Near the cathedral in the Rue de Pet.i.t Gras is the birthplace of the precocious Blaise Pascal, who next to Urban II.--if not even before him--is perhaps Clermont"s most famous personage. A bust of the celebrated writer is let into the wall which faces the Pa.s.sage Vernines, and yet another adorns the entrance to the bibliotheque; and again another--a full-length figure this time--is set about with growing plants, in the Square Blaise Pascal. Altogether one will judge that Pascal is indeed the most notable figure in the secular history of the city. This most original intellect of his time died in 1662, at the early age of thirty-nine.
XV
ST. FULCRAN DE LODeVE
Lodeve, seated tightly among the mountains, near the confluence of the rivers Solondre and Lergue, not far from the Cevennes and the borders of the Gevaudan, was a bishopric, suffragan of Narbonne, as early as the beginning of the fourth century.
It had been the capital of the Gallic tribe of the Volsques, then a pagan Roman city, and finally was converted to Christianity in the year 323 by the apostle St. Flour, who founded the bishopric, which, with so many others, was suppressed at the Revolution.
The city suffered greatly from the wars of the Goths, the Albigenses, and later the civil wars of the Protestants and Catholics. The bishops of Lodeve were lords by virtue of the fact that the t.i.tle was bought from the viscounts whose honour it had previously held. _St. Guillem Ley Desert_ (O. F.), a famous abbey of the Benedictines, founded by an ancestor of the Prince of Orange, is near by.
The ancient cathedral of St. Fulcran is situated in the _haute-ville_ and dates, as to its foundation walls, from the middle of the tenth century. The reconstructed present-day edifice is mainly of the thirteenth century, and as an extensive work of its time is ent.i.tled to rank with many of the cathedral churches which survived the Revolution.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the last remaining work and alterations were completed, and one sees therefore a fairly consistent mediaeval church. The west facade is surmounted by _tourelles_ which are capped with a defending _machicoulis_, presumably for defence from attack from the west, as this battlement could hardly have been intended for mere ornament, decorative though it really is. The interior height rises to something approximating eighty feet, and is imposing to a far greater degree than many more magnificent and wealthy churches.
The choir is truly elegant in its proportions and decorations, its chief ornament being that of the high-altar, and the white marble lions which flank the stalls. From the choir one enters the ruined cloister of the fifteenth century; which, if not remarkable in any way, is at least distinctive and a sufficiently uncommon appendage of a cathedral church to be remarked.
A marble tomb of a former bishop,--Plantavit de la Pause,--a distinguished prelate and bibliophile, is also in the choir. This monument is a most worthy artistic effort, and shows two lions lying at the foot of a full-length figure of the churchman. It dates from 1651, and, though of Renaissance workmanship, its design and sculpture--like most monumental work of its era--are far ahead of the quality of craftsmanship displayed by the builders and architects of the same period.
The one-time episcopal residence is now occupied by the _hotel de ville_, the _tribunal_, and the _caserne de gendarmerie_. As a shelter for civic dignity this is perhaps not a descent from its former glory, but as a _caserne_ it is a shameful debas.e.m.e.nt; not, however, as mean as the level to which the papal palace at Avignon has fallen.
The guide-book information--which, be it said, is not disputed or reviled here--states that the city"s manufactories supply _surtout des draps_ for the army; but the church-lover will get little sustenance for his refined appet.i.te from this kernel of matter-of-fact information.
Lodeve is, however, a charming provincial town, with two ancient bridges crossing its rivers, a ruined chateau, _Montbrun_, and a fine promenade which overlooks the river valleys round about.
_PART III
The Rhone Valley_
I
INTRODUCTORY
The knowledge of the geographer Ptolemy, who wrote in the second century with regard to the Rhone, was not so greatly at fault as with respect to other topographical features, such as coasts and boundaries.
Perhaps the fact that Gaul had for so long been under Roman dominion had somewhat to do with this.
He gives, therefore, a tolerably correct account as to this mighty river, placing its sources in the Alps, and tracing its flow through the lake _Lemannus_ (Leman) to _Lugdunum_ (Lyon); whence, turning sharply to the southward, it enters the Mediterranean south of Arles. Likewise, he correctly adds that the upper river is joined with the combined flow of the Doubs and Saone, but commits the error of describing their source to be also in the Alps.
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who knew these parts well,--his home was near Autun,--has described the confluence of the Saone and Rhone thus:
"The width and depth of the two rivers are equal, but the swift-flowing Rhone discharges twice the volume of water of the slow-running Saone.
They also differ remarkably in colour. The Saone is emerald-green and the Rhone blue-green. Here the minor river loses its name and character, and, by an unusual process, the slowest and most navigable stream in Europe joins the swiftest and least navigable. The _Flumen Araris_ ceases and becomes the _Rhoda.n.u.s_."
The volume of water which yearly courses down the Rhone is perhaps greater than would first appear, when, at certain seasons of the year, one sees a somewhat thin film of water gliding over a wide expanse of yellow sand and shingle.
Throughout, however, it is of generous width and at times rises in a true torrential manner: this when the spring freshets and melting Alpine snows are directed thither toward their natural outlet to the sea.
"Rivers," said Blaise Pascal, "are the roads that move." Along the great river valleys of the Rhone, the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhine were made the first Roman roads, the prototypes of the present-day means of communication.
The development of civilization and the arts along these great pathways was rapid and extensive. Two of them, at least, gave birth to architectural styles quite differing from other neighbouring types: the _Romain-Germanique_--bordering along the Rhine and extending to Alsace and the Vosges; and the _Romain-Bourguignon_, which followed the valley of the Rhone from Bourgogne to the Mediterranean and the Italian frontier, including all Provence.
