CHAPTER XXIII

THE SORCERESS OF THE ALPILLES

Music in a dead city!

We stopped abruptly. Out of the deepening stillness there grew slowly, solemnly, the muffled, mournful trembling of an organ issuing from the closed doors of the church on the platform. The sound swelled, ebbed, fell into low troubled mutterings, then swelled again; never was any strain more plaintive, solitary shadowed: all in subdued undertone, but heart-breaking.

Surely a human soul despairing and unable to find expression!

In this wild scene it was unearthly in its intensity of mournfulness. Looking back we saw the figure of a nun crossing the space from the house of the Porcelets to enter the church, and as the doors opened, the sound poured out in fuller volume, but always in that strange, tense undertone.

The city seemed to be steeped in melancholy, as if a grey mist of grief had fallen upon it.

We commenced our homeward journey on foot, making a little circuit to visit the "Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne" in the gorge below, leaving our vehicle to follow.

La Reine Jeanne was the famous and beautiful Queen Joan of Naples, heiress of Provence, whose father on his death-bed counselled her to hand the country over to the Pope, then at Avignon. He in his turn bestowed it on the Count of Anjou, and thus Provence came to belong to that powerful family.

The Queen is said to have often visited Les Baux, and to have held Courts of Love and various revelries in the now weed-grown enclosure where the Pavilion sadly stands in the corner of what was once a garden; a fine, highly-bred little piece of architecture well fitted for its purpose.

On our way to rejoin our trap we were overtaken by two wayfarers: a young man and woman somewhat poorly clad and carrying bundles. They were looking about them intelligently as if interested in the scene.

The man's bundle was evidently a musical instrument, and as they came nearer we heard snatches of song, sometimes gay, sometimes sad. The man pointed to Les Baux as if astonished at its extraordinary aspect, and the woman stood looking up at it curiously. Sometimes they left the road to explore some of the clefts and rock passages, and among the bare walls of limestone and the narrow galleries, their songs—with which they had doubtless delighted Marseilles audiences—reverberated most fantastically. Evidently they were strolling minstrels tramping the country, and were now probably on their way to St. Remy, Tarascon, and Beaucaire, and on to Avignon and the cities of Languedoc; modern troubadours following the ancient calling in the ancient country.

But ah, if Raimbaut de Vacqueiras had seen his successors!

It was a touching little scene: the two footsore troubadours—jongleurs, perhaps, one ought to call them—passing wondering but unconscious below the city where once their forefathers of the craft were welcomed and honoured guests.

If the passes of the Alpilles were as desolate as a moon landscape in the full blaze of a ProvenÇal midday, what were they in the grey of evening? The human spirit is not fashioned to endure the aspect of these abysmal regions of nature.

Masses of rock rising out of unknown deeps of shadow take on the aspect of some lawless architecture, the handiwork of an alien race: fantastic earth-born peoples raising mad palaces half sublime, half grotesque:—

colonnades whose capitals are sculptured by the wind spirits: strange half-finished cathedrals with pinnacles and fretwork, flocks of gargoyles wrought by goblin sculptors.

There was one sublime insane cathedral looming crazily through the dusk, with an encumberment of caricatures of saints and angels, grinning faces, half defined, half suggested—it seemed like some great Temple of Evil.

From the Gorge of Hell, high up among the recesses of the hills, opens the Witch's Grotto amidst "tortured shapes which rise up, sink down, stretch into great entablatures and gardens in the air."

This is the dreaded domain of TavÈn, the famous sorceress of the Alpilles. She plays an important part in Mistral's epic poem Mireille (or MirÈio, in the original ProvenÇal).

To this maiden and her lover Vincent, who visited her cavern which stretches for long distances underground, TavÈn gives extraordinary experiences. They have come to her for aid in their love affair which Mireille's father, a wealthy farmer on the outskirts of the Crau, violently opposes. Vincent has been treacherously wounded by his rival, an owner of cattle on the Camargue; a brutal but wealthy suitor favoured by the father.

The sorceress is found at the bottom of the grotto amid a "cloud of dreams," with a sprig of broom-grass in her hand, which is called the devil's wheat. Above her head is a raven perched on a beam, and beside him a milk-white hen; also (for magical reasons) a sieve tied to the wall.

She leaps down a deep crevice, and her clients follow her. She directs them to gird round their brows the leaves of the mandrake, the gruesome plant of human contours that shrieks aloud when its roots are torn out of the ground.

