E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
([http://www.pgdp.net])
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
([https://archive.org])

ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE

CLOISTERS OF ST. TROPHINE, ARLES.
By E. M. Synge.

ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE

BY
MONA CAIRD

ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES BY
JOSEPH PENNELL AND EDWARD M. SYNGE

NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN

TO
MARGUERITE HAMILTON SYNGE

[All rights reserved.]

Preface

This volume can hardly be said to have been written: it came about. The little tour in the South of France which is responsible for its existence, happened some years ago, and was undertaken for various reasons, health and rest among others, and the very last idea which served as a motive for the journey was that of writing about the country whose history is so voluminous and so incalculably ancient. Nobody but a historian and a scholar already deeply versed in the subject could dream of attempting to treat it in any serious or complete fashion. But this fact did not prevent the country from instantly making a profound and singular impression upon a mind entirely unprepared by special study or knowledge to be thus stirred. The vividness of the impression, therefore, was not to be accounted for by associations of facts and scenes already formed in the imagination. True, many an incident of history and romance now found its scene and background, but before these corresponding parts of the puzzle had been fitted together the potent charm had penetrated, giving that strange, baffling sense of home-coming which certain lands and places have for certain minds, remaining for ever mysterious, yet for ever familiar as some haunt of early childhood.

An experience of that sort will not, as a rule, allow itself to be set aside. It works and troubles and urges, until, sooner or later, some form of transmutation must take place, some condensing into form of the formless, some passing of impulse into expression, be it what it may.

And thus the first stray notes and sketches were made without ultimate intention. But the charm imposed itself, and the notes grew and grew. Then a more definite curiosity awoke and gradually the scene widened: history and imagination took sisterly hands and whispered suggestions, explanations of the secret of the extraordinary magic, till finally the desultory sketches began to demand something of order in their undrilled ranks. The real toil then began.

The subject, once touched upon, however slightly, is so unendingly vast and many-sided, so entangled with scholarly controversy, that the few words possible to say in a volume of this kind seem but to cause obscurity, and worst of all, to falsify the general balance of impression because of the innumerable other things that must perforce be left unsaid. An uneasy struggle is set up in the mind to avoid, if possible, that most fatal sort of misrepresentation, viz., that which contains a certain proportion of truth.

And how to choose among varying accounts and theories, one contradicting the other? Authorities differ on important points as radically and as surely as they differ about the spelling of the names of persons and places. There is conflict even as to the names in use at the present day, as, for instance, the little mountain range of the Alpilles, which some writers persistently spell Alpines, out of pure pigheadedness or desire to make themselves conspicuous, as it seems to the weary seeker after textual consistency. Where doctors disagree what can one do who is not a doctor, but try to give a general impression of the whole matter and leave the rest to the gods?

As for dates——!

Now there are two things with which no one who has not been marked out by Providence by a special and triumphant gift ought to dream of attempting to deal, namely, dates and keys—between which evanescent, elusive and fundamentally absurd entities there is a subtle and deep-seated affinity. If meddled with at all, they must be treated in a large spirit: no meticulous analysis; no pursuit of a pettifogging date sharpening the point of accuracy down to a paltry twelve months. And correspondingly, as regards the smaller kind of keys, no one who values length of days should ever touch them! They are the vehicles of demoniac powers. Of course the good, quiet, well-developed cellar or stable-door key is another matter; and thus (to pursue the parallel) dates can be dealt with in a broadly synthetic fashion, in centuries and group of centuries, so that while the author gains in peace of mind, the reader is spared the painful experience of being stalked and hunted from page to page, and confronted round every corner by quartets of dreary figures, minutely defining moments of time which are about as much to him as they are to Hecuba!

The chronology in this volume, therefore, may be described as frugal rather than generous in character, but what there is of it is handled in the "grand manner."

Such, then, is the history of the volume which still retains the character of its irregular origin. Historically it attempts nothing but the roughest outline of the salient points of the story about which a traveller interested in the subject at all is at once curious for information. The one thing on which it lays stress is the quality of the country as distinguished from its outward features. For to many (for example, to our severe critic whose impressions are recorded in Chapter III.) these external features are devoid of all attraction. It is necessary to keep this fact in mind.

A wide plain bounded by mountains of moderate height and an insignificant chain of bare limestone hills (the Alpilles); cities ancient indeed, but small, shabby, not too clean, with dingy old hotels, and no particular advantages of situation—such a description of Provence would be accurate for those who are not among its enthusiasts. To traverse the country in an express train, especially with the eyes still full of the more obvious beauties of the Pyrenees and the Alps, is to see all the wonder of the land of the troubadours reduced to the mere flatness of a map. In a few minutes the "rapide" had darted past some of its most ancient and romantic cities—quiet and simple they stand, merged into the very soil, with no large or striking features to catch the eye; only a patch of grey masonry in the landscape and a few towers upon the horizon, easily missed in the quick rush of the train.

A deeper sound in the rumble of the flying wheels for a couple of minutes announces the crossing of some river: long stretches of waste land, covered for miles and miles with sunburnt stones, and again stretches of country, low-lying, God-forsaken, scarcely cultivated, with a few stunted, melancholy trees, a farmstead on the outskirts here and there: these are the "features of the country," as they might be described without departure from bare, literal, all-deceiving fact.

How many travellers of the thousands who pass along this line every year are interested in such a scene or guess its profound and multitudinous experiences? How many realise as they rattle past, that in this arid land of the vine and the cypress were born and fostered the sentiments, the unwritten laws and traditions on which is built all that we understand by civilised life? How many say to themselves as they pass: "But for the men and women who dreamt and sang and suffered in this Cradle of Chivalry, the world that I live in would never have been born, the thoughts I think and the emotions to which I am heir would never have arisen out of the darkness?"

But, indeed, the strange, many-sided country gives little aid or suggestion for such realisations: it has reticently covered itself with a mantle; it seems to crouch down out of sight while the monster engine thunders by with its freight of preoccupied passengers.

A bare, flat, sun-scorched land.

Yes, these are the "facts," but ah! how different from the magic truth!

With facts, therefore, this volume has only incidentally to do. It is a "true and veracious history," but by no means a literal one. As to the mere accidents of travel, these are treated lightly. Exactly in which order the cities were visited no reader need count upon certainly knowing—and indeed it concerns him nothing—when and where the observations were made by "Barbara," or the "severe critic," or the landlady of the Hotel de Provence and so forth, the following pages may or may not accurately inform him (with the exception, indeed, of the curious, self-revelation of Raphael of Tarascon, which is given almost word for word as it occurred, for here accident and essence chanced to coincide); but he may be sure that though Barbara possibly did not speak or act as represented then and there, she did or might have so spoken or acted elsewhere and at another time. The irrelevancies of chance and incident have been ignored in the interests of the essential. Barbara may not recognise all her observations when she sees them. Tant pis pour Barbara! They are true in the spirit if not in the letter. And so throughout.

