Chapter I: Cathedrals of the Cities 237 (5)

In 1060, after the destructive vicissitudes of the early centuries, Archbishop Rostaing d'Hyeres issued a pastoral letter appealing to the Faithful to aid him in the re-building of a new Cathedral; and it may be reasonably supposed that the nave which is at present the south aisle, the baptistery, and the Cloisters were the buildings that were dedicated less than fifty years later. They are the only portions of the church which can be ascribed to so early a period, and with the low door of entrance, the single nave and the adjoining cloister-walk, they constitute the usual plan of XI century Romanesque. Considering this as the early church, in almost original form, it will be seen that the portal is a very interesting example of the Provencal use not only of Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister, although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence. Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it "sans everything."

About two hundred years later, in 1285, the Archbishop of Aix found the Cathedral too unpretending for the rank and dignity of the See, and he began the Gothic additions. Like many another prelate his ambitions were larger than his means; and the history of Saint-Sauveur from the XIII to the XIX century, is that oft-told tale of new indulgences offered for new contributions, halts and delays in construction, emptied treasuries, and again, appeals and fresh efforts. The beginnings of the enlarged Cathedral were architecturally abrupt. The old nave, becoming the south aisle, was connected with the new by two small openings; it retained much of its separateness and in spite of added chapels much actual isolation. The Gothic nave, the north aisle and its many chapels, the apse, and the transepts, whose building and re-construction stretched over the long period between the XIII and XVII centuries, are comparatively regular, uniform, and uninteresting. The most ambitious view is that of the central nave, whose whole length is so little broken by entrances to the side aisles, that it seems almost solidly enclosed by its massive walls. Here in Gothic bays, are found those rounded, longitudinal arches which belong to the Romanesque and to some structure whose identity is buried in the mysterious past. The choir, with its long, narrow windows, and clusters of columnettes, is very pleasing, and its seven sides, foreign to Provence, remind one of Italian and Spanish constructive forms and take one's memory on strange jaunts, to the far-away Frari in Venice and the colder Abbey of London. From the choir of Saint-Sauveur two chapels open; and one of them is a charming bit of architecture, a replica in miniature of the mother-apse itself. The paintings of this mother-apse are neutral, its glass has no claim to sumptuousness, and the stalls are very unpretending; but above them hang tapestries ascribed to Matsys, splendid hangings of the Flemish school that were once in old Saint Paul's.

With these beautiful details the rich treasure-trove of the interior is exhausted, and one passes out to study the details of the exterior. The Cathedral's single tower, which rises behind the facade line, was one of the parts that was longest neglected,--perhaps because a tower is less essential to the ritual than any other portion of an ecclesiastical building. Begun in 1323, the work dragged along with many periods of absolute idleness, until 1880, when a balustrade with pinnacles at each angle was added to the upper octagonal stage, and the building of the tower was thus ended. The octagon with its narrow windows rests on a plain, square base that is massively buttressed. It is a pleasant, rather than a remarkable tower, and one's eye wanders to the more beautiful facade. Here, encased by severely plain supports, is one of the most charming portals of Provencal Gothic. Decorated buttresses stand on either side of a large, shallow recess which has a high and pointed arch, and in the centre, a slim pier divides the entrance-way into two parts, pre-figuring the final division of the Just and the Unjust. A multitude of finely sculptured statues were formerly hidden in niches, under graceful canopies, and in the hundred little nooks and corners which lurk about true Gothic portals. Standing Apostles and seated Patriarchs, baby cherubs peering out, and the more dramatic composition of the tympanum--the Transfiguration,--all lent a dignity and wealth to Saint-Sauveur. Unfortunately many of these sculptures were torn from their crannies in the great Revolution; and it is only a few of the heavenly hosts,--the gracious Madonna, Saint Michael, and the Prophets,--that remain as types of those that were so wantonly destroyed. The low, empty gables that sheltered lost statues, their slender, tapering turrets, and the delicate outer curve of the arch, are of admirable, if not imposing, composition. The portal's wooden doors, protected by plain casings, abound in carvings partly Renaissance, partly Gothic. The Sibyls and Prophets stand under canopies, surrounded by foliage, fruits, and flowers, or isolated from each other by little buttresses or pilasters. This Gothic portal quite outshines, in its graceful elaboration, the smaller door which stands near it, in the simpler and not less potent charm of the Romanesque. And side by side, these portals offer a curiously interesting comparison of the essential differences and qualities of their two great styles. If the Romanesque of Saint-Sauveur is far surpassed at Arles and Digne and Sisteron, nowhere in Provence has Gothic richer details; and if the noblest of Provencal creations must be sought in other little cities, the lover of architectural comparisons, of details, of the many lesser things rather than of the harmony of a single whole, will linger long in Aix.