The true source of the Rhone is in the Pennine Alps, where, in consort with three other streams, the Aar, the Reuss, and the Ticino, it rises in a cloven valley close to the lake of Brienz, amid that huge jumble of mountain-tops, which differs so greatly from the popular conception of a mountain range.
Dauphine and Savoie are to-day comparatively unknown by parlour-car travellers. Dauphine, with its great historical a.s.sociations, the wealth and beauty of its architecture, the magnificence of its scenery, has always had great attractions for the historian, the archaeologist, and the scholar; to the tourist, however, even to the French tourist, it remained for many years a _terra incognita_. Yet no country could present the traveller with a more wonderful succession of ever-changing scenery, such a rich variety of landscape, ranging from verdant plain to mountain glacier, from the gay and picturesque to the sublime and terrible. Planted in the very heart of the French Alps, rising terrace above terrace from the lowlands of the Rhone to the most stupendous heights, Dauphine may with reason claim to be the worthy rival of Switzerland.
The romantic a.s.sociations of "La Grande Chartreuse"; of the charming valley towns of Sion and Aoste, famed alike in the history of Church and State; and of the more splendidly appointed cities of Gren.o.ble and Chambery, will make a new leaf in the books of most peoples"
experiences.
The rivers Durance, Isere, and Drome drain the region into the more ample basin of the Rhone, and the first of the three--for sheer beauty and romantic picturesqueness--will perhaps rank first in all the world.
The chief a.s.sociations of the Rhone valley with the Church are centred around Lyon, Vienne, Avignon, and Arles. The a.s.sociations of history--a splendid and a varied past--stand foremost at Orange, Nimes, Aix, and Ma.r.s.eilles. It is not possible to deal here with the many _pays et pagi_ of the basin of the Rhone.
Of all, Provence--that golden land--stands foremost and compels attention. One might praise it _ad infinitum_ in all its splendid attributes and its glorious past, but one could not then do it justice; better far that one should sum it up in two words--"Mistral"s world."
The popes and the troubadours combined to cast a glamour over the "fair land of Provence" which is irresistible. Here were architectural monuments, arches, bridges, aqueducts, and arenas as great and as splendid as the world has ever known. Aix-en-Provence, in King Rene"s time, was the gayest capital of Europe, and the influence of its arts and literature spread to all parts.
To the south came first the Visigoths, then the conflicting and repelling Ostrogoths; between them soon to supplant the Gallo-Roman cultivation which had here grown so vigorously.
It was as late as the sixth century when the Ostrogoths held the brilliant sunlit city of Arles; when follows a history--applicable as well to most of all southern France--of many dreary centuries of discordant races, of varying religious faiths, and adherence now to one lord and master, and then to another.
Monuments of various eras remain; so numerously that one can rebuild for themselves much that has disappeared for ever: palaces as at Avignon, castles as at Tarascon and Beaucaire, and walled cities as at Aigues-Morte. What limitless suggestion is in the thought of the a.s.sembled throngs who peopled the tiers of the arenas and theatres of Arles and Nimes in days gone by. The sensation is mostly to be derived, however, from thought and conjecture. The painful and nullifying "_spectacles_" and "_courses des taureaux_," which periodically hold forth to-day in these n.o.ble arenas, are mere travesties on their splendid functions of the past. Much more satisfying--and withal more artistic--are the theatrical representations in that magnificent outdoor theatre at Orange; where so recently as the autumn of 1903 was given a grand representation of dramatic art, with Madame Bernhardt, Coquelin, and others of the galaxy which grace the French stage to-day, taking part therein.
Provencal literature is a vast and varied subject, and the women of Arles--the true Arlesians of the poet and romancer--are astonishingly beautiful. Each of these subjects--to do them justice--would require much ink and paper. Daudet, in "_Tartarin_," has these opening words, as if no others were necessary in order to lead the way into a new world: "IT WAS SEPTEMBER AND IT WAS PROVENCE." Frederic Mistral, in "Mireio,"
has written the great modern epic of Provence, which depicts the life as well as the literature of the ancient troubadours. The "Fountain of Vaucluse" will carry one back still further in the ancient Provencal atmosphere; to the days of Petrarch and Laura, and the "little fish of Sorgues."
What the Romance language really was, authorities--if they be authorities--differ. Hence it were perhaps well that no attempt should be made here to define what others have failed to place, beyond this observation, which is gathered from a source now lost to recollection, but dating from a century ago at least:
"The southern or Romance language, the tongue of all the people who obeyed Charlemagne in the south of Europe, proceeded from the parent-vitiated Latin.
"The Provencaux a.s.sert, and the Spaniards deny, that the Spanish tongue is derived from the original Romance, though neither the Italians nor the French are willing to owe much to it as a parent, in spite of the fact that Petrarch eulogized it, and the troubadours as well.
"The Toulousans roundly a.s.sert that the Provencal is the root of all other dialects whatever (_vide Cazeneuve_). Most Spanish writers on the other hand insist that the Provencal is derived from the Spanish (_vide Coleccion de Poesias Castellanas; Madrid, 1779_)."
At all events the idiom, from whatever it may have sprung, took root, propagated and flourished in the land of the Provencal troubadours.
Whatever may have been the real extent of the influences which went out from Provence, it is certain that the marriage of Robert with Constance--daughter of the first Count of Provence, about the year 1000--was the period of a great change in manners and customs throughout the kingdom. Some even have a.s.serted that this princess brought in her train the troubadours who spread the taste for poetry and its accompaniments throughout the north of France.
The "Provence rose," so celebrated in legend and literature, can hardly be dismissed without a word; though, in truth, the casual traveller will hardly know of its existence, unless he may have a sweet recollection of some rural maid, who, with sleeves carefully rolled up, stood before her favourite rose-tree, tenderly examining it, and driving away a buzzing fly or a droning wasp.