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