A Spring Walk in Provence

CHAPTER VIII

Salon and the Crau

Ever since I first saw Les Baux, on a motoring trip from the north to the south of France, I had wanted to get back to it. I saw Aix and Avignon and Nîmes and Arles at the same time, and I wanted to get back to them. But Les Baux was the bonne bouche. When I contemplated this spring walk it was what I was thinking of as the central point of interest of the whole expedition; and I was thinking of it all the time I was walking through the country during those first nine days.

For it sums up the whole past of Provence. It is connected with the Græco-Phœnician colonies that preceded the Roman occupation; with the Roman occupation itself, and especially with that stirring episode of the Marian defeat of the barbarian invaders; with the Christian Marian legends; almost more than any other place with the romantic era of the Troubadours; with every internal struggle of the many that disturbed the country during the Middle Ages; with the religious wars; and indeed with every movement of significance in Provence down to the time of the merging of the kingdom into that of France.

After that its importance dwindled, but did not expire until much later. When it did, its ruin was so complete that it acquired another sort of interest altogether. It arouses much the same feelings now as the one-time flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, for it is almost as dead as they, and its ruins tell as eloquently of the time when it was alive. Added to which, it is most romantically situated, in the very heart of the country that is most characteristic of Provence as it is today—the Provence that lives its rich, picturesque life with an eye kept always on its rich, picturesque past; the country of Mistral, and the scenes of that moving epic in which all the poetry and glamour of Provence is garnered up: "Mireille."

I shouldered my pack once more, but was in such a hurry now to get to Les Baux that I took the train early in the morning as far as Maussane. It was well that I did so, for the rain fell heavily when I reached Salon, where I had an hour to wait.

Nostradamus, who was born at Saint-Remy, lived at various times at Salon, and died there. Out of his thousand prophecies it is not surprising that a few hit the mark, and from them he gained an immense reputation. Exactly a hundred years after his death we find Pepys writing: "Amongst other discourse we talked much of Nostradamus, his prophecy of these times, and Sir George Cartaret did tell a story how at his death he did make the town (of Salon) swear that he should never be dug up or his tomb opened after he was buried; but that they did after sixty years do it, and upon his breast they found a plate of brasse saying what a wicked, unfaithful people the people of that place were, who after so many vows should disturb and open him such a day and year and hour, which, if true, is very strange." Probably it was not true, as to the time; but he would not have risked much if he had prophesied the fact. He did, however, prophesy that a new era would begin for France in the year 1792, which was a bold shot, as it was more than two hundred years after his death; and Napoleon is said to have seen predictions that concerned himself in his writings.

M. Mariéton tells of the fashion in which he seized his opportunity in the town of Salon.

Charles IX was making a solemn progress through Provence with his mother Catharine de' Medici and the little Prince Henry of Navarre. The town of Salon made elaborate preparations for their reception, and Nostradamus was asked where he would like to walk in the procession. He said that he proposed to have a little procession of his own. When the royal party appeared before the gates the queen mother looked anxiously about for the prophet, and when she saw him apart from the rest beckoned him to take up his position between herself and the king. He had been counting on something of this sort, for he had already been in Paris, and had gained a considerable ascendancy over Catharine. He was lodged in the castle during the royal visit, and invited to a solemn consultation on the subject of the stability of the royal line. Catharine wanted him to tell the fortune of Prince Henry. He was quite ready to do it, and ordered the child to be undressed, as a preliminary. The little prince thought he was going to be whipped, and filled the castle with his howls. When he had calmed down, Nostradamus boldly announced that he would come to be king.

If this story is true, it shows the prophet to have been a schemer rather above his kind. Catharine had three sons still alive, and could not have been expected to welcome the announcement. Nor would the young king have been particularly pleased with it. Indeed, it may be said to have been a prophecy not altogether free from risk to the man who was bold enough to make it. But he seems to have judged human nature aright. His reputation was vastly increased by the prediction, and Catharine summoned him to Paris for the second time, which was no doubt what he wanted.

The royal visit to Salon took place in the year 1564, and while the great humbug of the time was preparing for his own little private effect there must have been somewhere in the crowd that filled the streets strewn with rosemary and lavender and thyme a young man who deserved far better to be noticed. This was Adam de Craponne, who by that time had already begun his work of fertilizing the Great Crau.

Mr. Baring-Gould, in the book already mentioned, gives an interesting account of this "little Sahara in Europe," which occupies 30,000 acres.

"At a remote period, but, nevertheless in one geologically modern, the vast floods of the diluvial age that flowed from the Alps brought down incredible quantities of rolled stones, the detritus of the Alps.... This rubble, washed down from the Alps, forms the substratum of the immense plain that inclines at a very slight angle to the Mediterranean, and extends for a considerable distance below the sea.... There is a break in the chain on the south, between the limestone Alpines and the sandstone Trévaresse; and the brimming Durance, unable to discharge all her water, choked with rubble, into the Rhône, burst through the open door or natural waste-pipe, by Salon, and carried a portion of her pebbles into the sea directly, without asking her sister the Rhône to help her. Now the two great plains formed by the delta of the Rhône, and that of the Durance with the Rhône, are called the Great and the Little Crau. They were known to the ancients, and puzzled them not a little. Strabo says of the Great Crau: 'Between Marseilles and the mouth of the Rhône, at about a hundred stadia from the sea, is a plain, circular in form, and a hundred stadia in diameter, to which a singular event obtained for it the name of the Field of Pebbles. It is, in fact, covered with pebbles, as big as the fist, among which grows some grass in sufficient abundance to pasture heads of oxen.'"

