Part 5

from an artist’s standpoint, miles of the larger canvases that cover the main walls. An old altar-piece in another of the shallow side-chapels is a fine piece of sixteenth-century decorative painting.

Enclosed in a cheap-looking painted cupboard that stands in the sacristy is the reliquary that holds a “veritable” portion of St. Martha’s skull. This reliquary is not ancient, but is a reproduction of an original that was presented to the Church by Louis XI. in 1478, and which, in the unhappy starvation times of the great Revolution, was sent to the Genoese merchants by the revolutionaries in exchange for wheat to the value of £4,000. It was a great loss to the Church in more ways than one, for in the head of the bust were placed the frontal bones of the patron Saint of Tarascon. This bust was of solid gold, and round it were beautiful little enamels which pictured the life of St. Martha; an exquisite statue of King Louis XI. represented him kneeling in adoration at the base of the bust. The reproduction is in gilt, and contains a portion of the base of the Saint’s skull tied with a piece of pink ribbon. The tomb in the crypt had of course to be opened to obtain these. Beautiful as the reproduction is, and veritable as is the relic it contains, it is doubtful if the pious Tarasconaises are reconciled to the loss of the most precious ornaments that the town possessed.

Down in the dark, damp crypt of the Church, lit only by the entrance, lies a tomb of real dignity and beauty. This crypt is a part of the older church of the twelfth century, and is without any particular grace or beauty, acting as a foil to the monument it enshrines.

This representation in marble of the entombment of St. Martha is of real merit. The recumbent figure of the Saint lies in a peaceful repose that is nobly expressed. A figure of Christ supports the head, and one of St. Fronto the feet. The anachronism of associating St. Fronto, who was a Bishop of Périgueux in the fourth century, with an event that presumably took place in the first, does not seem to have troubled the author of this tomb. But in a land of Romance one should close one’s eyes to such unromantic things as dates, and accept without question the stories woven by a clergy that seem to have been largely endowed by the same spirit that inspired the Troubadours of their sunny land.

LES BAUX

IV

LES BAUX

The little chain of rugged hills with fantastic contours, which breaks away from the great Alpine range and juts into the peaceful valley of the Rhone, is called “Les Alpilles,” or little Alps. On the south side of this small mountain chain, upon cliffs that stand almost isolated from the main group, lie the ruins of the ancient Provençal town of Les Baux.

The approach to this extraordinary place from over the mountain chain is full of interest and surprises, if one starts out from St. Remy, which lies well over to the north. The ascent by the winding road that curves and twists round the great hills is a fitting preparation for the scenery that lies to the south, for the distant hilltops are crowned with great rocks, carved and chiselled by nature into such shapes that the eye continually mistakes them for buildings erected by the hands of men.

The tall cypress-trees that in the plains spire up into the sky disappear as one ascends, and few shrubs or trees clothe the bald hillside. Wild thyme and lavender betray their presence by the fragrance of their perfume. Rabbits burrow amongst the undergrowth; hawks hover high overhead, and with keen, penetrating vision sweep the rugged landscape in search of prey. Few other signs of life disturb the quiet of the lonely hills.

From the crest of the chain, just before the descent into the great plains of La Crau, a weird scene breaks upon the eye. A valley of rocks, so fantastic, so unearthly, that one can easily credit the Provençal poet Mistral’s belief that it was here that Dante got the inspiration for his graphic description of the topography of the infernal regions. It is a valley of death, of ghosts of skeletons, rocks naked and gaunt, altogether baffling description.

As the limestone of which these rocks are composed is admirable for building purposes, quarrymen have been at work upon the scene, and the great square doorways, or openings, cut into the grotesque formless masses accentuate the unreality of this spot. One could imagine it inhabited by strange monsters of human shape bereft of man’s feelings and emotions. But the wild mysterious grandeur of the valley constitutes only half the astoundingness of the place. For on a great precipitous rock, at the end of it, stands the town of Les Baux, half-built, half-excavated, more than half-ruined, a strange confusion of man’s and nature’s architecture. Above the town, which is carved and built upon a plateau half-way up this mountain rock, a castle rears its ruined towers.

This gaunt fortress looks right over the great, flat plain of La Crau to the distant blue waters of the Mediterranean, over to the lands about fifty miles distant upon which one of the world’s most decisive battles was fought, when Marius with his legions laid 200,000 Ambrones dead upon the field.

The great plateau of La Crau has undergone much change since Roman times. In the fifteenth century a canal was dug across its arid surface, and lands that were once marshy swamps and barren stony ground are gradually yielding to the persuasive hand of the agriculturist, and producing rich harvests of grapes and olives, mulberries, and almonds.

