Romantic Cities of Provence. Mona Caird
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.