The singular event referred to was the fight between Hercules and the Ligurians. Hercules had used up all his arrows, and had retired to a cave in the Alpilles to make his last stand, when Jupiter came to his assistance and rained down a shower of stones which killed all his enemies. When the hero, thus miraculously aided, emerged from his cave, he saw the great plain covered with stones as it is today. Or rather, as it was; for thanks to Craponne and those who came after him the desolate area is now much circumscribed.

This legend, which is still alive in Provence, takes us back to the very earliest times. For Hercules is the Phœnician Melkarth, and wherever his name survives it is in connection with Phœnician trading, before the Greek colonization.

Craponne's scheme was to bring "some of the waters of the Durance through the gap where some of its overspill had flowed in the diluvial period, by a canal, into the Great Crau, so that it might deposit its rich alluvium over this desert of stones. He spent his life and his entire fortune in carrying out his scheme, and it is due to this that year by year the barren desert shrinks, and cultivation advances."

There are few things more interesting to learn about than the bold works by which man gets the better of nature, or rather sets nature to work to correct, as it were, her own mistakes. About a hundred years later than this, Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer, started draining the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire fens, a work of even greater magnitude, which gave England some of its richest agricultural land. The draining of Holland was already a thing accomplished; the draining of the Rommy marshes in Kent and Sussex was partly effected before the Roman conquest of Britain. Of late years Australia has dammed up a great river, and turned a dry valley into a lake over two hundred feet deep, from which land will be irrigated as many miles away.

In all these great works, varied in means but the same in intention, the thing to be done is as simple as a child's diversion of water on the sloping sands of the seashore. What he does with his wooden spade, digging his channels and building up his banks, the engineers do with their laborious machinery, trenching canals, and piling up the huge masses of their dams. The waters, obeying the few simple laws of their fall, do all the rest.

The greatest of all these works, and one of the simplest in idea, was the damming of the Nile at Assouan. More than two thousand years before Christ the yearly rise and fall of the great river began to be recorded, but it was not until four thousand years later that the action was adapted to man's more effective use. The natural laws are there waiting, always to be trusted. There is no scale too great, as there is none too small, upon which they can be applied.

The result of this slow fertilization of the Provençal Crau is plain to be seen from the line that skirts it on the way to Arles. There are great plantations of olives, each tree clipped and pruned like a rare shrub in a conservatory, every branch and almost every twig at an even distance from the next, so as to get the maximum of air and sun to the buds and the fruit. And there are wonderful sheets of almond blossom, sometimes covering acres. As far as the eye can see on the level, the plain is of the richest. There are frequent villages and homesteads, and everywhere lines of cypresses, planted very close together and allowed to grow as tall as they please. These are to break the force of the bise, which blows so strongly as to scoop the crops out of the ground if they are left unprotected, and once actually carried away the suspension bridge between Beaucaire and Tarascon.

We pottered along the little single line, while the rain still came down, but the clouds began to look a little lighter. One of my fellow-travellers was a young conscript who was on furlough from his regiment in Tunis. He was a handsome, charming-mannered youth. He said that he liked soldiering, and there was little hardship in the life. He wore his uniform when he was going on a journey, because soldiers are taken at half fares on the railways. He told me with a grin that he was liable to be court-martialled for wearing patent-leather boots, but on this line he thought he might risk it. He was inclined to be facetious at the expense of the line, and told me a story about it that I first heard some twenty years or so ago in connection with one of our own railways. And he said that it was a good deal used by companies of cinema actors; that at any time you might find yourself in the society of desperate characters prepared to do desperate deeds, or slowing down between stations so that somebody might be photographed crawling along the footboard or the roof of the carriages. The railway company had obligingly arranged for a collision not long before, being glad enough to sell some of its antiquated stock for this purpose; and in fact, if it had not been for the money made out of the cinema operators, it would have closed down long before.

He told me something about the Crau, too. This fertile tract through which we were passing was very unlike the part that was still desert, which I should be able to see from the heights of Les Baux. It is dry and desolate, scorched by the sun in summer, but in winter affording pasturage for flocks and herds that are brought down from the Alps.

The flocks are led by wise old goats, who know every mile of their three weeks' journey; then come the she-goats, and after them the innumerable company of sheep. The dogs of the shepherds surround the flock, and the rear of the procession is brought up by asses, carrying the baggage, and the little lambs that are too young to follow their dams. Every night the great flock is shut in with hurdles, and the shepherds keep guard over them. There are said to be two or three hundred thousand sheep in the flocks that make these yearly migrations, which have been going on for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Pliny mentions them, and there is little doubt that the order followed in his day was much the same as it is now. For the primal industries of the world do not change much, and in this ancient land scarcely at all.

I asked my young soldier if he had ever seen the flights of flamingoes that are said to make lovely the desert of the Crau, but I do not think that he had, although he would not say that they were not to be seen. He expressed himself with admiration and affection about his beautiful country of Provence, and especially about this corner of it, in which he had been brought up. A station or two before we reached Maussane, he got out. There was an open carriage waiting for him, and an elderly, prosperous-looking gentleman in it whom I took to be his uncle, on no grounds except that I liked to think of him during his holiday coming out from Salon to visit relations who lived in some roomy, picturesque "mas," where there was welcome and good cheer for him in the hospitable old-fashioned way of the country.