TavÈn tells them that it is the blest plant of her master-in-magic Nostradamus. The astrologer and magician lived at St. Remy, and so was within easy reach of his famous pupil.

Then the witch urges further descent into the depths, crying,

a saying suggesting an idea of philosophic significance.

Indeed, the whole fantastic story seems to have more meaning in it than is ostensibly claimed, and contains many hints of the deeper reaches of experience.

As TavÈn and her charges penetrate further into these wilds, a blast of wind and a "pack of elves shriek through the crypt," which is full of wailing.

TavÈn warns her scared visitors to keep on their "charmed crowns," and to be undismayed by the huge apparition that they see in the dusk: la LavandiÈre, "whose throne is on Ventoux," where she makes rain and lightning.

The whole dark factory of Evil is shown to the adventurers. They are told how, on the last three days of February and the first three of March, the tombs all open and the tapers kindle, and

A phantom priest performs mass and the church bells ring themselves of their own accord.

But one can hear the bells of Les Baux ringing thus on wild March days and nights!

In the Grotto, TavÈn looses the "swarms of ill," and they rush forth and hold a sort of Carnival, with wizards from Varigoule, in the Luberon range, and ghouls from Fanfarigoule on the Crau.

And in the midst of this appalling Desert of Stones, where the wild thyme makes here and there a fragrant carpet, this mad company dances the farandole.

It was with a pleasant human sense of comfort and cheer that we found ourselves once more driving through the streets of St. Remy. Quieter now than ever these little streets in the dusk, so that we could almost hear the falling of the great yellow leaves of the plane-trees, softly, occasionally, in the avenues. Quite from the other end of the tiny town we could catch the rumble of the homing omnibus, bringing its last freight of passengers from the station, or more likely returning empty, to earn its rest in the outhouse behind the hotel—happy, simple omnibus, without a care in the world!

We were thankful to wash off the dust of the day, and with it half our fatigue, and to hasten down to the salle À manger, pleasantly tired with the long hours in the open air, the long stream of strong impressions. And how hungry we were! Impressions seem to need a large amount of sustenance.

I think the waiter must be accustomed to famished visitors returning from Les Baux, for he simply flew as we appeared, dashed the menu down on the table, murmuring, "Tout de suite, Mesdames," and was scurrying back the next minute with two small tureens of smoking soup. Never did soup taste so good or so comforting!

Life indeed has its contrasts! We thought of Les Baux among the abysses of the Alpilles under the shroud of night, with a light or two from the Chevelure d'Or and the few neighbouring houses twinkling mysteriously on the height, and perhaps that strange music stealing into the darkness of the valley—while out on the Crau—

"Si Mesdames dÉsirent du vin blanc ou du vin rouge?"

Thus sharply roused, we make a random choice, (Barbara accused me of having replied "du Crau, s'il vous plait,") and the waiter placed on the table a bottle of good ProvenÇal wine which tasted like distilled sunshine, which indeed it was, just tempered with a breeze from Mont Ventoux.

After the meal we were conducted once more to the parlour, where the same little party was collected, all interested to hear what we thought of Les Baux.

We expressed ourselves with warmth.

"Oui c'est belle," observed Madame, giving a hitch to her work to bring it more under her fingers, "VoilÀ une petite excursion ex-cess-ive-ment in-ter-ess-ante."

A desire to laugh became insistent, not at Madame, but at the whole situation. But that was out of the question. Had I been allowed to cry it would have done almost as well, but that would have created still more consternation, so I played up to Madame and said—

"En effet, c'est une excursion la plus charmante que nous avons fait en Provence," and happily no one seemed to see how ridiculous the observation was.

We returned to the subject of St. Remy, of which Madame knew a good deal—learnt, as she told us, from some esteemed and instructive American clients.

Of Nostradamus and the troubadours and the Counts of Provence her information was not exhaustive; though she had some anecdotes and a personal feeling about the Good King RenÉ who has made himself loved and remembered by his countrymen for four centuries by his goodness and the quality that we well call charm—recognising in it an element of natural sorcery.

St. Remy must have been a bright little city in the days of the Counts; the scene of many gay and knightly doings.

And there were doings neither gay nor knightly in one grim old house covered with demoniac gargoyles where Nostradamus worked through the clear ProvenÇal nights.

Doubtless it was in this narrow ancient street in that gloomy, haunted house that TavÈn the witch came to learn the mysteries of the art of magic. Perhaps it was here that the philosopher on his side learnt many things from his pupil, as wise teachers are apt to do.

One can but wonder how far the legend was founded on fact and what actual part the Enchantress of the Alpilles played in the life of the great astrologer.