In the Middle Ages this stronghold of Les Baux was the capital of one of the most powerful lordships in the whole county of Provence, and the independent sovereignty of its rulers was unquestioned by neighbouring and distant nobles alike. It was an important and celebrated town, its name familiar wherever the minstrel sang his song or the troubadour his lay. Its population mustered more than four thousand strong; but that was long ago, in the days when a highway connected it with Orgon and Arles. Year by year, ever since this was abandoned, the town’s prosperity has declined; its churches, convents, and castle have lost heart, for their inhabitants have fled. The wind howls through its abandoned ramparts, and the sun’s rays penetrate into once gloomy dungeons. Yesterday four hundred souls possessed the town; to-day there are scarce a hundred who find shelter among its ruins; to-morrow Nature will again take possession, and man’s architectural efforts will have crumbled away.

Throughout all the many changes that Provence has experienced in its rulers, the ancient family of Des Baux clung tenaciously to their rock fortress, and their name was held in high esteem. Their coat of arms, a star with sixteen rays, can still be seen along with several others within the ruined Chapel of St. Claude. It occurs also in other parts of Provence, and typifies the proud claim of the Des Baux to a direct descent from one of the Kings who, guided by a star, came from the East to lay rich gifts before the Infant Christ lying in the manger at Bethlehem. The descendants of the Oriental King, proud of their origin, added to their titles of Princes of Baux those of Princes of Orange, Viscounts of Marseilles, Counts of Provence, Kings of Arles and Vienne, Seneschals of Piedmont, Podestas of Milan, Counts of Milan, along with many others.

To follow the fortunes of the Des Baux family, the feudal chiefs of the surrounding country, is to dip deep into the history of Provence, for their names are constantly cropping up over divisions of land and inheritance by marriage with neighbouring and distant families. Suffice it to say that from the time of Count Leibulfe, who founded the house and lived probably in the eighth century, to that of Honoré Camille de Grimaldi, from whom the marquisate of Baux was taken by force during the Revolution, its princes have been related to nearly every great family in Europe. The Château, which has resisted many a siege, is of almost monolithic construction; its ramparts, towers, staircases, banqueting halls carved out of the rocks. The builders have made use of the natural foundations, and the result of the natural and artificial construction is one of the most fantastic castles that ever existed.

When René succeeded to the Barony of Baux the town was in a thriving condition, and in 1444 he set about putting the castle, much battered by successive sieges, into repair, restoring the ramparts and towers; and, internally furnishing it with all the resources the period could command, made it over to his second wife Jean de Laval for her lifetime. Old King René, artist, poet, and musician, found in Baux an ideal spot after his own heart. For nearly three centuries Baux had been a favourite rallying-place for the Troubadours and the ancient “Court of Love.”

The records of the numerous wars and forays in which the Lords of Baux and their retainers were engaged have not, however, aroused the curious interest of later times so much as have the town’s romantic associations with the literature of the dark ages, written in the dialect of the Langue d’Oc, better known as Provençal.

This language, which still lingers in the South of France, arose gradually out of the corrupted Roman dialects of the first centuries, throughout the colonies occupied by the conquering Empire of the West. The particular variety of dialect known as Provençal gained a wider celebrity than that spoken in Iberia, or in the districts north of the Loire. It was developed from the old Romance language, and about the eleventh or twelfth century was extensively in vogue among the cultured classes throughout Europe.

A crop of poets sprang up in amazing profusion in the valley of the Rhone, and all who had pretensions to learning and refinement wrote in the language of Romance until well on into the fifteenth century, when a decay set in and other languages developed into more permanent and literary forms. The Provençal language, with its smooth and pleasant sounds, seemed eminently adapted to the feelings and voluptuous thoughts of a people who delighted in song, music, and the dance.

The Troubadours, or finders (inventors), sprang from all classes of the people, and the admiration which was accorded their productions, combined with the flattery and praise bestowed upon the authors, tended to awaken latent vanity and draw thousands into the field of poetry. Princes and Knights, the aristocracy of the country, entered into this domain; and lays, thousands of verses long, recounted the adventures of the Brave Knights who fought for the Cross, and incidentally for themselves, against Saracens and Turks. The lack of any other literature, unless among a few obscure monastic students, gave a great impetus to these lays, written by the Troubadours and sung sometimes by themselves, but more often by the strolling minstrel who learnt by heart the long-winded romances.

Of a lower order were the Jongleurs, who entertained the Lords and Ladies in their great halls in winter, and in the courts and gardens in the summer months. They were tumblers and acrobats, who practised every kind of antic and contortion to amuse audiences who knew neither theatre nor music-hall.

