead with the Holy Father) the earnest Gregory XI. left Avignon, he did so with a feeling of relief. At his departure, the licence of the clergy increased to such an extent that Charles V., shocked at the scandals of the Church, could endure them no longer, and sent soldiers under the command of Marshal Boucicaut to drive the Anti-pope, Pierre de Luna (Benedict XIII.), from the place. Pierre de Luna established himself in the Fortress Palace, and defended it with determination. He destroyed one of the arches of the Pont St. Benezet to cut off the approaches from the river; and from the battlements and towers of his castle directed the engines of war with his own hands on the town and townsfolk, who suffered so severely that over a hundred houses and four thousand of the inhabitants were destroyed during the siege.

After months of fighting the King’s troops stormed the fortress, and Pierre de Luna saved himself by means of secret passages and staircases leading to a vault from whence he got to the river side, and escaping across the Rhone, sought refuge under the protection of the King of Spain in his native country. Here, with two vicars, or priests, he kept up the pretence of being still the Pope, and each day from the top of a tower he blessed his distant friends and cursed his enemies. At his death his two followers, both of whom he had made cardinals, met in conclave, and one elected the other “Pope.” The farce of this schism was ended by both of the exiled cardinals being bribed into reconciliation to Rome; one being made Archbishop of Toledo, and the other Archbishop of Seville.

It was during this siege that the fire broke out by which the Salle Brulle got its name; but there is another story which attributes the origin of this name to the brutality of one of the Papal Legates, when, inviting a number of the leading citizens of the town to a great feast in the chamber, he left them in the middle of the banquet and blew up the happy party with gunpowder.

The reason for this “Gunpowder treason” was, that a near relative of the Legate had been assassinated by some

citizens for taking liberties with a young maiden of good family belonging to the town. Whichever version is correct, the name has stuck tenaciously to this chamber. There is another tragedy associated with this Palace which is famous for evermore. The massacre, which took place in the Glacière, or Ice Tower, one awful night in the middle of November 1791, at the outbreak of the Revolution, set a fiendish example to the lawless brutality which, in 1793, expressed itself in a similar way in the Abbaye Prison in Paris. Jourdain Coupetête, a fierce revolutionary, had earned his nickname two years previously by decapitating the corpses of the two Body-guards in the Marble Court of the Palace at Versailles, at the “insurrection of women.” In June 1791 he was leading a body of nearly 15,000 men, who called themselves the Brigands of Avignon. Jourdain had dubbed himself “General,” and with his associates was the terror of the Royalists.

L’Escuyer, one of the Patriot leaders, accompanied by the crowd, entered the Church of the Cordeliers to hear Mass, or to mock at it. The aristocratic Papists (the Church and Royalist faction) resented this, and their hot southern blood being roused, the two parties came to blows. In the mêlée L’Escuyer was killed, and this roused the Patriots to demand an inquest. Impatient of delay, the Brigands under Jourdain took possession of the Papal Palace, and there imprisoned some hundred and thirty persons—men, women, and children—in the dungeons of the Glacière Tower.

Then establishing themselves into a court-martial, with Jourdain as the judge, these Brigands very quickly disposed of all the prisoners with the naked sword—a most ghastly slaughter that makes the blood run cold.

When the troops under General Choisi came to the rescue, Jourdain could not hold the castle, but was forced to take flight, escaping through the secret passages as Pierre de Luna had done four hundred years previously.

If Avignon were to be deprived of her grand Papal Palace, she would still have enough churches and monasteries left to give evidence either of the great popularity her church enjoyed, or of the power wielded in the Middle Ages by the religious orders.

Churches and monasteries are scattered lavishly through the town, and from the rich stores of relics still possessed by them, some slight idea may be gleaned of the wealth they possessed before the terrible Revolution. Everywhere the stranger goes the story is the same. Vergers and guides tell of the past glories of this town: this stood here and that there; here was a monument, there a shrine; but—they vanished in the Revolution.

Terrible were these revolutionists of the South; they gathered their harvests of rich plunder from the Church’s hand with as little concern as a farmer gathers his corn, or as a beggar his rags. Nothing was sacred from their vandal hands, and the tables were turned upon the Church, which in the centuries long gone had taken its heavy toll from all the country round.

What a grotesque picture the Revolution presents! Grim satire on the vanity of riches, the pomp of ceremony and fleetingness of power, and the emptiness of rank. Riches took wings, or rather were carried off on donkeys’ backs to be melted down into coin and turned into bread for hungry mouths. Ceremonies, even the most sacred, were mocked at, and burlesque processions of ecclesiastical pageants excited the ribald laughter of the crowd. The powerful were humbled to the dust, and rank lost its head under the cruel slicing invention of Dr. Guillotin.

The Royalist faction in Avignon had always been associated with the Order of the “White Penitents,” and in the same way the “Black Penitents” had inherited the independence and rebellious spirit that animated the followers of Count Raymond of Toulouse. These rival factions, whose original opposition had been mainly religious, had now become political, and on the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo their differences became more accentuated and violent. The Royalists were in the ascendancy, and they revenged themselves upon their political and religious enemies with all the fanatical fervour of their Southern nature.

The aristocratic and religious party had much to remember. The Glacière massacres of 1791 were perpetrated upon their class, and as in 1795 the Royalist libertines in Paris had indulged in ghastly reprisals against the red-capped revolutionaries, the White Penitents followed in Avignon the fashion set them by the capital. The enforced submission to the restored Bourbon Dynasty in July 1815 aroused the bitterest resentment of the Black Penitents and their followers, just as the restoration of Napoleon had done their opponents earlier in March of the same year.