CHAPTER IX

Les Baux

As I got out of the train the rain ceased, though there looked to be more to come, and I walked the three miles to Les Baux with the sun shining, and the birds singing among the drenched leaves of the trees.

I was faced by the craggy rampart of the Alpilles, which hang over the great plain, and were once sea cliffs washed by the Mediterranean. They are of white limestone, and rise in places to a height of close upon a thousand feet. Just at this point they thrust themselves forward in a series of fantastic crags, rising up sheer from the plain and crowned by great masses of gleaming rocks that look almost as if they had been placed there by some giant hand.

I knew that Les Baux was upon one of these crags, and thought that I remembered which it was. But there was nothing of it to be seen from the plain. The line of cliffs was quite bare; the road might have been leading over some deserted col to fairer regions beyond. No one could have guessed himself to be nearing the remains of a once flourishing city.

The road led up through a fertile valley in which there were fields and scattered houses and gardens, and some sort of a mill. The cliff rose abruptly to the right, and at a turn of the road—the green valley now lying some way below—there came into view the walls of a few houses. They were perched up high overhead, and seemed to be growing out of the cliff itself, as indeed they were; for half of this strange city is built out of the solid rock, and its ruins remain part of the cliff from which they were hewn.

The road has been remade, so that it now zigzags steeply to an entrance from the north. But the foot passenger can leave it and take a still steeper track to the ancient gateway that was once the chief entrance into this eagle's aerie. It is called the Porte d'Eyguières, and is still in a good state of preservation, with the grooves of its portcullis to be seen, and a stone bearing the arms of the Lords of Les Baux—the star with sixteen rays which marks their descent from Balthasar, one of the wise kings from the East, who brought gifts to the Infant Christ.

A steep and narrow lane leads up through the still inhabited quarter of the town, past the old but rebuilt Hôtel de Ville to the place where the new road comes in and the two inns are situated. So far there is nothing particularly to strike the visitor—nothing at all to compare for picturesqueness with the old hill towns of western Provence, from which I had come. Picturesqueness is not the note of Les Baux, and in the lower quarter of the town the air is rather that of a poor village which contains the bare remnants of some past importance.

But as one mounts up towards the summit of the crag this impression of something like squalor gives place to a very different one. The inhabited cottages are soon left behind. They have already been seen to be interspersed with the ruins of noble mansions, and to be themselves, for the most part, salvage from greater buildings. They line a narrow, winding street, paved with rock in which the ruts of old cartwheels are worn, just as they are in the streets of Pompeii. And now there is nothing but ruin on either side, except where part of a great house has been put into some sort of repair for the purposes of a museum. It is ruin complete and irreparable; but it is not like other ruins. There stands up a bare wall, with apertures for windows and doors; and it is seen to be, not the remains of a structure of built-up stones, but a shell of living rock, from which the inside has been scooped, like a cheese with nothing left but the rind.

Now one is on the summit of the crag. It is a wide, grassy platform, upon which rear themselves huge masses of rock cut into the forms of towers and battlements, like a giant's castle in some fantastic dream.

The castle itself stands back on the northern edge of the cliff. Nearer at hand are the remains of dwellings that are nothing but caves in great jutting masses of rock. But they are caves with a difference. They are carefully squared chambers, with chimney places still showing the marks of fire, with holes into the walls that were once cupboards, with ceilings cut into so as to provide hanging for lamps. They are open to the south, and the entrances blocked with débris; but there is no doubt that they were once merely the back parts of houses, which showed fronts as well built as some of those still standing in the streets below.

The grassy height is strewn with the stones of many buildings quite destroyed, but once it contained the ordered precincts of the great pile that nothing has been able completely to destroy. It stands grim and majestic, towering over the whole mass of tumbled walls and the few roofs and chimneys that are all that remain of the rich city. One can see stone stairs and galleries high up in the rock and can mount up to some of them. The dungeon, cut out of solid stone, shows a yawning hole in the ground. It lies open to the sky, but the ribs of its vaulting are still seen springing from the corners. Two sides of a rock hard by are scooped into cells. This was the great castle dovecot. There is a little ruined chapel, its roof delicately carved.

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From the summit of the castle there is a magnificent view of the great plain to the south. It includes the whole extent of the Crau; and now you can see which part of it has been fertilized, with the threads of canals running through it, and which part still remains in its stony desolation. The great lagoon, called the Etang de Berre, lies a glistening sheet almost on the horizon, and you can just descry the line of the sea beyond it. To the right you see Arles and the famous abbey of Montmajour, and the Rhône rolling its turgid waters through the plain of the Camarque, to where Stes. Maries rears its fortress church on the edge of the sea, and the holy men and women from Palestine miraculously landed. It is very far away, but there is hardly so much as a hillock between you and it.

From here too can be seen the strange, blanched desolation of the valleys that creep up into the solitudes of these stony hills. They are strewn with gigantic rocks that take on all sorts of fantastic tortured shapes. Part of it is called the Val d'Enfer, and it is said that Dante, who is known to have sojourned in Arles, took from it the scenery of his Inferno. In the spring it is lightened with the delicate flush of almond blossom, and Les Baux is beautiful with the silvers and blues and purples of its surrounding country, and its own wild aspect of strength and desolation. But its appeal is to the past, and without some knowledge of its history it must present itself as an almost undecipherable riddle.