From the moment that the original "notes" began to be written, the one and sole impulse and desire has been to suggest, to hint to the imagination that which can never be really told of the poetry, the idealism, the glory, the sadness, and the great joy of this wondrous land of Sun and Wind and Dream.

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER I
THE SPELL OF PROVENCE

"Aubouro-te, raço Latino—

Emé toun péu que se desnouso

A l'auro santo dou tabour,

Tu siès la raço lumenouso

Que viéu de joio e d'estrambord;

Tu siès la raço apoustoulico

Que souno li campano â brand:

Tu siès la troumpo que publico

E siès la man que trais lou gran

Aubouro-te, raço Latino!"

Latin race arouse thyself!

With thy hair loosened to the holy air of the tabor,

Thou art the race of light,

Who lives in enthusiasm and joy:

Thou art the apostolic race—

That sets the bells a-chiming;

Thou art the trumpet that proclaims:

Thou art the hand that sows the seed—

O Latin race, arise!

From "Ode to the Latin Race," by Mistral.

A PROVENÇAL ROAD.
By Joseph Pennell.

CHAPTER I

THE SPELL OF PROVENCE

During the night there was a great and unexplained tumult: rustling sounds in the little courtyard to which our rooms looked out; whisperings along the corridors; distant bangings; footsteps, voices—or was it the remaining rumours of a dream?

Then a great sigh and a surging among the shrubs in the courtyard. The creepers sway against the windows, and something seems to sweep through the room. Presently a rush and a rattle among the jalousies, and a high scream as of some great angry creature flying with frantic wings over the courtyard and across the sky.

The mistral!

There was no mistaking our visitor.

A great angry creature, indeed, and no one who has seen the Land of the Sun and Wind only under the sway of the more benign power can have any conception of the passion and storm of this mighty Brigand of the Mountain.

We begin now to understand the meaning of the epithet, "windy Avignon." And if one considers its position on the plain of the Rhone and the Durance—the country stretching south and east to the mysterious stony desert of the Crau[1] and the great regions of the mouths of the Rhone—it is easy to see how the Black Wind, rushing down from his home in the ranges of Mont Ventoux and the Luberon, must sweep the streets of the city and fill every nook and corner with whirl and trouble.

The Rhone that "bends round Avignon to salute Our Lady on her high rock," as Mistral proclaims, grows white with anger under the lash, noble river that she is!

Round farmstead and garden, along her banks, and far away on the great spaces of this wonderful country, long, tall rows of cypresses keep guard over house and home; for only these steadfast trees of Wisdom and of Sorrow can stand against the fury of the mistral. For unnumbered ages, long, long before all human history or tradition, he has lorded it over the country, descending after the fashion of the ancient Ligurian inhabitants from the hill-tops, for raid and ravage in the valleys.

Many have been his victims from first to last; among them the daughter to whom Madame de Sévigné addresses her famous letters. She suffers from his onslaught upon her Provençal château of Grignan, which was nearly destroyed by the monster; unless, indeed, the lady is romancing a little to keep her lively mother amused and quiet; for Madame de Sévigné writes: "Vous dépeignez cette horreur comme Virgile!"

A householder seriously damaged in his property would be most unlikely to describe the disaster thus classically. Perhaps a chimney or two blown off and a roof carried away may have stimulated Madame de Grignan's fancy. There were always those letters to be written and a certain dearth of subjects for a lady besieged by the mistral in a Provençal château. What Madame de Grignan must have said one gathers from the mother's reply—

"Voila le vent, le tourbillon, l'ouragon, les diables déchainés, qui veulent emporter votre château.... Ah ma fille, quelle ébranlement universel!"

The mother recommends taking refuge in Avignon; a curious place to flee to from such a foe! But in those days there was no swift flight possible, and a removal from the howling country to the whistling town was all that could be achieved even by the wealthy. One wonders how the removal of a household was effected when there were no railways and probably few roads—and a mistral at full tilt across the plains!

Poets of all ages have sung of the feats of the amazing wind, and there are descriptions of its furious descent upon the Crau, where in default of anything better to wreak its anger upon, it sends the stones hurling across the plain. Nothing can stand against it. Mistral says that in tempest "il souffle toujours. Les arbres ... se courbent, se secouent à arracher leurs troncs."

The ancients assigned a place to the great wind among their deities, and the Emperor Augustus erected a temple in its honour. It is curious how this pagan feeling of personality in the wind survives to this day.

Its famous namesake, the Provençal poet, whose home is at Maillane, on the great plain among the guardian cypresses, expresses the sentiment in a hundred forms, and he adduces a still more striking instance in the account he once gave of his father—a fine specimen of the Provençal farmer or yeoman—who had a positive adoration for "le bon vent."

"Le jour ou l'on vannait le blé, souvent il n'y avait pas un souffle d'air pour emporter la poussière blonde, alors, mon père avait recours a une sorte d'invocation au mistral.

"Souffle mon mignon, disait il, et il priait et implorait.

"Eh bien, le vent venait et mon père, etait plein de joie, et il criait 'brava, brava.'"

In his house at Maillane, protected from foreign intrusion by the double army of the winds and the mosquitos, this chief of the Félibres passes his days, rejoicing in their scourges because they frighten away the wandering tourist—"tempted by our horizons and our sky"—from the land of the Sun and the Cypress.

To him the roar and shriek of the mistral is always a "musico majestuoso."

This tremendous being (as indeed he seems when one has once felt the very earth shaking beneath his assault) must be responsible for much in the Provençal character and literature; it is impossible to believe it to have been without profound influence on the imagination of the many races that have made the country their home.

Its voice is elemental, passionate, sometimes expressing blind fury, but often full of an agony that even its own tremendous cry cannot utter; a torment as of Prometheus and a grandeur of spirit no less than his.

The mistral produces effects of astonishing contrast; for when he is silent Provence is the most smiling, kindly land in the world; and half its stories are of gentle and lovely things: of chivalry, of romance, of dance and song and laughter. But when once the Black Wind begins to rouse himself from his lair on Mont Ventoux, then tragedy and pain and despair are abroad on wide dark wings.

All the "merry hamlets" of Provence have delightful courts or places shaded with plane-trees. Here the villagers assemble on Sundays and Saints' days, and here may always be found a few happy loungers resting on the benches, or playing some game of whose mysterious antiquity they are blissfully unconscious.

It is the country of mediævalism; it is still more the country of paganism, of Greek temples, Phœnician inscriptions and tombs, Roman baths, amphitheatres, aqueducts; it boasts a profusion of exquisite churches, splendid mediæval castles; scenes of troubadour history, of the reputed Courts of Love; of a thousand traditions and stories that have become the heritage of every civilised people.