At Carpentras, about fifteen miles from Avignon, a small garrison of the republicans, who had kept the tricolour floating until July 15, were shot down by the Royalist Volunteers, although they had surrendered. Fanatical crowds of Royalists directed their hatred and anger against the Protestant section of the community.

Vindictive murder and pillage spread all over the country towns and villages. “The White Terror” of 1815 is a thing to remember, or rather to forget. The diabolical outrages of Jourdain were equalled, if not surpassed, by the White Penitent Pointu, the Avignon murderer, a leader of a band as ferocious and bloodthirsty as himself. The military and civil authorities were powerless to check the excesses of the fanatical horde that rode roughshod over law and order, morality, decency, and ordinary human feeling.

Marseilles, Nîmes, Uzès, Avignon, Arles, and Carpentras were all involved in the White Terror, and one can hardly credit the details of the cruel crimes committed. Among the victims to the insensate Royalists was Marshal Brune, passing through on his way from Marseilles to Paris to defend his conduct to the Government. On reaching Avignon he sought out quarters in the Hôtel de la Poste. The news of his arrival had spread along with sinister stories as to his doings during the Revolution of 1789, and a great mob assembled around the hotel, broke in and shot the Marshal in cold blood. His body was on its way to burial when the crowd forced the bearers to change their course and proceed to the river-side, where a wooden bridge spanned the river. From this they threw the body of the Marshal into the silent Rhone. The ribald crowd fired shots into the body as it floated down the

stream, a proceeding which they termed “military honours.” On the arch of the bridge they wrote “The Tomb of Marshal Brune.” The river, however, refused the honour, and after twice being washed ashore, the corpse was taken and buried by two men, who recognised it. The Marshal’s widow, eventually, had the body disinterred and embalmed. At her instigation a public trial was held, at which the memory of the dead man was cleared of the charge of suicide and the body buried at Rioni.

This is one story; a sidelight on the happenings in Beautiful Provence at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The Papal Palace in Avignon stands steadfast amidst all the changes that have come to the city, for its outward features have successfully resisted the incessant hammerings of time. The work of internal renovation goes steadily on, whilst the white dust raised by the masons, who sing at their work, settles in every conceivable resting-place, much to the discomfort of the inhabitants, especially when the “mistral” sweeps down and drives this dust, like snow, before it. The old motto of the city

“Windy Avignon, liable to plague when it has not the wind and plagued with the wind when it has it,”

still applies, if the plague is interpreted to mean dust.

The inhabitants have been easily moulded by the influence of modernity, and their principal street boasts of electric light and trams. Fashion finds ardent devotees in the provincial town, who worship at her shrine with as much, if not greater, zeal than her votaries in Paris, London, or New York. The café and the restaurant are held in high esteem, and, as in all French towns, occupy an important place in the civil life. The hour ’twixt sundown and the most important of the day, when all Avignon sits around the well-spread dinner tables, is devoted to the cafés; and these clubs of the people, deserted and idle at some hours, are full of joyful life.

On winter evenings the temporary stoves that stand prominently in the middle of these salons are surrounded by cold-footed mortals, who rest their extremities upon the encircling fenders. Friends meet, and seated around marble tables consume café, beer, bright-coloured syrups, and absinthe according to their fancy. Absinthe is still a popular drink throughout Provence, in spite of reasoned appeals from the medical fraternity for its discontinuance. Respectable womenfolk frequent the cafés with their male relatives and friends, and sip sweet sickly syrups with the rest. Excess is rare, almost unheard of. Cards are played, the stakes usually being the cost of the entertainment. During the hour or so before dinner the café is supreme.

The old folk in Avignon are all happy-looking; the men especially are a jolly set of fellows, and although the snow of years falls on their heads and never melts, their hearts are young and warm, secure from Time’s blighting frosts. They have studied the art of living, under their blue skies, and have mastered the difficult business.

The girls and women are particularly well favoured, dark, as becomes their Southern origin, well featured, favouring the Grecian rather than the Roman type. They have less of the imperious self-conscious dignity of their sisters in Spain and other Latin countries, and seem frank and more human and in touch with the life around them. The Church finds in them its chief adherents, faithful still in a country where once everybody believed and few inquired, and now, where few believe and all ask questions. New vistas of thought were opened up in Provence during the Revolution epoch, and ever since the view has widened. In the churches nearly all the little brass plates on the prie-dieu chairs have the prefix Mme. or Mlle. engraved upon them. One seldom comes across Monsieur.

In summer, when the heat of the brilliant day gives place to the lovely glow of the Provençal evening, all Avignon sits outside around the tables that trespass in careless fashion upon the pavements. The gossip of the day goes round amidst unrestrained laughter and merriment. The café on the pavement is as truly a Gallic institution as the “Bullring” is Spanish. Spain carried her “institution” to her remotest colonies, and France has done the same with the café.

The scene on a summer evening in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Avignon is but a repetition on a smaller scale of what may be seen on any evening from one year’s end to the other in the Cannebière at Marseilles, or farther distant still, across the Mediterranean in the Place du Gouvernement in the French city of Algiers.

The Romans introduced their great national institutions for amusement, the amphitheatre and the circus, into nearly all their colonies, no matter how distant, and the modern Gaul has emulated the older and far greater coloniser in this respect. Even on the borders of the Great Desert the outside café is firmly planted amongst a people who boast a longer civilisation than their conquerors—a feat which the Romans found impossible, for the amphitheatre of Rome made no headway amongst the conquered Greeks.

