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