In the valley of Elorn, near Landerneau—called the Cradle of Chivalry—was found, according to the legend, the veritable round table of King Arthur, and here rose into the sky the towers of the Château de Joyeuse Garde of the Arthurian legends.

But Provence rests its claim to having been the birthplace of Chivalry on better grounds than this, for the first troubadour was a Provençal, the Comte Quilhelm de Poictier; a most debonnaire gentleman, of attractive appearance, courtly manners, and an exhaustive knowledge of the Gay Science, making great havoc with the hearts of ladies.

The colour of the landscape in Provence is as vivid as the history of its people.

A writer speaks of "la couleur violente, presque exaspérée, des montagnes."

There is no country that can be less conveyed to the imagination by an enumeration of topographical facts. The more exact the description the less we arrive at the land that Mistral sees and loves.

Of this poet, characteristically Provençal, Lamartine is reported to have said—

"I bring you glad tidings, a great epic poet is born among us. The West produces no more such poets, but from the nature of the South they will spring forth. It is from the sun alone that power flows."

It is from the sun that life flows, is the irresistible conclusion that one comes to under the skies of the Midi.

Science has insisted upon the fact, and no one seriously disputes it, but not to dispute and to actually accept are two very different conditions of mind. Legend, proverb, history, song, all seem to tell of a life more intense, more "vibrant," as their great poet describes the Provençals—in the troubadour country than elsewhere; unless indeed one goes still farther into the regions of the sun and falls under the kindred spell of Italy.

In England archæology seems cold and dead. In the South it conjures up visions of a teeming life; generation after generation of peoples, race after race, civilisation after civilisation.

Paradox as it seems, the multitude of dead or ruined or vanished cities that have lined the coast from the Pyrenees to the Var strangely enhances this sense of vitality and persistence of human activities.

But one records and records, and yet one has not Provence. One has but her mountains and contours, her blue sky, and perhaps her wild wind—but there is always something beyond.

One sees the Rhone and the Durance on their way to the sea—splendid headlong rivers; one sees the melancholy brooding wilderness of the Crau, where Hercules and the quarrelsome Titans flung those huge stones at one another in the dim old days; one sees always the strange, fantastic little limestone chain of the Alpilles which finishes to the south-east the great semicircle begun to the west by the higher ranges. The eye follows everywhere, fascinated, the battalions of cypresses, while over all is the flooding light, vibrating, living. And yet after all is said, Provence is still an unknown land.

It is one of the haunted lands, the spell-weaving lands. It enslaves as no obvious technical beauty of landscape can enslave.

Provence is like one of its own enchanting ladies of the troubadour days, and strangely significant is it that this nameless quality of the country should have been thus reproduced by the crown and flower of its people. For this attribute of charm belongs to knight and baron, soldier and singer, if we may trust the old songs and the old stories. But, par excellence, it belonged to the cultivated lady of the epoch. Take, for instance, the mysterious Countess of Die or Dia, of whose identity nothing is certainly known. She was a writer of songs and the heroine of one of the poetical love-stories of the age: a lady capable of deep and faithful love, unhappily for her peace of mind. Of the subtlety of her attractions one may judge by the power which the mere dead records wield to this day over the imagination. This is how a modern author writes of her—

"Her voice had the colour of Alban wine, with overtones like the gleams of light in the still, velvety depths of the goblet, and when she smiled, it seemed as if she drew from a harp a slow, deep chord in the mode of Æolia. Though not at all diffident, and not at all prudish, she wore usually an air of shyness, the shyness of one whose thoughts dread intrusion."

How our author managed to gather such intimate detail from ancient volumes is perhaps difficult to understand; and doubtless he has reconstructed a voice and a smile from hints of the personality given by musty documents written demurely in the quaint, beautiful old langue d'oc. Still, there must have been some potent suggestion in the chronicles to set the fancy working in this glowing way, and it is a fact that all that one reads of the women of that time has a curious elusive element, producing an impression of some attraction subtler and more holding than can be expressed in direct words.

And Provence has a charm like that of her mysteriously endowed women; unaccountable, but endless to those who are once drawn within the magnetic circle. Have their sisters of to-day none of this quality? One here and there, no doubt, but it is to be feared that modern conditions do not favour the production of the type. Perhaps the women of to-day are making a détour out of the region of enchantment, but only in order to obtain a broader, more generous grasp of the things of life. Some day they will give back to mankind what has been taken away by the new adventures, and when the tide turns, there will surely pour over the arid world a flood of beauty and "youngheartedness" and romance such as the blinder, less conscious centuries have never so much as dreamt of!

Meanwhile the troubadours had the privilege of dedicating their songs and their hearts to the most fascinating women which civilisation had as yet produced. Perhaps one associates such subtle attraction with the powers of darkness, but there is nothing to show that such powers had aught to do with the charm of the heroines of troubadour song. On the contrary, they seem as a rule to have been of extremely fine calibre; and if one consults one's memories of magnetic personalities—after all there are not a very large array of them—it almost always proves to be the powers of good in its broadest sense, and not of evil, that give birth to the fascination that never dies.

And the fascination of this gay, sad, brilliant, sympathetic country is not dreadful and diabolic. It is compounded of wholesome sunshine and merriment, swift ardour of thought and emotion, of beautiful manners; of the poetry of ancient industries: of sowing and reaping and tillage; of wine-culture and olive-growing; of legends and quaint proverbs, and a language full of the flavour of the soil and the sun that reveals itself to the quick of ear and of heart long before it can be fully understood. For it appeals to the heart, this sweet language of the troubadours, and hard must have often been the task of those poor ladies, wooed in this too winning tongue!

The traditions of chivalry are among the priceless possessions of the human race, and it is in Provence that their aroma lingers with a potency scarcely to be found in any other country. The air is alive with rich influences. The heat of the sun, the extraordinary brilliance of light and colour, the dignity of an ancient realm whose every inch is penetrated with human doings and destinies, all combine towards an enchantment that belongs to the mysterious side of nature and prompts a host of unanswerable questions. The eye wanders bewildered across the country, wistfully struggling to realise the wonder and the beauty. It sweeps the peaked line of mountains with only an added sense of bafflement, and rests at last, sadly, on some lonely castle with shattered ramparts and roofless banqueting-hall, where now only the birds sing troubadour songs, and ivy and wild vines are the swaying tapestries.

CHAPTER II
AVIGNON

"Sur le pont d'Avignon,

On y danse, on y danse!"

"Avenio ventosa, sine vento

Venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa."

Latin Proverb.

"Parlement mistral et Durance

Sont les trois fleaux de Provence."

Old Saying.