But the Place, with all its gay life upon a summer evening, is not a lasting memory of Avignon. The picture that remains upon the mind is the view from the suspension bridge, just where it reaches the isle of Barthelasse. From this point of vantage Avignon, bathed in the evening glow, assumes a thoroughly mediæval aspect. The dark masses of the Rocks of the Dom, the Cathedral, the Papal Palace, the church spires and belfries are all softened and mellowed in the mystic light of the afterglow in the west, until fancy suggests that the intervening years have, in some subtle way, been bridged over, and the beholder is back in those days when the proud prelates ruled like kings, nay despots, in this fortress town beside the Rhone.

VILLENEUVE

II
VILLENEUVE

The modern approach to the town of Villeneuve passes the Tower of Philip the Fair, a huge square block of masonry, erected early in the fourteenth century on the west bank of the river, at the spot where the old Bridge of St. Benezet reached the shore. The position was such that whoever held this tower had complete command of the bridge, and could render it useless to the inhabitants of Avignon when any conflict arose. Its presence here proves how determined Philip was to have the Papacy under his complete control, and at the time of its construction it was well-nigh impregnable, for it embodied the latest improvements known to the military genius of that day.

Before this period the battlements of fortresses and castles were simply a series of embrasures and merlons with narrow oylets perforating the latter. The engines of war used in laying siege to these buildings were great battering-rams, with iron points, which laboured incessantly at the lower portions of the defences, until a breach sufficiently large to give passage to the attacking party was effected. The defenders’ reply to this mode of attack was to lower cords or chains from the battlements, and with them entangle the battering-ram so as to put it out of action.

The besieging party’s efforts were, therefore, engaged in preventing the defenders from leaning over the parapets; the archers and bowmen directing their arrows and quarrels at any and every head appearing at the embrasures above. Throughout the crusades this was the manner of defence and attack, and an improvement was introduced by a system of covering the battlements with temporary galleries, projecting over and supported upon wooden beams, thrust through holes left for the purpose in the masonry. This gallery was roofed with wood and tiles, whilst the floor had gaps between the planks through which the defenders could let down their ropes and chains or pour molten lead, burning sulphur, stones and other missiles upon the heads of those who advanced to enter breaches in the walls.

But in time a method was discovered of successfully

attacking this device of the defending party. Great catapults, the most ancient of military engines, invented away back in the early classic times, were now employed to hurl barrels of burning tar up on to the temporary wooden shelters, which were soon demolished by this means.

For centuries this method of attack and defence flourished, and it was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that the machicolated battlements came into existence. From ancient times the old crenellated battlements had served through ages that were engaged in fighting. The ancient Egyptians and Assyrians used them, and it was reserved for the military genius of the Middle Ages to invent the machicolated parapet. This consisted of building out from the main walls of the tower or castle a curtain of masonry, supported by stone brackets. This gave a thorough protection to the besieged, who could look down through the apertures between the corbels and drop their missiles, molten lead, burning sulphur and melted pitch, on to the heads of their assailants.

The Tower of Philip the Fair is built with a machicolated battlement, and over the small doorway there is an “échauguette,” or small projecting tower, which commands the entrance. Even if the besiegers managed to escape the missiles dropped through the floor of the little tower, and forced their way into the porch, their task was not accomplished, for from the roof of the narrow passage leading into the large ground-floor chamber a long chimney runs right up to the top of the tower and down this projectiles could still be dropped.

The tower contains three lofty chambers, one above the other, each of which has a finely vaulted roof, the ribs resting upon fantastically carved corbels. These chambers are in an absolutely perfect state of preservation, a rare thing in a fourteenth-century building in this part of the country. The narrow winding staircase lit by oylets, which betray the thickness of the walls, has at intervals little branch stairways of only a few steps. These give

access to small openings into the shaft that runs from the roof of the porch to the roof of the building.

If for any reason the roof had to be abandoned, the besieged could still command the entrance through these apertures. The top chamber in the tower seems to have been used as a prison at some early time, for it is covered with pathetic inscriptions, cut with such care that they could only have been executed by persons upon whose hands the time hung heavily. One cannot know for certain that they are not the work of a besieged garrison, or the guardians of the tower, but the presence of strong iron bars across the outside of the windows, and other evidences, would indicate that prisoners occupied this tower at some time in its history; and one would think that all these precautions to prevent the escape of a prisoner from this lofty room were hardly necessary: unless indeed the prisoner had a rope or was able to construct a makeshift one out of his clothing, he would be very unlikely to run far after he had dropped from this lofty tower on to the rough rocks below.

The stone seat in one of the deep window embrasures in the second chamber has carved upon it, very neatly, the chequered pattern of a chess-board, the alternate squares being either raised or sunk. A similar “chessstone” appears upon the floor of one of the chambers in the Fort St. André. One can only imagine them to be the work of prisoners, for, however much time the soldiers of the Guard had at their disposal, it is incredible they would have allotted themselves so hard and tedious a task when they could easily obtain a bit of wood to serve their purpose. And yet, who knows? A prolonged siege might have reduced the garrison to its last stick, and the horror of their perilous position may have driven them to seek any diversion to drive away the contemplation of the fate awaiting them.

The Fort of St. André commands not only the town which nestles around its foundations, but the river and the whole of the western side of Avignon.

When Philip forced the miserable Pope Clement V. to settle in France, he anticipated the necessity of keeping a strict watch on the Papal residences, and although the great Palace which now stands in Avignon was not erected till some years after, Philip had the Fort St. André built to keep a guard. It was probably the proximity of this formidable fortress that caused the succeeding Popes to take such care with the fortification of their residence. It was from this fortress that the French troops besieged the Papal Palace when Pierre de Luna set up his pretensions and defended it against all comers.