An old romance relates how one of these Jongleurs, fallen upon evil days, sought refuge in a monastery, where he assumed the cowl. Distressed at his inability to render the Holy Virgin sacred service, and worried lest this might be discovered by the inmates of the convent and lead to his dismissal, at last, in all humility, he betook himself into a vault at the hour when the monks were engaged in their devotions. Here, in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, divesting himself of hooded gown, he went through a series of

antics and contortions with such determination and fanatic zeal, that at last he fell in a fainting condition upon the hard cold floor. When he recovered, he rejoined the brethren in the refectory and partook of food, which he ate tremblingly and with sore misgivings. The poor tumbler continued his eccentric devotions at matins and vespers daily, always in fear that the Abbot should discover his strange worship and insist upon some more becoming form of service beyond his power to render. The Abbot and brothers, anxious to know the “why and wherefore” of the tumbler’s daily visit to the lonely crypt, concealed themselves to witness his devotions. The astonishment they felt on observing his extraordinary method of doing homage to the Queen of Heaven was further increased when they beheld the glorious Lady, crowned and clothed in shining raiment, accompanied by the angelic hosts, descend from the roof and minister with loving care to the unconscious acrobat. The unearthly visitors vanished when the exhausted tumbler revived, and he returned to his cell, equally unconscious of the heavenly ministrations and the espionage of his brethren. The story goes on to relate, in the sequel, how the Abbot honoured the tumbler ever after, admitted him as a perpetual brother to the monastery, recognised the efficacy of his worship, and pointed out to those whose sense of religious propriety was shocked when the story of the tumbler’s carryings on leaked out, that the true spirit of religious service was of more account than its method.

This romance throws a little ray of light on some aspects of life in the Middle Ages, but there are many more, less elevated in sentiment, which depict the curious conception of chivalry, religion, superstition, and love common at a period when society was emerging from the darkest age that Europe has experienced since the advent of civilisation.

The literature and traditions of the Troubadours is extensive, and the lives of nearly one hundred and fifty of them have been written. Nearly every king and great prince in the Middle Ages had a troubadour attached to his court. Richard Cœur de Lion, who had pretensions to poetry himself, patronised and encouraged some of the most famous of the fraternity, such as Arnaud, Daniel, Vidal, and Flouquet of Marseilles. The Princes of Baux were most enthusiastic patrons of the poetic brotherhood, the tourney, the joust, and that most curious pastime of the age, the “Court of Love.”

These parliaments of Love, which were the outcome of the cult of gallantry, flourished in Provence, and particularly in the romantic town of Les Baux. The walled “Court of Queen Jeanne,” as it is called, can still be seen in the valley, and a very beautiful little pavilion of Renaissance architecture adorns the spot. In this tribunal women were the only judges and reigned supreme. Troubadours came from all parts to extol the beauty of their mistresses, and put nice points relating to the etiquette of gallantry before the Court. Contesting parties argued out these impossible subtleties with grave seriousness, and the pedantic ingenuity of the Council and Court was exercised to determine imaginary cases, in which bright glances, stolen kisses, and furtive hand-squeezings constituted the most important evidence.

Another part of the diversion offered at these gatherings was the recital by the princely troubadours of their songs, to the accompaniment of the viol and guitar, played by themselves or by the jongleurs. It was at this court that Guillaume de Cabestan sang the praises of the Princess Bérengère, wife of Lord des Baux, and those of her sister-in-law, Tricline Carbonnelle. These songs are largely concerned with the adventures of princes and knights in the domains of Love and War, and descriptions and histories of violent passions, to which the warm-blooded peoples of the South were peculiarly subject. So obsessed were these early poets with the fascination of the greater passions that one can hardly wonder at some of the fantastic turns their songs and stories took. Most of them have failed to stand the test of time; their affectations and pedantic unreality failing utterly to reflect natural feelings and spontaneous emotions.

The strange relationship that grew up between the troubadours and the great ladies to whom they offered their platonic admiration and regard, is sufficient to brand many of the lays with the stamp of insincerity. Each troubadour was, by a sort of unwritten code, bound to choose some lady-love; it did not matter if she were married--indeed, she generally was--and to this divinity, were she fair, fat, or ugly, he offered lays and songs that praised her beauty in extravagant terms.

As the troubadour was generally dependent on the patronage of the great for his bread, it was common to select the wife of his patron for this high honour. Doubtless if the troubadour were of humble or lowly origin, the difference of his estate from that of the object of his poetic worship would prevent any undue familiarity being encouraged, although many of the earlier love-songs of the troubadours affect a deep and “love-at-a-distance” kind of worship of the fair divinity. There are many stories told by the troubadours themselves that unblushingly proclaim that the relationships existing between worshipper and worshipped were such as to disturb domestic peace; but when outraged husbands wreaked their just wrath upon these sighing swains, the sympathy of the narrator of the story is invariably on the side of the author of the trouble.