CHAPTER II

AVIGNON

How the sun does pour down on to the great esplanade before the Palace of the Popes! It is as warm as a June day in England and twice as light. That astounding building towers into the blue, bare and creamy white, every stern, simple line of it ascending swift and clear, in repeated strokes, rhythmically grand, like some fine piece of blank verse.

The parapet alone shows broken surfaces. Neither cornice nor corbel nor window pediment; scarcely a window to interrupt the mass of splendid masonry, only recurrent shafts of stone (continuing from the machicolations above) which shoot straight and slim from base to summit of the fortress, to meet there at intervals, as if a line of tall poplars, two by two, had bent their heads together to form this succession of sharply-pointed arches.

The arrangement of massive wall and slender arch gives to the building a singular effect of strength and eternity combined with a severe sort of grace.

PONT DE ST. BENÉZET, AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.

It stands there enormous, calm, yet with a delicacy of bearing belonging surely to no other edifice of that impregnable strength and vast bulk. The genius of the architect has expressed in these sixteen-feet walls some of the spirit of the palace as well as the rudeness of the stronghold, and has given a subtle hint of the painted halls and galleries wherein half the potentates of Europe were magnificently entertained, where Petrarch dreamed and Rabelais jested.... And that hint seems to lie in the general relations of mass to mass, and especially in the shallow projection and towering height of that endless line of delicate arches. Burke, in his sublime way, assures us that sublimity is the result of monotonous repetition, and this surprising achievement of Papal magnificence certainly bears out the theory.

The palace shows no more signs of age upon it than the glowing tint of the walls through the beating of the sun upon them for hundreds of brilliant years. How brilliant they must have been! What warmth, what light! That is what astonishes Barbara: the light. She cannot get over it. We seem to have awakened into a world woven out of radiance.

Not but that it is a very real and solid world, this sun-created realm of rambling terraces and upward-trending pathways. Rich stone-pines follow the slant of the road, as it mounts the famous Rocher du Dom in easy zig-zags till it reaches the plateau at the summit, where once upon a time, tradition says, all the witches and wizards of the country-side used to celebrate their unholy rites. And thereby hangs a tale—perhaps to be told later in the day.

Half-way up the rock, on a little platform of its own, stands a small Romanesque Cathedral, singularly fine in style, and characteristic of the architecture of the South of France. Creepers are hanging recklessly, alluringly over the walls and parapets of the hill above. On the top there is a little garden, with seats and shrubs and a pond inhabited by ornate, self-conscious kinds of birds. We learn this in later explorations. Just now the instinctive human desire to reach the highest point achievable is half quieted by the warm comfort of this placid spot below, and we turn our backs on the aspiring Mount.

There are sun-warmed stone benches under the young, sparsely-covered plane-trees (no town in Provence ever dreamt of trying to exist without plane-trees), and here we establish ourselves and watch the little events of the square: the soldiers coming and going up the steps of the Papal Palace (now a barracks); the three recruits being frantically drilled (there is always an element of frenzy in French military exercises); the slow moving of the shadows which rudely caricature the huge stone garland on the Papal Mint, a design in Michael Angelo's most opulent manner; the stray cats on the prowl from neighbouring kitchens; the cheerful dog trotting across the square, tail in air, ready to answer to a friendly word with which we detain him from more important affairs.

Ancient as is this city of the Popes, there are no weather-stains, as we northerners understand them, only marks of the sun and wind. A good friend this fierce, cleansing sun, and the wind from Mont Ventoux must sweep away all impurities from the narrow streets, and—il y en a!

Away across the parapet a mass of roofs fills the slope to the river bank—most wonderful of rivers!—and to the south there are hills and bright distances: Provençal hills, distances of the land of "joy, young-heartedness and love." And that makes the thought that we are in Provence wake up with a cry that rings in the heart like a reveillé. And on its heels comes a strange, secret rebound of sadness, keen as the cut of a knife. As for the cause? Who can say exactly what home-sickness, what vast longing it is that wakens thus when the beauty and greatness of the world and the narrowness of individual possibilities point too clearly their eternal contrast?

PALACE OF THE POPES AND CATHEDRAL.
By E. M. Synge.

"I can't get over that light," Barbara exclaims, in renewed astonishment. "I don't feel as if I ever wanted to move from this bench."

And we let the sun make a considerable portion of his daily journey across the palace walls before we move. Already the influence of the South is in our veins. It makes one better understand the genius of this "Rome transportée dans les Gaules." It must have been, in some sort, the capital of Europe, when for sixty years or so the Papal Court drew the great and the famous from the ends of the earth to the gay, corrupt little city.

Seven Popes reigned here, but of the life at the Palace during that time there is singularly little record. Instinctively one tries to recapture misty reminiscences of schoolroom lore, for now the dry facts begin to glow with the splendour and the pathos of real life, as one realises that just on this very spot, in sight of these sunny hills and this rushing river, those ancient things took place.

"Oh! Barbara, how magnificently learned I should be if only I possessed all the information that I have forgotten!"

"What have you forgotten?" Barbara inquires soothingly.

Heavens! What with forgetting and never having known, one felt as arid and futile as an extinct volcano. Had one but enjoyed the privileges accorded to the characters of ancient drama, one would have stretched forth hands in invocation to the mysterious eventful city.

"O city, O immortal city of the Rhone, lift but for one moment the veil that hides from us those tremendous secrets which fill the air with dreams and presences even to this hour!"

Perhaps the appeal was not altogether in vain, for a few isolated facts began to drift, ghost-like, into view. They were images imprinted in childish days while Avignon was nothing but a name, and so the ill-guided imagination had placed the city on the plain; a bare, arid group of houses surrounding a vague, vast structure, against which clouds of dust were continually being driven.

It was curious and interesting to compare this long-cherished picture with the reality. In connection with it was another painted in richer tones. The subject was the journey of Philip of Valois through his kingdom with the kings of Navarre and Bohemia in his train. After passing through Burgundy—broad and spacious Burgundy, with its straggling, brown villages—he arrives here at Avignon, where other kings have hurried to meet him, and is magnificently received by the Pope. Which of the seven Popes was it? Alas! memory failed, but King Philip was lodged over there across the river at Villeneuve-les-Avignon.

"Beyond the island where the huge castle is on the hill?" Barbara inquired. "What a shabby sort of place to put a king."

My idea, too, of Villeneuve, till I saw it, had been a brilliant little pleasure-city, full of splendid cardinals' palaces.

"Let's go and see the town," said Barbara; "perhaps the palaces are still there."

We decided to go that very day. A place is twice seen that is seen at once. Some discerning person had read me Froissart's account of the scene, and I had never forgotten it; the feastings and festivals that burst forth all over the city, till Lent came; and then the thrilling news that went flying through the country that the Saracens were marching against the Holy Land. This was a threat to all Christendom. It was difficult to imagine what it must have been to fear a possible invasion of those terrible enemies.