Two great towers form the entrance to the grounds upon which stood the Abbey of St. André. During the troublous times of the sixteenth century these two towers were used as prisons, and the great Hall on the first floor, the Hall of the Chevaliers, served for a recreation-room. The flagstones of this great bare apartment are covered with inscriptions and devices which, although much worn, show that the prisoners who carved them were educated men of the period. The skill displayed in many of these elaborate devices is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that the only instruments used were the soft pewter spoons the prisoners had for supping soup with. Indications of the prisoners’ thoughts are embodied in the stones. A St. George and the Dragon, a Crucifixion, cannon, Maltese crosses, a figure of Justice, a device emblematic of abundance, skulls and crossbones, form some of the subjects upon which the prisoners tried their spoons and skill; whilst one by a member of the “Carbonari” recalls memories of Silvio Pellico and his moving records of a prisoner’s life.

The venerable heavy doors that lead into these gloomy chambers groan with age each time they turn upon their well-worn hinges; rusty iron bolts creak out the same melancholy discords that many years ago fell upon strained ears and sinking hearts.

The twin towers of the Fortress of St. André remain a most imposing memorial of fourteenth-century military architecture. Standing on a rock, that at one time was an island of the Rhone, the fort commanded the surrounding country to an extent that made its presence a

menace to the neighbourhood. The walls enclose a site upon which a town nestled in calm security, and near by the Monastery or Abbey of St. André, sheltered further by a great belt of pines, rises upon the site of a still more ancient building now passed out of memory.

Its career has been a chequered one, for it has changed owners with a bewildering frequency. After the Revolution it was turned into a military hospital; later it came into the possession of private persons; and in the second decade of the last century it again became a convent, inhabited by nuns. Now, unoccupied, it awaits some fresh development, but who dare prophesy what destiny has in store for it?

The little town beside it is fast tumbling to decay; its dilapidated walls and roofs straggling in irregular confusion up the rocky hillside. Higher up, on one of the topmost knolls of the enclosure, a small ancient chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Belvezet, stands erect and stern in its simplicity, forsaken and exposed to the mistral’s greatest violence and the sun’s fiercest bleaching rays.

The town of Villeneuve, that lies below the fortress, sadly belies its name, for a more concentrated collection of crumbling ruins could hardly be imagined. The Monastery of the Chartreuse, founded by Innocent VI. in the middle of the fourteenth century (1352), was for more than four hundred years one of the most important and prosperous in Languedoc. The walls enclosing it measure nearly a mile in circumference, and now its ruins form a squalid little town inhabited by over five hundred human beings, to say nothing of the domestic animals.

The walls of its crumbling church are fast disappearing, the roof lets more than daylight in, and what little of it remains affords but a poor shelter for a few rickety, cumbrous, mud-stained carts and piles of faggots stored for winter use.

The Gothic tomb of Innocent VI., the founder and patron of this monastic town (for the Monastery of the Chartreuse was more than a mere cluster of religious buildings), was only removed from this church as lately as 1835, and placed amidst more secure and fitting surroundings, in the Hospice of the town.

This beautiful tomb of Innocent, not unlike that of his predecessor John, in the Cathedral of Avignon, suffered more shameful treatment at the hands of the demoralised mobs of the first Republic. For years it lay neglected, amidst accumulating mounds of degrading filth that threatened to engulf it; till during the reign of Louis Philippe, when the fires of the Revolution had died down, attention was directed to the ancient monuments of the country, and amongst other things it was discovered that this once beautiful and dignified tomb was being used by some ingenious and impious person as a rabbit hutch. Time’s revenges are indeed bitter, but its healing power is none the less merciful, and to-day the tomb receives the homage of pilgrims actuated by more varied motives than those of former ages.

Some idea of the enormous power of Monachism, and the attraction it had for all classes in the Middle Ages, can be derived from the contemplation of even the ruins of these institutions in the Southern countries where they flourished.

At the close of the thirteenth and all through the following century the Monastery and Convent reached the highest developments. The primitive hermits, who lived in bare seclusion, depriving themselves wilfully of all but the essentials of existence, were not only fifteen centuries removed from the powerful and luxurious monks of the Middle Ages, in point of time; they are for ever unrelated to them in their methods of existence. The gradual stages in the evolution of the monastic idea melt into each other almost imperceptibly. From St. Anthony to the Monastery of Villeneuve is a far cry, and the anchorite of Thebes would have found it difficult to recognise in the monachism of later years the spirit that controlled his life.

Instead of the rough cave of nature’s carving, a succession of chapels richly decorated by the hands of accomplished artists, whose talents were controlled by monastic wealth, cloisters with carvings that only practical

and well-paid sculptors could achieve, galleries, chapter-houses, refectories, gardens, kitchens, stables, wine-cellars, all contributed to the enjoyment of the occupants. The worldly prosperity of the institution continued right down until the Revolution relieved it of its wealth and robbed it of its power. There was no lingering period of decay, but a sudden lightning stroke put an end to the Monastery of the Chartreuse.

Its architecture represents all the styles of four hundred years. Here we see an early Roman-Gothic chapel, on whose walls linger remnants of Italian frescoes, painted when art was breaking away from the archaic tradition of the earlier Christian schools. Classic Renaissance sculpture adorns the fine entrance gateway, a masterpiece of the eighteenth century, the work of de Valfenier. Upon the shield facing the spectator is the inscription: “Domus Sanctæ Mariæ. Vallis Benedictiones.”

All through the strange winding lanes, that once were cloisters and vaulted passages, incongruous squalid makeshift hovels mingle and jostle with the ancient buildings. In the centre of one of the cloisters there stands unfinished, but isolated, a classic rotunda that once sheltered a fountain, one of the latest additions to the monastery when the end came. At the beginning of the eighteenth century buildings foreign to the character of the place grew up in the cloisters that surround this dignified rotunda, but the intervening space has fortunately been spared to give, as it were, a breathing space to one of the best preserved monuments in the ruined abbey.