The old city itself shows scarcely a trace of the many historic dramas of which it has been the scene,--the lowering tragedy of the Vaudois time,--the bright, gay comedy of good king Rene's Court,--the shorter scenes of Charles V's occupation,--the Parliament's struggle with Richelieu and Mazarin,--the day of the fiery Mirabeau,--the grim melodrama of the Revolution,--all have passed, and time has destroyed their monuments almost as completely as the Saracens destroyed those of the earlier Roman days. Only a few, unformed fragments of the great Temple of Apollo remain in the walls of Saint-Sauveur. The earliest Cathedral, Sainte-Marie-de-la-Seds, has entirely disappeared, the old thermal springs are enclosed by modern buildings, and only the statue of "the good King Rene" and the Church of the Knights of Malta give to Aix a faint atmosphere of its past distinction. Who would dream that here were the homes of the elegant and lettered courtiers of King Rene's brilliant capital, who would think that this town was the earliest Roman settlement in Gaul, the Aquae Sextiae of Baths, Temples, Theatres, and great wealth? Aix is a stately town, a provincial capital which Balzac might well have described--with old, quiet streets that are a little dreary, with a fine avenue shaded by great trees in whose shadows a few fountains trickle, with lines of little stages that come each day from the country,--a city whose life is as far in spirit from the near-by modernity of Marseilles as it is from that of Paris, as quaintly and delightfully provincial as that other little Provencal city, the Tarascon of King Rene and of Tartarin.

Languedoc.

I.

CATHEDRALS OF THE CITIES.

[Sidenote: Nimes.]

Entering Languedoc from the valley of the Rhone, the Cathedral-lover is doomed to disappointment in the city of Nimes. All that intense, intra-mural life of the Middle Ages seems to have passed this city by, and its traces, which he is so eager to find, prove to be neither notable nor beautiful.

The great past of Nimes is of a more remote antiquity than the Cathedral Building Ages. A small but exquisite Temple, a Nymphaeum, Baths, parts of a fine Portal, Roman walls, and an Amphitheatre which rivals the art of the Coliseum,--these are the ruins of Nimean greatness. She was essentially a city of the Romans, and that, even to-day, she has not lost the memory of her glorious antiquity was well illustrated in 1874, when the Nimois, with much pomp and civic pride, unveiled a statue to "their fellow-countryman," the Emperor Antoninus Pius. These are the memories in which Nimes delights. Yet her history of later times, if not glorious, is full of strange and curious interest. Like all the ancient cities of the South, she fell into the hands of many a wild and alien foe, and at length in 737, Charles Martel arrived at her gates. Grossly ignorant of art, no thing of beauty that stood in his path escaped fire and axe; and smoke-marks along the arena walls show to-day how narrowly they escaped the irreparable destruction which had wiped out the Forum, the Capitol, the Temple, the Baths, and all the magnificence of Roman Narbonne. To both the early and the later Middle Ages, Roman remains had scarcely more meaning than they had for the Franks. The delicate Temple of Trajan's wife, scorned for its pagan associations, was used as a stable, a store-house, and, purified by proper ceremonials, it even became a Christian church. The Amphitheatre has had a still stranger destiny. To a mediaeval Viscount, it was naturally inconceivable as a place of amusement, and as naturally, he saw in its walls a stronghold where he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean strength, and in 1100 it had become "a veritable hornets' nest, buzzing with warriors."

A few years before, Pope Urban II had landed at Maguelonne and ridden to Clermont to preach the First Crusade. On his return he stopped at Nimes and held a Council for the same holy purpose. Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and overlord of Nimes, travelled there to meet the Sovereign Pontiff, and amid the wonderful ferment of enthusiasm which the "Holy War" had aroused, the South was pledged anew to this romantic and war-like phase of the cause of Christ. Trencavel, Viscount of Nimes, loyal to God and his Suzerain, followed Raymond to Palestine. Its natural protectors gone, the city formed a defensive association called the "Chevaliers of the Arena." As its name implies, this curious fraternity was composed of the soldiers of the ancient amphitheatre. Like many others of the time it was semi-military, semi-religious, its members bound by many solemn oaths and ceremonies, and thus, by the eccentricity of fate, this old pagan playground became a fortress consecrated to Christian defence, the scene of many a solemn Mass.

The divisions in the Christian faith, which followed so closely the fervours of the Crusades, were most disastrous to Nimes. From the XIII until the XVII centuries, wars of religion were interrupted by suspicious and unheeded truces, and these in turn were broken by fresh outbursts of embittered contest. An ally of the new "Crusaders" in Simon de Montfort's day, Nimes became largely Protestant in the XVI century; and in 1567, as if to avenge the injuries their ancestors had formerly inflicted on the Albigenses, the Nimois sacked their Bishop's Palace and threw all the Catholics they could find down the wells of the town. This celebration of Saint Michael's Day was repaid at the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The wise Edict of Nantes brought a truce to these hostilities,--its revocation, new persecutions and flights. A hundred years later the Huguenots were again in force, and, aided by the unrest of the Revolution, successfully massacred the Catholics of the city; and during the "White Terror" of 1815 the Catholics arose and avenged themselves with equal vigour. When it is remembered that this savage and vindictive spirit has characterised the Nimois of the last six hundred years, it is scarcely surprising that they should prefer to dwell on the remote antiquity of their city rather than on the unedifying episodes of her Christian history.