We need not linger over the importance that this natural fortress had in the time of Marius, who had camps very near to Les Baux, and perhaps on the very spot; nor the story of the Christians who were driven to take refuge here by Alaric the Visigoth. The first of the long line of the counts of Les Baux who is known to history was Leibulf, who lived at the end of the eighth century. From that time, until the year 1426, when the death of the Princess Alix at last brought it to an end, it continually increased in wealth and importance, until it vied with the rest of the royal houses in Europe. Yes; this deserted, almost forgotten city, which now contains a bare hundred of inhabitants, was the seat of princes who intermarried with the reigning families of England, France, Poland, Savoy, Nassau, Brunswick and many more. It was the centre of a principality that included seventy-nine towns and bourgs, villages, or castles. Its rulers were Princes of Orange, besides, from which our own royal house is sprung; they derived titles from Milan, Naples, Piedmont, Marseilles and elsewhere; they were kings of Arles and Vienne; Princes of Achaia, Counts of Provence, Cephalonia, Spoleto, and other places; finally emperors of Constantinople, and that this was not an empty title is shown by the fact that an embassy was sent to a reigning princess of Les Baux to treat for her rights as empress. In the twelfth century the towns owned by the prince of Les Baux included Aix, Saint-Remy, Salon, Pertvis, and the Bourg-Neuf at Arles. The possessions of "La Baussenique" already made of it a second Provence. Indeed, Raymond des Baux, who died in 1150, claimed, through his marriage with the daughter of the Count of Provence, the whole of the country, and fought for it until his death.

There was continual fighting, with Les Baux as its centre, during the Middle Ages, and sometimes its lords were on the summit of fortune, sometimes forced to give up some of their lands. They fought with the Saracen corsairs, with the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon, with the counts of Anjou and Poitou, the king of Naples, and many more. They went crusading with the rest, and one of them is mentioned with honour in the pages of Froissart.

It was at the siege of La Reole in Gascony. The Earl of Derby lay before it for nine weeks, and the townspeople were so reduced by starvation that they wished the place to be given up. But Sir Agos des Baux, who commanded the troops, would not consent to this, and retired to the castle, with plenty of wine and other provisions. The castle had been erected by the Saracens, and was much stronger than the English had supposed. So they prepared to mine under it, and then the garrison grew alarmed. So "Sir Agous dyscendedde downe fro the hygh towre, and dyd put out his heed at a lytell wyndo, and make a token to speke with some of the host." Lord Derby, Sir Walter Manny and Lord Stafford came to parley with him, and he offered to give up the fortress if he and his troops might retain "our lyves and goodes saved." Lord Derby replied, "Sir Agos, Sir Agos, you will not get off so. We know your distress, and will receive only an unconditional surrender." Then Sir Agos said that he would trust to the honour of the English, and Lord Derby, commending his gallantry, granted honourable surrender to the garrison, with their armour.

"Then they dyd on their harnesse and toke their horses, whereof they hadde no mo but sixe; some bought horses of thenglysshmen, the whiche they payed for truely. Thus Sir Agous de Baus departed fro the Ryoll, and yelded up the castele to the Englysshemen, and Sir Agos and his company wente to Tholons."

One of the bloodiest struggles of all that had surrounded Les Baux took place when the Princess Alix succeeded to its sovereignty at the age of seven, and it was twenty-six long years before she was able, as a widow, to take up her residence in her much battered but still noble castle.

She was the ward of the Viscount of Turenne, the "Scourge of Provence," who married her at the age of thirteen to a young noble whom he thought he could use for his own purposes, which were of course to get possession of his ward's property. But Adon de Villers unexpectedly decided to fight him, and succeeded in gaining valuable support, from the neighbouring cities, and from the Pope himself, who was then seated at Avignon. Besides men at arms, the Pope launched a threat of excommunication against Turenne, who laughed at it, and said that for a thousand florins he could get more soldiers than the Pope for seven years of plenary absolution. He was not in the least particular where he got his fighters from. He allowed a robber-chief to seize and sack Les Baux itself and to murder and pillage in all the country round, and he roused the Mediterranean pirates to spread further devastation through the lands of his ward.

But, in the meantime, the Pope who had been deified died, and it happened that the King of France had a quarrel with his successor and sent troops against him under Marshal Boucicaut. When this little affair was settled Boucicaut turned his attention to Turenne, whose daughter he had married. As persuasion was useless, he besieged and took Les Baux and other towns, and Turenne was brought to his knees. He broke out again immediately afterwards, and there is no knowing how much longer the poor Princess Alix could have been kept out of her rights if he had not been accidentally drowned while he was crossing the Rhône.

Her castle was almost defenceless, but she married again and lived in it in peace for another twenty-four years. When she lay dying, it is said that a bright star descended from the heavens and entered her room, hanging over her until she breathed her last, when it faded away. It was thought to be that very Star of the East which had shone upon the founder of her long race, now extinguished with her.