TARASCON

III
TARASCON

Daudet has left on record the feelings of embarrassment that overcame him whenever he had to pass the little town of Tarascon. From the moment when the great white towers of the Château René burst upon his view until it was left behind he confesses to feeling ill at ease. He had made the name of the sleepy Provençal town almost as famous in the nineteenth century as it had been in the fifteenth, and yet its natives were ungrateful and in no way pleased with the new celebrity that had been thrust upon them.

Tartarin and Tarascon were, however, both pseudonyms; but with the almost comic seriousness that is characteristic of the Provençal, the inhabitants of the little town felt convinced that the author was holding them up to ridicule. The real scene of the cap-shooting parties that Daudet had in view, when he penned the delightful exploits of the famous Tartarin, lies about fifteen miles on the other side of the Rhone. “Tarascon,” with its fine sonorous rolling sound, appealed to the ear of the author, who little thought that his choice of it as a part title for his work would draw down upon his head the execrations of a town. And they put their resentment into deeds too, for the book was banned and never could be bought in the place. Time works wonders: the resentment is now forgotten, and the adventures of the famous hero are pushed under the nose of every passing stranger who puts foot into Tarascon.

Tarascon is a junction on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean system, and its station is a busy hive of bustling noisy humanity whenever a train arrives or departs. Few of the many thousands of passengers who pass through the junction make any stay in the town, although it is well worthy of a visit. The two “monuments,” as they are called, of the town are the Château René and the Church of St. Martha. These alone are more than worth the time taken to examine them, and the town itself is picturesque enough to warrant an inspection by the casual passer-by and a more prolonged stay by the lover of out-of-the-way corners.

A wide boulevard, the Avenue de la République (nearly

every little town in Provence has its “Avenue de la République”), planted with four rows of great plane trees, leads from the station to the centre of this town of some nine or ten thousand inhabitants. Small and large cafés, with little and big forecourts framed in front of them by shrubs growing out of old wine casks which are painted a vivid green colour, are the most distinguishing features of this boulevard.

It is not difficult to discover the “Château” from any part of the town, for its great walls tower far above the loftiest buildings. It is one of the best preserved fortresses of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century in Provence, and the walls reflect as brilliantly as ever the dazzling sunlight. Despite their age, they remain fresh and unstained by dirt, an eloquent tribute to the purity of the Provençal atmosphere. Built upon rocks that rise abruptly from the waters of the Rhone, it was in days gone by surrounded entirely by the river, a bridge of three arches giving access from the landward side across the moat. The moat is now dry, for the ends of it, which were formerly connected with the river, are closed, one by the construction of the abattoirs and the other by a great stone wall which has been built across, to keep the waters out. A more imposing mediæval castle could hardly be imagined, nor one more typical of the fourteenth century.

King René, the merry monarch of the land of the Troubadours, had rather an eventful life. He inherited through his father, Duke Louis II. of Anjou, the title of King of Naples, and from 1434 onwards was involved

in a complication of troubles and wars in endeavouring to gain that kingdom, as well as those of Sicily and Jerusalem. When luck went against him and he was imprisoned by Philip of Burgundy, who was the supporter of the claims of Count Vandemont, he provisionally made over to his wife, the Duchess Isabella, all his rights, and she became Regent of Naples, Sicily, Anjou, Provence, etc. René managed at last to ransom himself from his prison, and made a final attempt to possess himself of Naples. The Duke Alphonse of Aragon was, however, too strong for him, and he was reluctantly forced to retire to Provence. His daughter, Margaret, married Henry VI. of England, and was as unfortunate as her father in her royal career. Poor old René was the possessor of many empty titles. He was Duke of Lorraine, King of Naples, King of Sicily and of Jerusalem, but with them all he never had much power, nor was possessed of riches commensurate with his high rank. Shakespeare in Henry VI., makes Gloster say of him:

“Unto the poor King Regnier, whose large style
Agrees not with the leanness of his purse,”

and further makes York refer to:

“The type of King of Naples of both the Sicils and Jerusalem.
Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.”

Of all the kingdoms to which he claimed the title, none

were actually in his possession except the fair country of Provence. He was a good-natured, easy-going old monarch; gay, and in spite of all the troubles that overtook him, light-hearted. His daughter’s marriage with the King of England was unfortunate for all parties concerned, and instead of René benefiting by the splendid alliance, the poor old King had frequently to dip his hand deep into his purse to ransom his unlucky daughter. The court of this old Bohemian was conducted on free and easy lines; wandering minstrels and errant knights finding hearty welcome from the King, whose fame was naturally spread far and wide by those gentry. It was only in the last years of René’s reign that he was able to reside much at his castles of Aix, Tarascon and Les Baux—a short period of calm after a stormy life.

He practised the arts of poetry, painting and music, and the surest passport any knight or troubadour could have to his good will and patronage was to be proficient in either of these accomplishments. A good listener might also come in for a share of his smiles, for he was notoriously fond of singing and reciting his own ballads and verses, or superintending some pageant or display. His poetic works were published in four volumes during the last century, but they have never attained any great celebrity.

Of all his castles, Tarascon is the only one standing in anything like its original condition. As one looks up at the great round towers that swell out at the two corners of the main building (on the landward side), one realises what a sense of security its inmates must have indulged in, when besieged; and how impotent the attacking party must have felt. The riverward towers are square, as are the two smaller towers on the north-east side. There is a girdle of slightly projecting stone-work upon one of the towers, about three-quarters of the way up, that conveys very vividly to the eye its great circumference.