But the city was spared. The Pope preached a great sermon to his congregation of kings, exhorting them to take the cross. They all obeyed. And then the visionary pictures became a procession: the King of France with his retinue journeying westward into Languedoc——

"Languedoc?" questioned Barbara.

It was just before us across the Rhone; lovely brown hills on the horizon.

And so the royal company moved in picturesque progress through the provinces of France: Auvergne, Berry, Beauce, and so on, till they reached Paris.

"I should like to have seen it," said Barbara. "I wonder if they wore long robes and ermine."

"Perhaps not quite so beautiful a garb as that, but, thank Heaven, we know they didn't wear tweed suits! When the human race took to doing that they bid goodbye to the charm and romance of life for ever."

"But I think men look quite nice in tweed suits," said Barbara. "I am sure they would look ridiculous now in mantles and ermine."

"Oh, that's another matter. There is always something a little ridiculous about civilised man, 'rough hew him how you may'; but nothing brings it out so fatally as tweed."

Barbara remonstrated, and then wanted to know if I could remember any more.

I could remember nothing about Avignon, but between us we recollected incidents about the beginning of the Hundred Years' War, which took place just at this time. It was a luckless day for France and England when Edward III. was so ill-inspired as to assert his roundabout claim to the throne of France! The fair country became the scene of raids and sieges, ravaging of provinces, taking and retaking of towns and castles, battle and murder and sudden death.

Of this there are of course endless chronicles; of all the moil and toil of war and rapine, of the clash of rival interests, of mad ambitions which, once gratified, left their victims only more wild and craving than before.

If the annals of the Middle Ages have a moral it is this: Fling away ambition. Fling away this crude passion of kings and captains which seems to drive a man like a fury through his untasted life, never giving him pause to possess what he has won or even to realise the triumph of his achievement.

"Tell me more," demanded Barbara.

But the pictures were at an end. Quite capriciously it seemed, certain scenes had painted themselves on the mind, but what followed chronologically had made no special impression, perhaps because there was a general confusion of wars and tumults, till suddenly we emerge on familiar ground at the battles of Creçy and Poitiers.

We had grown tired of trying to realise the things of the past, and strolled down to the river, to the long suspension bridge, where, as every French child knows, "on y danse, on y danse." And here one has a fine view of Villeneuve, across the Rhone, and looking back, of Avignon. From this point its walls are strikingly picturesque, ramparts of the fourteenth century, built by Clement VI. and described by a modern author as a "remarkably beautiful specimen of mediæval masonry, with a battlemented wall for projecting machicolations on finely moulded corbels"—corbels of four or five courses, which give an appearance almost Eastern to these splendid walls and gateways.

"The intensest life of the fourteenth century," says the same writer, "passed through the Gothic portal over which the portcullis hung in its chamber ever ready to drop with a thundering crash, and fix its iron teeth in the ground."

Barbara asked a great many searching questions about times and manners. But here I began to experience what some discriminating person has called a "reaction against the despotism of facts." I did not know any more. I began to repent of having excited this inordinate thirst for information. However, very little is needed to enable one to achieve a general impression of France in the fourteenth century. One has merely to think of the fair land under the horrors of sack and siege, burning towns, starving people, all the agonies of chronic warfare. What is more difficult is to descend from the general to the particular, and to imagine what sort of life that must have been for the mortal who was neither a King nor a Pope, nor a plundering freebooter, but only a human being with a life to ruin and a heart to break.

Even while one is dreaming of other things, that wonderful Palace is impressing itself upon the sentiment with steady power. It stands there in the blaze of light, tremendous, inevitable, like a fact of nature. One can scarcely think it away. It resists even that mighty force, the human imagination.

Avignon! the Roman Avenio; a place of many events, many influences, which have helped to make our present life what it is—we are really there, absurdly improbable as it seems; we, with our modern minds, modern speech, modern preconceptions, in the bright land of the troubadours; and, stranger still, in the land where the Phœnicians traded, the Greeks colonised, the Romans built their inevitable baths and amphitheatres; where the ancient Ligurians lived their lives on peaked hilltops, and race fought race and tribe fought tribe, when there was neither Pope in Avignon nor King in France, but only wild gods and wilder chieftains ruling in the lawless, beautiful land.

From the height of the Rocher du Dom (we climb there at last by the zig-zag pine-shadowed road) the whole country bursts upon us, blue, wide, mountain-encircled, radiant; with the Rhone winding across the plain, dreaming of mysterious things. The great river has a personality of its own as strong as that of the palace. It sweeps to the foot of our cliff and takes a splendid curve round the south side of the town, past the ruined bridge of St. Benézet, with its romantic chapel poised midway above the rush and flurry of the river.

Every year, on Christmas Eve, Mass used to be celebrated in this little chapel of the Rhone, and strange must it have been when the yellow lights glowed—just once of all the nights of the long year—on its lonely altar, and the chanting of priests rose and fell above the sound of the marauding waters. But for their aggressions, the grand old bridge would still be carrying passengers from the Papal city across the two branches of the river and the island of St. Barthelasse to the foot of the tower of Philippe le Bel.

This old tower is, perhaps, the most striking building—except the great castle—in the decaying town of Villeneuve where the Cardinals built so many palaces. Here it was, in that forgotten little haunt of pleasure, that the guests of the Pope were once so gloriously lodged and entertained. And now—sad beyond all telling is the little town! Ardouin-Dumazet, the author of "Un Voyage en France," seems to have been impressed by its forlornness as much as we were, for he writes of it in words that evoke the very spirit of the place:—

"Amas de toits audessus desquels surgissent des eglises rongées par le temps, des edifices à physiognomie triste et vague—La ville est d'apparence morne. Elle dut être splendide jadis: de grands hotels, des maisons de noble ordonnance, des voies bordées d'arcades indiquent un passé prosperé. Les moindres détails: ferrurues de portes et de balcon, corbeaux, statuettes d'angle sont d'un art tres pur. Aujourd'hui on rencontre surtout des chiens et des chats—On pourrait se croire dans une ville morte—On va errer par les lamentables et pittoresques débris de la Chartreuse du Val-de-Bénédiction où sont encore de merveilles architecturales."

Everywhere, indeed, as one wanders, one comes upon these "architectural marvels." A fine doorway giving entrance to a wheelwright's yard; delicate pieces of iron-work on the balcony of a barber's shop; a scrap of stone carving; a noble block of buildings in some ill-kept street.

The symphonic beauty of such relics of the Renaissance which are found in almost every town of the South of France, bears in upon the imagination the truth of the saying of the great architect Alberti that a slight alteration in the curves of his design for San Francesco at Rimini would "spoil his music."

The traveller who climbs the hill to the vast fortress of St. André—with its battlements of the fourteenth century—enters a scene even more eloquent of desolation. But splendid it must have been in the days of its glory!