One of the best known of these tales is as follows: Guillaume de Cabestan, before mentioned, made love in troubadour fashion to the wife of Raymond de Seillans. Raymond, doubtless, saw more in the attachment than he thought consistent with his honour, and to revenge himself upon the guilty lovers, he slew the poet, tore out his heart and had it cooked and served up for dinner. After his unsuspecting spouse had eaten of the dish, and he had made known to her the loathsome nature of her repast, the lady lost her reason and threw herself from a window on to the rocks below.

The Castle of Baux is now a crumbling mass of ruins. Every year sees additions to the collection of fallen boulders that lie like tumbled giants on the sloping terrace below.

The only chapel still in use, the best-preserved building

in the dismantled town, is dedicated to St. Vincent, the patron saint of Les Baux. It has a central nave flanked by two side aisles of unequal proportions and different dates, and of these the more ancient, to the right of the entrance, has little side chapels, cut out of the rock which forms the south side of the edifice.

Towards the end of the last century, for unexplained reasons, excavations were made in the crypt of the church, and several of the heavy slabs of stone that covered tombs were raised. Bodies, clad in rich garments, in a perfect state of preservation, were discovered, which, however, crumbled away on being handled and exposed to the air. All that remained were the long tresses of golden hair that belonged to a young girl, supposed to have been one of the princesses of Baux, whose wonderful beauty had long ago incited the troubadours to eulogy.

The value of this find was quickly appreciated by the keeper of the languishing little hotel that stands in the “Place Fortin.” He obtained possession of the “Golden Tresses,” and, with an eye to business, altered the name of his hostelry to “A la Chevelure d’Or,” and exhibited the relic to his customers. After this curious relic was recovered by Mistral and lodged in the Museum which he founded in Arles, the sign of the hotel was changed to “The Hôtel Monaco,” a name obviously suggested by the connection of the town with the Grimaldi family, who were presented with the marquisate of Les Baux by Louis XIII. in 1642. But change and decay is the keynote of Les Baux; the name has again altered with the declining fortunes of the town, and, as if in mockery of the destitution and poverty that lie around it on all sides, the sign upon the weather-beaten walls of the neglected hotel reads “Hôtel de MONTE-CARLO.”

An old man upon whose hatband the word “Guide” is with difficulty discerned, one or two stray hungry-looking dogs, a few wild-looking fowls, the Hôtel Proprietaire, and innumerable flies constitute the crowd who forgather daily in the most popular resort of the town. The arrival of a traveller awakens but mild excitement in Les Baux. Two human hearts may beat a little quicker in the hopes of gain. The dogs sniff round the stranger with bewildered curiosity, and the flies buzz gleefully on discovering a new victim to torment. The guide (and a guide who knows the place is necessary to the stranger), bent with age, is quite in harmony with the surroundings. With a pathetic humour he leads his clients up the “Grande Rue,” and tells them, with a smile, that it is not like the “Cannebière” at Marseilles, for the only café in Les Baux is the Hôtel de Monte-Carlo.

At every step he points to some ruined doorway with fine carving of the seventeenth century; windows with beautifully moulded mullions and inscriptions; houses once inhabited by noble families whose fame still survives. At every turning, in front of every doorway, in the ancient chapel, in the roofless convent of the White Penitents, at the cemetery and the Château, the old man shakes his head and croons to himself in a voice ineffably sad, “Ah! Les Baux!” Nearly every house in the town is, in some part, hewn out of the rocks, and what carving and masonry they possess is generally on their fronts and gables. The

kitchens and cellars are excavated in the rocks. The ruins of the Chapel of St. Catharine show still the remains of the architecture of the thirteenth century, but the other four churches that once ministered to the religious population contain only vestiges of their former style.

Of the larger mansions of the town, the most important is that of the “Hôtel de Manvilles,” at the end of the Grande Rue, a fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century building, the chief features of which are the beautiful windows, framed in with delicate classic pilasters, supporting entablatures composed of simple and dignified mouldings. On one of the wings of the building the inscription “Post Tenebras Lux 1571,” on the frieze over a window of great beauty, recalls that Claud II., one of the counts of this house, espoused, at the instigation of his Protestant wife, the cause of the party at the Reformation.

The mansion of the Porcelets, near by the Church of St. Vincent, has been restored, and, after being an orphanage, is now the school for the handful of children who have had the misfortune to be born amidst these melancholy surroundings. Few of them will remain in their native town after they have grown up, and one would imagine that the memories they will carry away with them of their early days will seem like some fantastic dream. The Porcelet family were of the highest social rank in the fourteenth century, and they were also very numerous. These were the first nobles of the town of Arles and Marquises of Maillane, friends of King René, and the object of his satire.