Just past the south corner of this vast fortress, the Château de Montmorency rises on the other side of the river. In the clear air its outlines are sharp and well defined, and this distant toylike building helps to accentuate the size of the Château, near at hand. The outer windows on the great wall are grilled over with strong iron bars, for the Château is now a prison. These windows have dripstones over them, the carved ends of which are the only ornamentation on the great bare face of the building. For the rest, the corbels that support the machicolated battlements give a play of light and shade that, though simple, has a very rich effect, when contrasted with the great plain spaces below. The battlements, with their embrasures and oylets, form a crown of great dignity to the whole building, and it is in such fine condition (doubtless carefully restored) that one has no difficulty in picturing the rich spectacle that must have been presented by a cavalcade of brightly habited knights and ladies with their attendants issuing forth on a sunny morning to fly their falcons or to attend some fête at a neighbouring castle. No finer background for their gorgeous costumes could be conceived than these plain creamy walls, which the rounded towers at each corner save from monotony.

From the river the Castle does not present so bold an appearance, owing to the absence of rounded towers. At a little distance, when its size is not so apparent, it looks almost Greek in its restraint and refinement; the row of brackets supporting the overhanging battlements suggesting a series of dentils under an irregular entablature.

The inside of the Castle is well worth examination, but the prison authorities are a little particular whom they admit, and the visitor has to be conducted through the great building by a jailer, who, armed with great bunches of mediæval keys, unbolts ancient doors on creaking hinges, and bolts them just as carefully after. The internal arrangements of a fourteenth-to-fifteenth-century castle are simple, if massive, and hardly any alteration has been necessary to convert it into a prison. Very little has been changed since the good old King’s time. The Chapel has only had a movable wooden partition placed down the centre of it, to separate the prisoners who have been condemned from those awaiting trial, when they attend “the service.” The cells for solitary confinement, with their elaborate blacksmith-wrought fastenings, would defy the ingenuity of any “Jack Sheppard” seeking to escape.

There is not much carving or sculptured work in the Castle. It has been sparingly used, except in the porch of the Chapel, which is in fine ogival style with delicately carved archivolts. The principal chamber of the King is a noble apartment, in which the ceiling is, or rather was, a feature. It is heavily timbered, and although the panels have been removed to enrich some museum or private collection, sufficient remains to give an idea of the importance of this apartment. The embrasures of the windows are of the depth of the wall—that is, about twelve feet—and they form small chambers, around which are great stone slabs, that were used as seats.

Opening off the Royal Apartment is the Salle du Garde. From this room a door formerly opened into a passage that communicated with galleries extending all over the building. On the other side of the circular staircase, that leads up to the King’s apartment, there is a sexagonal chamber with a timbered panelled roof. This was occupied by the ladies-in-waiting on the Queen, whose apartment, immediately above it, had a fine vaulted roof. In such wonderful preservation are these apartments of five hundred years ago that they want but tapestries and furniture to be as habitable as ever they were. One can easily, in imagination, fill these chambers with the laughing maids of honour, bending over their tambours and tapestry work, or poring over some book with its delicately painted pages in which the romances of the Troubadours were set forth—one reading aloud for the benefit of the others some long narration of days gone by: perchance the very popular story, rhymed in true Troubadour fashion, about the inmates of the Castle of Beaucaire, that from the windows of the King’s and the Ladies’ apartment could be seen so distinctly in the sunlight.

This story of Aucassin and Nicolète has been translated

from the Provençal language into English by Andrew Lang. It relates how the Count of Valence was at war with the Count of Beaucaire, and was always outside the walls of his castle, to the great annoyance of everybody. The Count of Beaucaire was old and frail, and possessed of only one son, his hope and pride. This youth, Aucassin by name, was deeply in love with a dark-eyed maid, a slave girl, Nicolète, that a captain in the town of Beaucaire had purchased from the Saracens in Carthage, and had adopted. The old Count, furious at the thought of his only son making such a mésalliance as to marry a Saracen slave girl, ordered the young man to go out and fight against the enemy of their house and to lead the retainers of the family of Beaucaire on to victory. At the same time the Count prevailed upon Nicolète’s owner to have her put in seclusion, out of reach of Master Aucassin.

Whilst the youth is wringing his hands in despair, the city is besieged by the Count Valence, and the old Count of Beaucaire upbraids his son for his inactivity. Then Aucassin urges his suit to his father; but the old man will not give way, and only consents to allow the lovers an interview if Aucassin proves his mettle in the battle that is raging around them. The bold youth arms himself and rides out of the castle, and in an absent-minded mood goes right into the arms of the enemy. When he does realise his position and comes to himself he does doughty deeds, in his turn taking Count Valence captive, and, returning with him to the besieged castle, demands that his father should keep his engagement and grant him the promised interview with his lady-love. The old man refuses, and Aucassin is so overcome with rage that he releases his prisoner—an act for which his father puts him in close confinement.

Time passes, Nicolète escapes from her prison and goes amissing. Count Beaucaire, thinking that all danger to his son is now over, releases him from prison. One day Aucassin comes across Nicolète in a wood where she has been hiding, and together they go in a boat and make their escape down the river, only to be washed out to sea and captured by pirates. Their troubles are increased by their being separated. Aucassin is ransomed by his father, and Nicolète is sold to the Saracens. You would think that this was the end of her tale. No; she escapes disguised and finds her way back to fair Provence, where she makes a living by singing ballads up and down the country, eventually arriving at Beaucaire, where Aucassin is now Count in his father’s stead. Of course he discovers his long-lost lady-love, and the story ends, as all good stories should, with the hero and heroine living happily ever after.