CHARTREUSE DU VAL-DE-BÉNÉDICTION, VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.

The huge drum towers of the entrance gate recall old dreams of romantic adventure. But for the strange silence of the place, it might almost excite expectations of clattering cavalcades, and one knows not what medley of bright figures in harmony with the mediæval background. But the silence broods on, unbroken. A black kitten is the only living thing that meets the view as we pass through the shadows of the gateway. A dishevelled grey village has grown up within the walls, its steep street climbing upward to the summit of the hill, while a cypress-guarded convent stands within its own high walls. Here the sisters pass their lives, doubly immured. If some unhappy nun tried to escape, she would not only have to penetrate the stern boundaries of her retreat, but to scale the ramparts of the fortress into the bargain; the engines of State and Religion arrayed against her; of this world and the next. It prompted one to carry the significant symbol further afield, and to follow in imagination the fortunes not only of the fugitive nun but of the escaping woman!

As we begin the ascent of the desolate street, the black kitten slips coquettishly across the way, at a slant, her tail high in the air, like a ruler, as the School-Board essayist happily puts it. We hail her as alluringly as may be, but she is away beyond our reach up a little outside staircase leading to the doorway of one of the few habitable houses. From this eminence she looks down upon us mockingly, clearly enjoying our disadvantage. This piques us and we engage in pursuit. The imp finally vanishes into the doorway, and presently a miserably clad, dejected-looking woman emerges. Evidently the kitten had announced to her the advent of visitors. She leads the way, a huge bunch of keys in her hand, the kitten following in a self-willed, flighty sort of fashion. While we are trifling with ancient walls and gruesome dungeons, the kitten is busy catching phantom mice among the heaps of fallen masonry that encumber the grassy hill-top, forlorn remains, indeed, of human habitations.

CASTLE OF ST. ANDRÉ, VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.

The little chapel of the convent strikes with a chill as we enter—surely it is something more than a chill; a sense of something deathly. In a flash comes the horrified sense of the death-in-life that is hidden behind these mysterious walls. One needs no detail, no assurance; the whole beats in upon the consciousness, steals in like an atmosphere, as we stand in the shadow looking at the little flower-decked altar, musty and tawdry with its artificial flowers and flounced draperies.

"Of what Order are the Sisters?" we inquire, in undertones, after a long silence.

"Sh—h," warns a reproving voice from a hidden part of the chapel, which had been so arranged as to leave the west-end of it invisible to all but the inmates of the convent.

"C'est une des soeurs," whispered our guide, and we turned and left the devotee to her prayers.

A truly amazing thing the human spirit! There are times when one feels entirely divorced from it, as if one were studying its manifestations from the point of view of an alien race. And there is no epoch so baffling to the modern mind as the mediæval. The ancients seem normal, straight-going, and eminently human as compared with the men and women of the Middle Ages.

We are taken to the dungeons in the entrance towers where our feudal forefathers inflicted one dares not think what agonies, and without a pang of remorse; rather with a sense of right and heaven-inspired justice. It was within the walls of this fortress, probably in a cell of the Convent, that the Man in the Iron Mask passed the dreadful days and nights of his life.

The sentiment of the unimaginative ruffian who could condemn a fellow-creature to this living grave is probably beyond the understanding of a modern—short of a criminal lunatic. We are glad to hurry out again into the light, oppressed by the shadow of misery and wickedness that seems to hang about the place to this hour.

There are many who hold that the world has made no real progress except in material civilisation. That is a subject that might best be studied in some mouldering dungeon, which, be it remembered, was just as much a "necessary part" of the mediæval castle as the kitchen or pantry is of its descendant, the country-house of to-day.

If such strongholds were either let or sold in the feudal era, they were doubtless recommended to intending purchasers as having well-appointed torture-chambers, fitted with all the latest improvements in racks and thumb-screws. Without venturing to claim too much for the average modern, he may be said to have advanced a little beyond the stage when the thumb-screw was an instrument that no gentleman's house should be without. As the change of ideals to which this improvement is due may be said to have taken place in Provence, fostered and impelled, paradox as it seems, within the precincts of the feudal castle itself with its chains and oubliettes, those sighing ruins become strangely moving and significant.

Our poor, half-starved guide, however, looks as if she thought them anything but significant as she leads us up and down the fallen masonry, the kitten following always, and often springing to her shoulders and curving its lithe little body round her neck.

"Il est comme notre enfant," she says, half apologetically. "Nous n'en avons pas, des enfants." And the kitten swirls its tail in her face as if to assure her that it could well fill the place of any number of children. The faithful little acolyte had to be left outside the door leading to the dungeons, for she used to get lost in the passages and the turret staircase. But there she waited, mewing at intervals, till we re-emerged, and then she sprang with a little purring cry on to her mistress's shoulder.

We were at the entrance gate, and the round of the fortress was finished. We bade goodbye to the woman, who pocketed her "tip" and hastened back with her attendant sprite to the little grey, half-ruined house where she passes her grey, unimaginable life!

CHAPTER III
A SEVERE CRITIC—UZÈS AND BARBENTANE

"La cigalo di piboulo,

La bouscarlo do bouissoun,

Lou grihet di farigoulo

Tout canto sa cansoun."

The tree locust in the poplar, the thrush in the wayside bush,

The grasshopper in the wild thyme, each sings its own song.

Mistral.

CHAPTER III

A SEVERE CRITIC—UZÈS AND BARBENTANE

At the table d'hôte of our hotel, a little group of travellers was clustered at the far end of the long, old-fashioned room—silent, French though they were. My neighbour was a pale, faintly-outlined young man, with short, colourless hair. Curious that so artistic a nation should crop its hair so very close, I idly mused. That pallor? Presumably the lack of outdoor exercise, not to enter upon dark possibilities of absinthe and other Parisian roads to ruin.

At about the stage of the entrée the subject of these conjectures, bracing himself to the task, turned and said—

"Est ce que vous êtes depuis longtemps à Avignon, madame?" (Accent a little provincial, I thought, perhaps Provençal, which was interesting!)

"Non, monsieur, je ne suis ici que depuis hier," I responded, not only in my best French, but with as much sociability as I could throw into the somewhat arid reply, for I desired to prolong a conversation that might throw light upon the fascinating country.

"Ah!" said the close-cropped one, with a gesture that I thought Gallic, "je suis un peu—de—dis—disappointed, as we say in English," he suddenly broke up, with an exasperated abandonment of the foreign lingo. The man was an Englishman, for all he was worth! Barbara laughed aloud, getting wind of the situation. So much for the distinctions of national types. My neighbour had made precisely the same mistake on his side that I had made on mine.