Mr. T. A. Cook, in his admirable book on Provence, from which I have chiefly drawn for the above facts, gives an account of the inventory of Princess Alix's household effects, made for the crown after her death. It makes a welcome impression of peace and luxury, which no one can feel inclined to grudge this much-tried lady after the strife and bloodshed with which half of her life had been surrounded, and shows the grim castle of Les Baux in a light that is pleasant to contemplate.

"The entrance-courtyard of the château lay to the south. The chapel of Ste. Marie, with its vaulted roof, was in the rez-de chaussée, near several large reception-rooms, with kitchens, bakery, larders, and cellars beneath them. Above were fifteen more out of the thirty-five rooms. That in which Alix died was situated in a tower, beneath a granary. It was furnished with two candlesticks of silver, with plate of silver and of gold, with many lengths of tapestry, and with fine Eastern rugs. In the oaken chests were robes of silk and velvet, of cloth of gold, and 'vair'; furs, belts, eight rosaries set with pearls, prayer-books, and books of hours, bound in red cloth of gold, with clasps of silver-gilt. Within the 'Chambre de la Rose' were more books of prayer, bound in cloth of gold and pearls, and set in a case of stamped leather, bound with a silver band all gilt with fleurs de lys. The chapel and its vestry were filled with rich ecclesiastical garments and plate, chalices, pattens, candlesticks, and reading-desks, in gold and silver-gilt, enriched with gems, enamel, and embroidery, a number of illuminated liturgies, and a set of tapestries, showing the adoration of the Magi, with Balthasar, the traditional ancestor of the house. In other rooms were tables with huge legs enriched with carving, long seats that opened to form linen-chests, sideboards in solid worked wood, cupboards let straight into the stone, and lined with cedar. In the larders and cellars were tuns of wine, both white and red, great store of nuts and grain, piles of salt beef and pork, rows of fishing-nets, and stronger nets for hunting the stag and the wild boar; with herds of cattle, pigs, and sheep, in the pastures below, and nearly fifty chickens. In the halls and passages were trophies of arms, cuirasses, helmets, arbalètes, coulevrines, bombardelles, lances; and swords; 'the most of them rusty,' for their day was over; the furniture was partly sold by order of the king, partly bequeathed to the Bishop of Tortosa, and partly sent over to the Château of Tarascon."

The princedom of Les Baux now became merged in that of Provence, and a few years later the good King René succeeded to its honours. As Les Baux had been famous in the annals of the Troubadours, it is probable that he took considerable interest in the romantic place. He restored the ramparts and the towers of the castle, and made over the barony for life to his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, whose kneeling figure faces him in the Triptych at Aix. There is a charming little reminder of her still to be seen at Les Baux. In the valley beneath the fortress-rock is a square walled-in field which was once a garden. In a corner of it is a little stone pavilion with delicately carved Renaissance work, upon which time and weather have had very little effect. There was once one of these in each corner, but all signs of the others have disappeared, as well as the "knots" and parterres and treillages and the beds of sweet smelling herbs that lay between them. The one that is left is called the Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne, and if it did not, actually belong to her, which it probably did not, for she would have had her pleasaunce nearer to the castle, it must have given delight to some fair lady of her court, or to the wife of one of the Provençal nobles whose mansions lined the narrow streets of Les Baux. Fine as their remains show them to have been, they had no more ground attached to them than a house in a street of Mayfair, and it is agreeable to think that it was possible at this time for the ladies of Les Baux to enjoy a garden outside the fortifications, and not to be cooped up day after day within the protecting walls.

Soon after the principality of Les Baux became merged in that of Provence, Provence itself came to the throne of France. Louis XI was on the throne, and in the last year of his reign he ordered the destruction of the ramparts and the castle of Les Baux. It was not the first time that the castle had been destroyed, and it was not to be the last. Its immense strength seems to have given it a sort of vitality that suffered dismemberment without complete destruction, and even now it seems not to be quite dead, though it is long since it was at last rendered uninhabitable. Probably on this occasion it was only the offensive and defensive parts of the castle that were destroyed, for fifty years later, during a royal progress through Provence, Francis I visited it with a brilliant train, and was entertained there by his own High Constable, Anne de Montmorency, to whom he had given the barony of Les Baux. Another royal visit, in 1614, ended in sad disaster. The Duc de Guise was entertained one Sunday in May in the castle, and at every toast that was drunk there was a salvo of artillery. Being probably a little flushed with wine, the prince announced his intention of firing a cannon himself. The cannon exploded and shattered his leg, and a few days later he was buried at St. Trophime in Arles.

In the sixteenth century Les Baux, still in the thick of whatever strife was going forward, became the battleground of Catholics and Protestants. In 1543 Claude de Savoie, Count of Tende, who was Seneschal of Provence, took up his residence in the castle, and stayed there for a year trying to bring peace between the factions. In 1561 the Protestants got into Les Baux, and made havoc, quite in the old-fashioned way. In three months they were turned out, not at all gently. But two years later they were back again, not only free to practise their religion, but with the governor, Jehan de Manville, a convert to it. He converted part of his house into a chapel to the Huguenots. The house is in ruins, but there is enough left to show what a fine one it was, and among the remains is a pedimented Renaissance window of the chapel, with the famous Reformation motto carved over it in stone: "Post Tenebras Lux," and the date 1571.

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This family of Manvilles is the most important in the annals of Les Baux after that of its titulary princes. They held some sort of seignorial authority for about a hundred years, but in 1621 the fourth and last of them had to resign his rights for continuing to harbour the Protestants.