From the extensive roof of the Château a great panorama lies before the spectator. The Rhone for many a mile away to the south glistens in the sunlight until it is lost to view near the rising ground upon which with good glasses the Arena at Arles can be discerned. To the north the two lofty towers of Château Renard rise up, whilst in the far, faint distance the snow-capped peak of Mont Ventoux floats in the haze.

Provence is well supplied with lofty points of vantage, from which extensive prospects are before the spectator, and enable him to understand somewhat why Provence was chosen as a home for chivalry and a garden for romance. Castles rise up on nearly every point of vantage. Great cypress-trees shelter the low-lying fields. Farmhouses nestle in the protection of rising ground, upon which they would not, like the great stern castles and watch-towers, be able to retain a foothold when the mistral sweeps the heights. For the elements are at their strongest in Provence. The sun shines brightly and burns fiercely, the winds blow violently and chillingly, and the rains fall in terrible earnest in “this land of plenty.”

Greek, Roman, and Gaul have all fought for existence on nearly every foot of its great plains and scattered heights, and travellers from distant lands have often fallen a prey to the dangers that such a country could so easily harbour.

All around are castles that have stood many a siege when occupied by warriors whose history was one long

record of fights against Saracens and infidels abroad, and feudal chiefs at home.

High up on the walls of the Castle of Tarascon one can see evidences of the ordinances of later times. The end of the eighteenth century has left its mark here as on most of the strongholds and buildings in Provence.

The only other important building in Tarascon is the Church of St. Martha; but it is the most significant that the little town possesses, for it perpetuates the legend which gives the town its name.

The story of St. Martha and her victory over the devastating terror of the country-side, “The Tarasc,” is but a variation of the familiar St. George and the Dragon legend which embodies the pietistic faith in the overthrow of evil by good. This legend of St. Martha, along with that of the “Stes. Maries,” belongs exclusively to Provence, and it permeates the whole religious tradition of the delta of the Rhone. The story or legend runs that, after the crucifixion of Christ, the holy women who had remained faithful to their Lord, Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of James, Mary Salome, Martha with Sara, their black servant and Lazarus, were put in a boat by the Jews and sent out to sea. After an adventurous voyage of nearly two months, they landed on the extreme west point of the Camargue in a little village that was inhabited by some poor Phocean fisherfolk. The legends vary as to the subsequent routes taken by the illustrious voyagers, but they seem all to agree that Martha found her way to Tarascon; Mary Magdalen to St. Baume, not far from Marseilles, where her bones are believed to be under the Chapel of the Grotto; St. Lazarus accompanied her to Marseilles, where the legend connecting him with that city is still held in esteem by the pious.

Early in the fifteenth century, King René, who had an excellent taste for romantic legends, had a vision in which the holy women of “Stes. Maries” appeared to him and revealed the spot where their mortal remains were lying neglected. The sentimental King sought them and had them placed in the church, which he rebuilt on the spot where they first landed, and altered the name of the church from “Our Lady of the Sea” to “Les Maries.” Up to this time the little church of the tenth century, at this spot, went by the name of “St. Mary of the Boats,” or “St. Mary of the Sea.”

This name was probably but the Christian of an older Pagan name, given to the church or temple that stood on

its site, a name likely enough derived from the fame of the Syrian prophetess Martha, who accompanied Marius on his expedition into Gaul, a hundred years before the Christian era. And presumably there existed an earlier temple still upon this lonely swamp, a temple to some deity or goddess whose protective care the earliest Phoceans sought to procure by votive offerings. However this may be, René decided that the “Stes. Maries” were Mary, the mother of James, Mary Salome, and Sara, the black servant, who had remained in the little seaside village converting the inhabitants to the Christian faith.

Thus the great patron of romantic story inaugurated a legend that has persevered until to-day, for pilgrims from all parts still pay visits to “Les Maries” by the sea, to receive benefits and healing from the relics of the two Maries which are exhibited annually, whilst the remains of the black servant, Sara, strangely enough exact and receive homage of the gipsies from Bohemia.

St. Martha, who went first, on leaving her fellow-voyagers, to Aix, received there a deputation from a neighbouring place, Tarascon, which unfolded to her their sad plight. A great monster was ravaging their country-side, and their only hope was to get some one endowed with miraculous power to come to their assistance. The good Saint immediately set out for the terror-stricken town, where she received a great ovation from the assembled inhabitants. Without delay, armed with nothing but a small wooden cross, she sought the monster in the woods near by, and on finding it, held up the sacred emblem in front of it. The monster’s bellowings ceased at once, for the terror lay dead at her feet, its great jaws red with the blood of its last victim. St. Martha returned to the village and exhibited to the grateful populace the monster tied to her girdle.

King René, fond, as is well known, of pageants, processions, and fêtes, was the founder of the annual festival of the “Tarasque,” which was celebrated until quite recently in the month of June. A great pantomime monster was carried round the streets by sixteen men concealed in its body. It was led by a village beauty dressed in imitation of the Saint. The head of the creature had jaws that were movable, and they could be worked so as to grip any venturesome person who came close enough. When too hotly assailed by the townsfolk, fireworks were discharged from the eyes and different parts of the great canvas body. The old traditional “Tarasque” of great magnificence, which cost nearly £1,000, was, however, destroyed at the time of the Revolution by the Arlesiens, and was replaced shortly afterwards by the less imposing contrivance of to-day. The procession or fête was of a semi-religious character, and this, together with the rough practical jokes and horse-play that the people indulged in, led to its being prohibited by the Government in 1904.