With Avignon he was indeed "a little disappointed." He thought the Palace bare and ugly, and the town dirty and unattractive. The view from the Rocher du Dom? Yes, that was rather fine. Give the devil his due, he evidently felt. What was the height of Mont Ventoux? I longed to rush wildly into figures, but principle restrained me. Did I mean to go to Chateauneuf? Our friend had been there. Tumble-down old place. One could see it from the Rocher du Dom across the river. They made rather good wine there.

Chateauneuf! Good wine there!

Was this the famous Chateauneuf, the ancient country seat of the Popes, the lordly pleasure-house of the most luxurious and brilliant Court of the Middle Ages?—("Not much luxury about it now!" said our tourist)—a vast Summer Palace situated on one of the finest sites of the district, whence one could see Vaucluse itself in the Vale of the Sorgue, Petrarch's beloved retreat from the clamour of the Papal City; and Vacqueiras, the home of Raimbaut de Vacqueiras, the celebrated troubadour, and many another spot of greater or less renown.

Here, too, a modern singer had been born: Anselm Mathieu, and in the old house of his family the Provençal Félibres used to meet, reciting verses, singing songs, and doubtless pledging one another in the famous vintage of Chateauneuf, the "rather good wine" of our severe critic.

CHATEAUNEUF, NEAR AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.

He placidly continued his crushing observations. Vaucluse he considered a much over-rated spot, though the cliffs and crags above the source of the river were rather striking. Was there anything more to see in Avignon after one had done the Palace and the Museum? I reluctantly admitted there was but little one could recommend to a critical spirit. Our level-headed tourist had spent an hour in Villeneuve that morning—the little town across the bridge with the big castle, he explained—and found it depressing—everything peeling off. The description was annoyingly apt. There was no gainsaying it. Only it was not exhaustive.

Its author intended to go next morning to see the Pont du Gard, about which one heard so many laudatory accounts. He was told that he wouldn't think as much of it as he expected. How much he expected after this warning I was unable to estimate, but I thought it safe to prophesy disappointment. He said himself that he confidently anticipated it. I wondered vaguely whether the condition of mind thus described was capable of analysis, but did not attempt it. I felt Barbara was emotionally in a state of unstable equilibrium, and dared not add to her provocations. My neighbour further complained that considering the general importance of Avignon and one's extreme familiarity with its name, historically speaking, it seemed surprisingly shabby and small—narrow streets and all that. We admitted the narrow streets.

And there wasn't a decent church in the whole place! Wouldn't compare with Bruges or Rouen. My tourist was at Rouen in the autumn of '98, and at Bruges in September of '99, on a cycling tour—or was it August?

I thought it might be August.

Yes (our friend's memory clarified most satisfactorily), it was the last week in August. On the 18th he had left London. I knew that hot weather we had all over England and the Continent at the end of August in that year?

I evidently must have known it, so it seemed scarcely worth while confessing that my memory failed to distinguish the particular heat of that summer from the more or less similar oppressiveness of any other season.

Well, he and two fellows cycled all through Holland and Belgium in ten days and three hours; saw everything. They made an average of sixty miles a day. Barbara, who hailed from north of the Tweed, said "Aw!" and the flattered cyclist hastened to add, with becoming modesty, that of course the roads were good and the country flat. They did ninety several days. Pretty fair with the thermometer at 70° in the shade——

"An interesting country for such a tour?"

"Rather flat; never get a really good spin; though on the other hand, there is no uphill work."

For general interest did the country compare at all with Provence? I wanted to turn my informant from his line of ideas just for the fun of seeing him work back to it, as an intercepted ant or earwig will pursue its chosen path, no matter how many obstacles one may throw in the way. Our tourist doubled and fell into line again almost at once.

Provence? He had been recommended to give it a trial, but so far had seen nothing particular to attract one. Too hot for cycling, and hotels very poor. And, as he said before, there were no churches, let alone cathedrals. Look at the cathedral here, as they had the cheek to call it, perched up on a rock like a Swiss châlet. And what architecture! Baedecker called it Romanesque. He always called things Romanesque when there was nothing else he could decently call them. (This was cheering; a sort of inverted enthusiasm which at least was less depressing than indifference.) Why couldn't they stick to some definite style—Gothic or something? However, he (my neighbour) didn't pretend to know anything about these matters, though he evidently felt that the architects who couldn't bring themselves to settle down decisively into "Gothic or something" had made rather a poor thing of their profession. It seemed to him that there was a baldness about the buildings here. They might be all right, but so they struck him. Rienzi's tower, for instance—not a rag of ornament!

I had begun to suggest an unsatisfied yearning for a few minarets with a trifle of Early Perpendicular work down the sides, when I became aware that for various reasons—Barbara especially—it was wiser to desist.

It was not till our friend had gone next day to court disappointment at the Pont du Gard that we felt the lifting of the curious, leaden atmosphere that he had thrown around him. His presence seemed to stop the heart-beat of the place, nay, one's own heart-beat, till nothing was left but hotels and averages and heights and dates. Mon Dieu! And some day somebody would have to travel with such a being—perhaps for life. Heaven help the other traveller!

However, after all, it was possibly wholesome to have one's hot-headed impressions subjected to the cold light of an Englishman's reason. Our compatriot, with his severely rational way of conducting himself, had doubtless gathered a crop of solid information, which was more than could be said for our methods. I told Barbara that I was going to regard Avignon henceforth from the point of view of its population and height above the sea, and I hunted up facts in guide-books and put her in possession of all available dates from the earliest ages to the present day. She did not seem to me to assimilate them satisfactorily.

RIENZI'S TOWER, AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.

The country round Avignon serves to remind one of the fact that it was, in ancient times, a good deal nearer the sea than it is at present. The outlines are like those of a sea-bordering country; such heights as there are have the character of cliffs, or they are level-topped, smoothed-out hills until one reaches the grotesque escarpments of the Alpilles or the wild masses of the Luberon range, once island summits rising from the waters.

Avignon stands majestically on one of these heights, with the Rhone valley spreading wide on every hand.

It looks like a magic city in the sunshine or in the glow of evening; the interminable Palace, the Cathedral, the spires and towers rising against the sky with that particular serenity of beauty that we think of as belonging to the land of dreams.

A railway journey of about two hours from Avignon takes one to the little ducal city of Uzès, which lies in the heart of this curious lateral country, whose eminences have no peaks or highest points, whose lines are all horizontal.

Upon the sky-line at the end of the leisurely journey appears a striking mass of buildings and mediæval towers, announcing to the lover of architecture that some delightful hours are before him.

A quaint old omnibus takes (and shakes) the passengers—mostly commercial travellers—up the slight hill and in through the grey gates of this stately little city, landing one and all at the big inn in the broad main street. Except that it is so exceedingly quiet, it has something in common with the street of an English cathedral town.