A few years later the prosperity of Les Baux departed. Louis XIII sent troops against its last seigneur, Antoine de Villeneuve, who was an adherent of the Duke of Orleans, and Richelieu ordered the final destruction of the castle.

This time the work was done thoroughly. But the stout old pile made a resistance of its own. It took a month to demolish it, and gunpowder had to be used to blow it up. And even now there is a great deal of it left.

After that Les Baux steadily declined until it became no more than a refuge for a handful of peasants, who squatted amongst the ruins, fed their sheep where the grass grew over the castle courts, and cultivated a few fields outside. But it kept one church out of its five or six, and has always had some sort of corporate life. It is a little more prosperous now, because of its visitors; but compared with its rich past the life is a mere trickle, and only the ruins remain to tell of what it once was.

CHAPTER X

Les Baux (continued)

Mr. Cook had written of the inn at Les Baux that lunch was "a perilous adventure, and any other form of hospitality impossible." This did not frighten me, because when one takes a pack on one's back one drops a good many prejudices. Read what the inns were like when Smollett travelled through France, or Casanova, or Arthur Young. Probably the inn at Les Baux, when Mr. Cook visited it, would have seemed to an eighteenth century traveller a most desirable place of entertainment. At any rate, the reproach is now removed altogether, for there is an excellent inn at Les Baux. It is called the Hôtel de la Reine Jeanne.

The other inn is called the "Hôtel de Monte Carlo," which recalls a curious episode in the history of Les Baux—the last in its long history.

It was after Richelieu had wrecked it, and was caused, says Mr. Cook, by the ambition of Spain to become possessed of Monte Carlo.

"The young Honoré de Grimaldi, seeking the protection of Louis XIII, who had no desire to see the Spaniards conveniently planted between Genoa and Nice, so near to his own territories, arranged by the Treaty of Péronne for the independence of Monaco, and the protection of a French garrison, in 1641, together with sufficient lands in France to compensate for the loss of any Italian revenues confiscated by Spain. Grimaldi got the Spaniards out of Monaco by a cleverly audacious ruse, and was rewarded by lands in France which were called his Duchy of Valentinois; and in 1643 Les Baux was created a marquisate in the possession of the Grimaldis, Princes of Monaco, and Dukes of Valentinois. The title that had been held by Diane de Poitiers, and by Cæsar Borgia, added perhaps the last touch of sinister romance that was needed to complete the history of Les Baux. A little country pleasure-house, beneath the ruins of the fort, was enough for the Grimaldis; and even that was knocked to pieces by the Revolution, which also cut down every forest on the mountain-slopes."[10]

This "Hôtel de Monte Carlo" used to be called "A la Chevelure d'Or."

Some years ago when the pavement of the church was undergoing repair there was found the body of a beautiful young girl, wrapped in a mantle of her own golden hair. It fell to dust when exposed, all but the long strands of hair which the innkeeper possessed himself of and displayed in his tavern. When he left Les Baux he took the "Cabelladuro d'Or" with him, but a tress of it is now in the Musée Arlaten at Arles. The rock beneath the church is honeycombed with graves of the knights and ladies of old time, and this fair girl is supposed to have been the Princess Strella of Florence, who came to Les Baux to marry the Reine Jeanne's seneschal, but died instead, and was buried beneath the stone on which she would have stood to be wedded. A sad little story, very real at the time, then forgotten for four hundred years, and now again real enough to touch the heart!

All that afternoon and evening I wandered about among the ruins of the deserted city. I call it deserted because the greater part of it is actually so, and the life of the part that is inhabited is so different from the life it once enshrined that it has little power to change the meaning of the old buildings in which it shelters.

The church is perhaps an exception, for so many churches as ancient as this have survived. But if you sit in its darkness and silence for a time the present drops away from you and you are back again in the days when it rang with the tread of mailed knights and rustled with the silks and satins of their ladies. It has been clumsily enough restored without, but inside it is much as it was centuries ago. The south aisle is the oldest, and it has three chapels, as well as an altar, scooped out of the living rock. Mr. Cook reminds us of Dumas' visit to it. "As he entered the little, cold, dark building (in the days before its restoration) he heard a sound of sorrow at the eastern end. Upon an open bier, before the high altar, lay the dead body of a little girl. Her two tiny sisters knelt on either side. Her mother sat crying in a corner, and continued sobbing after the good Alexandre had thrown her his whole purse. Her little brother tried to toll the bell for a service at which no priest was present. A dozen or so of beggars had looked in to see the sight. They comprised the whole population of Les Baux."

In front of the church is a terrace overlooking the valley in which is the garden with the pavilion. In one corner of it are the ruins of a chapel of the White Penitents. On the other side the rock rises sheer and steep, and in it is hollowed out a semi-circular cistern called the Deïmo. Into this the vassals of the Lords of Les Baux poured their tithes of wine and corn and olive oil.

One can picture this terrace on a sunny spring morning filled with the people who had just come out from hearing Mass in the church. They would linger awhile to gossip by the stone parapet, or round the steps of the cross in the middle of the little place, before they went off to their fine houses in the narrow streets. Les Baux was a favourite residence of the Provencal nobility in its more peaceful days. Hardly less interesting than the ruins of the castle and the older houses are those of the fifteenth and sixteenth century mansions, with their noble proportions and their rich decoration.