Barbara, who had a good healthy appetite for romance, hoped it was a love affair—which was startling indeed!

Nostradamus in love seemed a most profane idea, and it took one some time to recover from the suggestion. And it was almost as much a comedown for TavÈn. It removed so much of her ghoulishness.

We consulted our hostess. Madame knitted her brows. She had heard about "ce Monsieur lÀ," from the instructive Americans who came to St. Remy for a visit of three days and stayed three years—an extravagant American sort of thing to do!

"Mais jamais avait on remarquÉ que Monsieur Nostradamus Était amoureux de la sorciÈre des Alpilles; jamais, jamais!"

It sounded much more feasible in French and I began almost to tolerate the preposterous theory.

"NÉanmoins cela se peut," added Madame, who knew something of life and that even magicians were human.

We were shown various relics and gifts of the American clients and listened to many anecdotes, all testifying to a most happy and unusual relationship, savouring of olden days, between the hosts and guests of an inn. But as a matter of fact, the American, the most modern of all men, is curiously apt to bring about something of old-time relationships, something of the cordiality and freedom, the simple humanness that very old civilisations may tend to weaken.

From talking of her clients, our hostess came to talking of their friends among the FÉlibres and of Mistral's Mireille, the modern epic of Provence. It breathes the very spirit of the country.

It is the Homeric character of the life that has inspired the poet; he saw in it a grandeur that we have been taught to imagine belongs only to the times of the ancients; probably because those times have been shown to us through the eyes of genius. But the Provence of to-day has also its seer who reveals its qualities of grandeur: the poet of Maillane.

After our visit to Les Baux we lost no time in reading the translation of the cantos in Mireille telling of the descent into the Witch's Grotto. Vincent and Mireille are there introduced to the Thirteenth Cavern, where they find domesticated on the hearth seven black cats and two dragons quietly emitting jets of blue flame without the slightest signs of arrogance, but simply as part of the day's work. TavÈn makes a brew in her cauldron and heals the wound which Vincent's rival had inflicted. Then they return to their homes, solaced for the time. But tragedy awaits them. The father's opposition is brought to a head when Vincent formally proposes for Mireille, and her parents are so angry and so resolved to marry her to the wealthy cattle-owner of the Camargue, that one dark night she runs away from her home, directing her steps to the church of the Saintes Maries, to seek aid by her prayers. We find her in the last canto a desolate, fragile figure crossing the Crau. She arrives at last in the island of the Camargue, and reaches, dying, the white church where the three holy women float down through the roof in answer to her prayers.

"We are Baux' guardian saints," they cry, bidding her take comfort.

And they go on to tell her that she would not fear death if she knew how small her little world appears from their high dwellings: "how ripening hopes are washed away with tears," while hatred and cruelty breed sorrow where love should shed peace over all the world.

However, before they understood all these things, they had, like Mireille, to drain bitter cups to the dregs. They tell her of their hopeless wanderings; how they were delivered over to the mercy of the waves and landed in Provence where their task was to convert the people to Christianity; how St. Martha was impelled to go to Tarascon to lure the Tarasque from its wicked ways; and how she afterwards went to Avignon, "striking the rock with her virginal discourse," and willing the waves of faith to pour from it, whence long afterwards "Good Gregory drank, and Holy Clement filled his cup with life."

Just at the last, when Mireille is dying under the care of the Saints, her distracted father and Vincent, broken-hearted, arrive, but only just in time to see her pass peacefully away into the silence.

From the windows of our rooms one can see above the trees the fantastic summits of the Alpilles. They are clear against a "jewel-enamelled sky."

The roses are exhaling their fragrance in the dark garden just below; now and then the omnibus horses peacefully move in their stalls, perhaps going over again in their dreams the happy homeward journey after the last train.

It is not yet late, but St. Remy has gone to its rest; only the stars are awake and watching.

The sweet night air comes in quietly at the window which has been unbolted and thrown open—not without giant efforts, for French precautions against the dangerous element are thorough and hard to circumvent.

The whole scene—black trees, mountains, stars—shows through a mist of oncoming sleep and has the appearance of some unearthly vision. The whole riddle of the universe seems to be out there in the darkness; the answer is there too, just behind the veil; only just behind——

One—two—three—four——eleven o'clock! The big church in the Market Place strikes the hour with that particularly solemn note of a clock striking in a sleeping town.

"Hour for rest, hour for rest," it seems to admonish the wakeful few.

Over all things Night and Peace spread wide their wings——