Obviously Uzès has been a place of importance in the past: the public buildings are on a grand scale and of fine design; the Ducal Palace announces the capital of a little Principality or Duchy, and the number of churches would suggest either a large population or a very devout one. But a sort of trance seems to have fallen upon the place, and not even the bustle of the inn at its busiest moments, when the vast, dark-papered dining-room is filled with hungry passengers, can overcome the sense of suspended life that haunts the town.

But in the earlier centuries it had a stirring history. Uzès possessed some valiant seigneurs in the days of Philippe le Bel, for that monarch was so pleased with their prowess that he erected the town into a "Vicomté." It was governed by its seigneurs and its bishops who shared the jurisdiction, and a lively time they must have had of it!

It has always been a fiery little city, and during the religious wars of the sixteenth century was the scene of terrible struggles and massacres, even in the very churches, which were half ruined during this period. Perhaps the tumult of those times has left Uzès weary and sad, for now the place seems dedicated to the God of Sleep.

The shaded promenade or terrace, with its white parapet of short stone pillars, runs round two sides of the Ducal Garden outside its walls—a delightful spot to rest or loiter in, commanding a curious wide view over the country, which is, however, suddenly shut in by a hard, high horizon line as level as if it were ruled, or as if it were the edge of a plain, though it is really a range of hills.

The trees of the shady old garden of the Duché drop their branches over a high wall; at the back of the demesne the Cathedral stands half hidden by some of the buildings of the Duché and beside it rises one of the most singular and beautiful architectural monuments of the South, La Tour Fenestrella, an exquisite Romanesque tower, much smaller but more graceful than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which it otherwise resembles.

It springs upwards, tier after tier of little arches, with an effect of exquisite lightness and strength, and leaves one wondering why this delicate example of Romanesque work does not enjoy a greater renown.

Many hours might be well spent in this forgotten little city, where in the old days the intense quiet that broods over it—as if invading it from the strange, almost ominous landscape beyond the parapet—was broken by the din of warfare more violent and more unappeasable than any other sort of strife: that of religion.

In early spring the plain of the Rhone in the neighbourhood of Avignon is all flushed with young almond blossoms. The carriage of the tourist trundles past field after field of misty pink, and for the time he might fancy himself in the landscape of a Japanese fan.

Above this plain, perched on a bare hillside that gives a bird's-eye view of the wide expanse of the Rhone valley, stands the ancient village of Barbentane, a name that occurs constantly in the literature of Provence, especially in the poems of Mistral. In Roman days Barbentane or Bellinto, a station on the road between Tarascon and Orange, was an island surrounded by the waters of the Durance.

STREET AT UZÈS.
By E. M. Synge.

It is of far less imposing aspect than Uzès and is approached by a long, ascending road, which is continuous with the broad main street of the town, whence other streets climb the hill, wandering into little platforms and nooks and picturesque corners such as only a hill town in the Midi can produce. There are ancient buildings at every turn, and above the rest, beyond the gateway leading up to the windy limestone downs, stands the tall ruined tower of Barbentane, which has a romantic story attached to it. Mistral writes of it:

"The Bishop of Avignon ...

Has built a tower at Barbentane,

Sea-wind it spurns, and tramontane,

And round it demons rage in vain.

He'll exorcise

The walls that rise

With turrets square

From rocks so bare.

Its front looks to the setting sun,

And over the windows one by one—

Lest demon ever through them may pass—

He carves his mitre over the glass."[2]

To this demon-proof stronghold the Bishop appoints a warder, who—as is the way of warders—has a charming daughter, Mourrette. Mourrette has a lover who is determined to scale the walls of the fortress and carry off the damsel or die in the attempt. Unfortunately, he dies in the attempt.

"So true, so brave, he ne'er will stop

Till he grasp her hand at the turret top.

Alas! a branch breaks—with a hideous shock,

Her lover is dashed on the hungry rock."

Tragedy as usual! If all had gone well, the story in all likelihood would never have reached us. We may, perhaps, conclude that life is not quite so dark as history and literature might lead us to believe.

The author of "Un voyage en France" writes:—

"Les cultures enveloppent jusqu'au Rhone le petit massif sur lequel se dresse la haute Tour de Barbentane," and these "cultures"—corn, almond-trees, vines, olives—give an aspect of richness and prosperity to the great valley.

GATEWAY, BARBENTANE.
By E. M. Synge.

On the opposite side of it stands an ancient but still inhabited castle belonging to the Comte des Essars (or some similar name), situated upon a sudden height or cliff and approached by a steep and shady avenue which leads to a modern garden of evergreen shrubs, all very carefully grouped and tended. At the highest point appears the great square castle, with its round tower at each corner, and crenellated walls.

The caretaker admits the visitor to a large courtyard and thence to the suites of sombre old rooms with their dark ceilings, stately mantelpieces and rich, ancient furniture, all spell-bound as if waiting for the life that has gone away. The owners only come there for about a month in the time of the grape-harvest, but the evidence of their presence in little personal belongings, such as racks full of pipes, carved sticks, riding whips, photographs, and so forth, emphasises pathetically the silence of the house, which is speckless and in perfect order, ready at any moment for habitation.

The place is well worth a visit, not merely for its rather sad charm, but because it helps the imagination to reconstruct the life and aspect of the feudal castle; for such edifices as this are generally seen in ruins, emptied of all their splendours. Here rises before one's eye the scene of mediæval romance almost precisely as in the days of the troubadours and their fascinating ladies.

It seemed a pity that our friend the critic had left Avignon without having seen this place where the little touches of the modern (especially that prosaic garden of well-groomed evergreens) would have cheered his soul and proved to him that Provence could, after all, produce something that was not either tumble-down or peeling off.

Such is the contradictoriness of human nature, that we began to regard with regret the certainty that he would not be at the table d'hôte that night to record his disappointments. It was quite interesting to watch the process by which he would throw an atmosphere of spiritual deathliness—a sort of moral incandescent gaslight—over the fascinating things of this despised country.

We realised that, in spite of his powers of disenchantment, we had found a sort of satisfaction (like the satisfaction of a discord in music) in the bleakness of our friend's outlook upon life and things.

It made one, perhaps not very relevantly, think of Madame de Sévigné's phrase:—

"Toujours soutenue de l'ignorance capable de Madame de B——"

"Ignorance capable!" We positively missed it!

CHAPTER IV
PETRARCH AND LAURA

"Solea lontana in sonno consolarme

Con quella dolce angelica sua vista

Madonna; or mi spaventa e mi contrista;

Né di duol, né di téma posso aitarme:

Ché spesso nel suo volto veder parme

Vera pietà con grave dolor mista;

Ed udir cose, onde'l cor fede acquista,

Ché di gioja e di speme si disarme.

Non ti sovèn di quell' ultima sera,