One of them, hard by the church, is still standing, and is used as a school. You can get permission to see its vaulted frescoed hall. It belonged to the noble family of the Porcelets, the origin of whose name is legendary.

A proud lady of the family drove away a beggar woman, rebuking her for bringing into the world more children than she could provide for. The beggar chanced to be a witch, as so frequently happened in such circumstances, and prophesied in return that the lady herself would bear as many children as there should be little pigs in the litter of a sow that was near them. The sow produced nine porcelets, and the lady as many children, who with their descendants were thenceforward called Porcelet.

If only one could catch just one glimpse of the place as it was in the days of high romance! It would be impossible to dip anywhere into the history of song and chivalry in the south during the Middle Ages without coming across mention of Les Baux. Some of its princes were noted Troubadours, knights and ladies thronged its Courts of Love, and the names of its queens ring musically through the poetry that was made there. Passe-Rose, Douce, Etiennette, Adélasie, Briande, Clairette, Barbe, Aybeline, Baussette—how sweet they sound! And there are stories to be told of all of them.

Characteristic of the times is that of the fair Azalais, wife of Count Barral des Baux. Her charms were sung by the famous Troubadour, Foulquet of Marseilles, but "neither by his prayers nor by his songs could he ever move her to show him favour by right of love." Whether or no he actually transferred his affections to his lady's young sister-in-law, Laura, or only pretended to do so, Azalais took umbrage, and "would have no more of his prayers or fine words." So, "he left off singing and laughing, for he had lost the lady whom he loved more than the whole world." But his homage continued, and we hear no more of Laura.

Barral des Baux grew tired of his countess and divorced her, but Foulquet, in spite of his friendship with her husband, maintained his allegiance to Azalais. At last he wearied of his fruitless sighing, and took the cowl. He rose to be Bishop of Toulouse, and his name lives, not as one of the greatest poets of his time, which he was, but as the cruel persecutor of the Albigensian heretics.

As one mounts towards the summit of the rock one sees the ruins of yet other churches and chapels, and on the grassy plateau is a wide space that was once used as an arena for bull-fights, but before that was the site of a hospital for lepers, of which there were many in Les Baux during the seventeenth century. In the foundations of the walls that are left can be seen the recesses for the beds of the patients cut into the rock.

It rained a good deal that afternoon, but as I was standing on the summit of the rock in the evening, looking out over the plain, the sun sank into a clear belt of sky between the clouds, and the whole wide landscape, with its encircling hills, was bathed in a glory of golden light. I turned, and almost held my breath at the beauty that was revealed to me. The setting sun had caught the ruins of the castle, and it was glowing in the unearthly light, like a fairy palace, while the walls and roofs below it were still in shadow. The deep blues and purples of the hills beyond were indescribably lovely. I could not expect to get a reminder of their beauty; but the castle, standing out like that—I might get it in a photograph. I turned and ran down the steep street to get my camera. I had carried it about with me all day, but had left it behind for my evening stroll. As I hurried up to the top again, the sun was just touching the lower bank of heavy cloud. As I ran towards the first place from which I could possibly get a view, the light slowly faded from the towers and battlements; as I reached it, it died away altogether. The ruins were once more cold and grim and forbidding.

It was the more disappointing because it is very difficult to get any view of Les Baux that is characteristic of the place as a whole. The castle stands up boldly from the north-east, but even there the rock on which it is built does not show its height. The view of the town taken from the castle gives some idea of its situation, with the rocks on the other side of the valley and the plain spread out below; but it is only a fragment, after all, and the only photograph I took of it that "came out" was when there was a driving scud of rain that blotted out the view, and shows few details of the foreground.

Another trouble came upon me that night. I was walking through a narrow street in the darkness when a big dog rushed out of a doorway and made for me. I turned quickly to defend myself, and at the same time a man standing in the doorway shouted at the dog and picked up a stone to throw at it. I felt a sudden pain in the calf of my leg, and thought that the dog had bitten me, or a stone had hit me, very sharply. But it was a split muscle, and it kept me laid up in Les Baux for two days longer than I had intended. And that produced the greatest disappointment of all. On Sunday I should have gone to Maillane, on my way to Avignon, and seen Mistral, who was then quite well, and who liked to see visitors. But on Monday I could not walk so far, and put off the visit till later; and on Monday Mistral was taken ill with the illness from which he died on Wednesday.

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But this further disappointment was hidden from me at the time, and I spent the next two days hobbling about Les Baux and getting an indelible impression of it, as familiarity with its nooks and corners increased. It became, by degrees, not so much a ruined city as a city of ruined houses, with a character to each. There are many intersecting streets and lanes, and as one poked about them here and there, some faint shadow of reality made itself felt above the destruction. Little bits of staircases, windows, hearths, chimneys, stood out from the mass of heaped stones. One could imagine the houses whole and clean and occupied. From some life seemed only recently to have departed, though they had been left to decay for centuries. The ghosts of the men and women of the past were very near to showing themselves, especially at dark, when what is preserved and what is destroyed was difficult to distinguish.