The Church of St. Martha, as might be expected, is full of references both in stone and canvas to the Lady. The Church itself is, like the south porch, in the Romanesque Gothic style. Here are paintings by Vien, the eighteenth-century painter who was the master of David. His pictures are in a classic style which he lived to see more popular than it was when he introduced it first, after his long residence in Rome. They make no great appeal to the tastes of this century, for the severe and academical style of them is apt to leave the spectator cold and unsympathetic. The subjects are all relative to the religious legends of Provence: “The Visit of Christ to St. Martha,” “The Raising of Lazarus,” “The Embarkation of St. Martha,” “The Landing of Martha at Marseilles,” “St. Martha preaching the Gospel at Tarascon,” and “The Death of St. Martha.”

The pictures by Parrocel are not so interesting either from the point of view of the artist or the seeker after legendary lore.

One of Mignard’s two canvases represents St. Martha attending on our Saviour. It is significant of the high repute in which the religious legends of Provence were held, and the wealth of the Church at the period, that such popular painters of the eighteenth century could be commissioned to execute pictures recording them.

There is a small picture by Vanloo, “The Death of St. Francis d’Assisi,” in one of the side-chapels; a very beautiful rendering of a religious subject that is worth,

from an artist’s standpoint, miles of the larger canvases that cover the main walls. An old altar-piece in another of the shallow side-chapels is a fine piece of sixteenth-century decorative painting.

Enclosed in a cheap-looking painted cupboard that stands in the sacristy is the reliquary that holds a “veritable” portion of St. Martha’s skull. This reliquary is not ancient, but is a reproduction of an original that was presented to the Church by Louis XI. in 1478, and which, in the unhappy starvation times of the great Revolution, was sent to the Genoese merchants by the revolutionaries in exchange for wheat to the value of £4,000. It was a great loss to the Church in more ways than one, for in the head of the bust were placed the frontal bones of the patron Saint of Tarascon. This bust was of solid gold, and round it were beautiful little enamels which pictured the life of St. Martha; an exquisite statue of King Louis XI. represented him kneeling in adoration at the base of the bust. The reproduction is in gilt, and contains a portion of the base of the Saint’s skull tied with a piece of pink ribbon. The tomb in the crypt had of course to be opened to obtain these. Beautiful as the reproduction is, and veritable as is the relic it contains, it is doubtful if the pious Tarasconaises are reconciled to the loss of the most precious ornaments that the town possessed.

Down in the dark, damp crypt of the Church, lit only by the entrance, lies a tomb of real dignity and beauty. This crypt is a part of the older church of the twelfth century, and is without any particular grace or beauty, acting as a foil to the monument it enshrines.

This representation in marble of the entombment of St. Martha is of real merit. The recumbent figure of the Saint lies in a peaceful repose that is nobly expressed. A figure of Christ supports the head, and one of St. Fronto the feet. The anachronism of associating St. Fronto, who was a Bishop of Périgueux in the fourth century, with an event that presumably took place in the first, does not seem to have troubled the author of this tomb. But in a land of Romance one should close one’s eyes to such unromantic things as dates, and accept without question the stories woven by a clergy that seem to have been largely endowed by the same spirit that inspired the Troubadours of their sunny land.

IV
LES BAUX

The little chain of rugged hills with fantastic contours, which breaks away from the great Alpine range and juts into the peaceful valley of the Rhone, is called “Les Alpilles,” or little Alps. On the south side of this small mountain chain, upon cliffs that stand almost isolated from the main group, lie the ruins of the ancient Provençal town of Les Baux.

The approach to this extraordinary place from over the mountain chain is full of interest and surprises, if one starts out from St. Remy, which lies well over to the north. The ascent by the winding road that curves and twists round the great hills is a fitting preparation for the scenery that lies to the south, for the distant hilltops are crowned with great rocks, carved and chiselled by nature into such shapes that the eye continually mistakes them for buildings erected by the hands of men.

The tall cypress-trees that in the plains spire up into the sky disappear as one ascends, and few shrubs or trees clothe the bald hillside. Wild thyme and lavender betray their presence by the fragrance of their perfume. Rabbits burrow amongst the undergrowth; hawks hover high overhead, and with keen, penetrating vision sweep the rugged landscape in search of prey. Few other signs of life disturb the quiet of the lonely hills.

From the crest of the chain, just before the descent into the great plains of La Crau, a weird scene breaks upon the eye. A valley of rocks, so fantastic, so unearthly, that one can easily credit the Provençal poet Mistral’s belief that it was here that Dante got the inspiration for his graphic description of the topography of the infernal regions. It is a valley of death, of ghosts of skeletons, rocks naked and gaunt, altogether baffling description.

As the limestone of which these rocks are composed is admirable for building purposes, quarrymen have been at work upon the scene, and the great square doorways, or openings, cut into the grotesque formless masses accentuate the unreality of this spot. One could imagine it inhabited by strange monsters of human shape bereft of man’s feelings and emotions. But the wild mysterious grandeur of the valley constitutes only half the astoundingness of the place. For on a great precipitous rock, at the end of it, stands the town of Les Baux, half-built, half-excavated, more than half-ruined, a strange confusion of man’s and nature’s architecture. Above the town, which is carved and built upon a plateau half-way up this mountain rock, a castle rears its ruined towers.

This gaunt fortress looks right over the great, flat plain of La Crau to the distant blue waters of the Mediterranean, over to the lands about fifty miles distant upon which one of the world’s most decisive battles was fought, when Marius with his legions laid 200,000 Ambrones dead upon the field.

The great plateau of La Crau has undergone much change since Roman times. In the fifteenth century a canal was dug across its arid surface, and lands that were once marshy swamps and barren stony ground are gradually yielding to the persuasive hand of the agriculturist, and producing rich harvests of grapes and olives, mulberries, and almonds.