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.

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.

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.

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]