I spent much time on the quiet grassy summit of the rock. A few sheep are fed there, and the shepherds watch them, as they always do in this country, sitting in the shade of some ruin or leaning over the rough stone parapet to look at the valley below. An old inhabitant came up to read his paper there, as he told me he did every evening when it was fine, and we saw the first swallow of the summer as we talked. The children came to cut plants for salads, busily turning over the stones and filling their wire baskets. They are very friendly, the children of Les Baux. When I had been there two years ago a slim little dark-eyed girl of twelve had shown me the church, and I had taken her photograph sitting on the steps of the cross. Now I found her grown into a young woman, and present her here as one of the beauties of Les Baux. Her name is Martha Montfort and I wondered if perhaps she was a descendant of the great Montforts. For our Simon de Montfort's father was Count of Toulouse, and campaigned it here against the Albigenses.

The people at the inn were very kind to me over my accident, provided me with embrocation and cotton wool and the best of advice, and sent me away nearly cured. Mistral had visited them in the early days of their occupancy, and had written in their visitors' book, in his fine delicate hand, the following poem:

Fiéu de Maiano
S'ère vengu d'ou tèms

de Dono Jano
Quand èro à soun printems

e soubeirano
Coune èron autre-tèms

S'ènso autro engano
que soun regard courons,
aurieu, d'elo amourouns,
trouva, j'eu benurons
vaur fino canvouneto
que la bella Janeto
m'aurié donna'n mantèu
pèr parèisse au cassèn.

One can get the lilt of the soft Provençal, in which the poet sings so sweetly, and with the French translation, added in his own hand, make out the sense.

Fils de Maillanne,
Si j'étais venu au temps

de Madame Jeanne,
Comme ou l'était dans sa fleur

et Souveraine,
Comme on l'était jadis,

sans autre politique
que son regard brillant,
j'aurais, amoureux d'elle

trouvé, moi bienheureux,
chansonette si fine
que la belle Jeanette
m'eût donné un manteau
pour paraître au château.

Mistral would certainly have been rewarded if he had appeared at the castle of Les Baux in the time of the Troubadours. He sings in the same tongue, poems at least as beautiful as any that they have left behind them. He was anxious that the patronne of the inn should wear the Provençal costume, and I do not wonder at it, for although she is a Swiss from Valais, she has the regular features and the stately bearing of the Arlesiennes who are said to be the most beautiful women in Europe.

I found an English artist settled at Les Baux. He had bought one of the old houses and restored part of it, a great deal with his own hands. We sat and talked in a large upstairs room with a fine open fireplace and the window open to the western valley and the hills beyond it. And on Sunday we visited the Val d'Enfer together, and the chapel of the Trois Maries, or the "Trémaïé."

The carved stone in front of which this little shrine is built—it lies under the castle rock to the west—supplies the key to much that we have already heard about. It is one of the great limestone rocks with which the hillside and the valley are littered—about twenty-five feet high, and is a semi-circular niche twelve feet or so from the ground containing the weathered carving of these draped figures, nearly life-size.

At first sight they appear to be those of three women, and for centuries the tradition has been that they were the three Marys who landed with the other saints at Stes. Maries de la Mer. But the carving is Roman, and the figures are Roman, dressed quite recognizably in togas and tunics, the right-hand figure facing us is a man, the other two are women, the one in the middle, taller than the others and wearing a sort of turban and carrying a rod decorated with foliage, though this is not easy to make out now. But it is not difficult to identify the three figures. There is a wealth of evidence to show that they are contemporary portraits of Caius Marius, his wife Julia, and in the middle Martha the prophetess who attended Marius in his campaign against the barbarians.

"For he had with him," writes Plutarch, "a Syrian woman named Martha, who was said to have the gift of prophecy. She was carried about in a litter with great respect and solemnity, and the sacrifices he offered were all by her direction. She had formerly applied to the senate in this character, and made an offer of predicting for them future events, but they refused to hear her. Then she betook herself to the women, and gave them a specimen of her art. She addressed herself particularly to the wife of Marius, at whose feet she happened to sit when there was a combat of gladiators, and fortunately enough told her which of them would prove victorious. Marius's wife sent her to her husband, who received her with the utmost veneration, and provided for her the litter in which she was generally carried. When she went to sacrifice she wore a purple robe lined with the same, and buttoned up, and held in her hand a spear adorned with ribbons and garlands."

The inscription below the figures has almost entirely disappeared; but enough remains to show its date, and the name of the sculptor, Caldus. Mr. Cook makes the interesting suggestion that this may have been "that plebeian partisan of Marius, who forged his own way to the front, was made tribune in 107 b.c., and won his honours by hard work like his master." For "he was lieutenant at Les Baux with Marius before he went to Spain; and in memory of his Spanish campaigns he struck the gold medals which record his rise to the consulate in 97 b.c."

Here then are the three Marii: Caius Marius, Martha Marii, and Julia Marii; and as is the way of such things they became presently transformed to the three Maries, and a whole new tradition was attached to them. There is little doubt either that Martha the sister of Mary who rid Provence of the scourge of the dragon derived from Martha the companion of Marius, who rid it of the scourge of the barbarians.

Not far from the rock of the Trémaïé is that of the Gaïé which bears the much mutilated carving of two figures which are probably those of Caius Marius and his wife Julia, or possibly of Martha.

These two stones, and especially the Trémaïé, are from one point of view the most interesting remains in the whole of Provence; for they join on the past to a past still more remote, and a story that took two thousand years in the telling is made plain.