Between the glories of her paganism and the disputes of Christians, the Faith has struggled and survived; but in the Cathedral-building era, religious enthusiasm was so often expended in mutual fury and reprisals that neither time nor thought was left for that common and gentle expression of mediaeval fervour, ecclesiastical architecture. And the Church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor, which would seem to have suffered from the neglect and ignorance of both patrons and builders, is one of the least interesting Cathedrals in Languedoc.

A graceful gallery of the nave, which also surrounds the choir, is the notable part of the interior, and the insignificance of the exterior is relieved only by a frieze of the XI and XII centuries. On this frieze is sculptured, in much interesting detail, the Biblical stories of the early years of mankind; but it is unfortunately placed so high on the front wall that it seems badly proportioned to the facade, and as a carved detail it is almost indistinguishable. As has been finely said the whole church is "gaunt" and unbeautiful; it is a depressing mixture of styles, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Gothic; and in studying its one fine detail, a photograph or a drawing is much more satisfactory than an hour's tantalising effort to see the original.

[Sidenote: Montpellier.]

Montpellier is "an agreeable city, clean, well-built, intersected by open squares with wide-spread horizons, and fine, broad boulevards, a city whose distinctive characteristics would appear to be wealth, and a taste for art, leisure, and study." The "taste" and the "art" are principally those of the pseudo-classic style, an imitation of "ancient Greece and imperial Rome," which the French of the XVIII century carried to such unpleasant excess. The general characteristics of the imitation, size and bombast, are well epitomised in the principal statue of Montpellier's fine Champ de Mars, which represents the high-heeled and luxurious Louis XIV in the unfitting armour of a Roman Imperator, mounted on a huge and restive charger. Such affectation in architectural subjects is the death-blow to all real beauty and originality, and Montpellier has gained little from its Bourbon patrons except a series of fine broad vistas. No city could offer greater contrast to the ancient and dignified classicism of Nimes.

If the mediaeval origin of Montpellier were not well known, one would believe it the creation of the Renaissance, and the few narrow, tortuous streets of the older days recall little of its intense past, when the city grew as never before nor since, when scholars of the genius of Petrarch and the wit of Rabelais sought her out, when she belonged to Aragon or Navarre and not to the King of France. This is the interesting Montpellier.

In the XIII century, she had a University which the Pope formally sanctioned, and a school of medicine founded by Arabian physicians which rivalled that of Paris. More significant still to Languedoc, her prosperity had begun to overshadow that of the neighbouring Bishopric of Maguelonne, and a bitter rivalry sprang up between the two cities. From the first Maguelonne was doomed. She had no schools that could rival those of Montpellier; she ceased to grow as the younger city increased in fame and size, till even history passed her by, and the stirring events of the times took place in the streets of her larger and more prosperous neighbour. Finally she was deserted by her Bishops, and no longer upheld by their episcopal dignity, her fall was so overwhelming that to-day her mediaeval walls have crumbled to the last stone and only a lonely old Cathedral remains to mark her greatness. In 1536 my Lord Bishop, with much appropriate pomp and ceremony, rode out of her gates and entered those of Montpellier as titular Bishop for the first time.

He did not find the townsmen so elated by the new dignity of the city as to have broken ground for a new Cathedral, nor did he himself seem ambitious, as his predecessors of Maguelonne had been, to build a church worthy of his rank. However, as a Bishop must have a Cathedral-church, the chapel of the Benedictine monastery was chosen for this honour and solemnly consecrated the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. This chapel had been built in the XIV century, and at the time of these episcopal changes, only the nave was finished. It was, however, Gothic; and as this style had become much favoured by the South at this late period, the Bishop must have believed that he had the beginning of a very fine and admirable Cathedral. In the religious wars which followed 1536, succeeding prelates found much to distract them from any further building; the Cathedral itself was so injured that such attention as could be spared from heretics to mere architectural details was devoted to necessary restorations and reconstructions, and the finished Saint-Pierre of to-day is an edifice of surprising modernity.

In the interior, the nave and aisles are partially of old construction, but the beautiful choir is the XIX century building of Revoil. Of the exterior, the entire apse is his also, and as the portal of the south wall was built in 1884 and the northern side of the Cathedral is incorporated in that of the Bishop's Palace, only the tower and the facade are mediaeval.

None of the towers have much architectural significance, either of beauty or originality. In comparison with the decoration of the facade they make but little impression. This decoration has more original incongruity than any detail ever applied to facade, Gothic or Romanesque, and is an extreme example of the license which southern builders allowed themselves in their adaptation of the northern style. It is a vagary, and has appealed to some Anglo-Saxon travellers, but French authorities, almost without dissent, allude to it apologetically as "unpardonable." Its general effect is somewhat that of a porte-cochere, whose roofing, directly attached to the front wall, is gothically pointed, and supported by two immense pillars. The pillars end in cones that resemble nothing in the world so much as sugar-loaves, and the whole structure is marvellously unique. Yet strange to say, the effect of the facade, with the smoothness and roundness of its pillars and the uncompromising squareness of its towers, while altogether bad, is not altogether unpleasing. Standing before it the traveller was both bewildered and fascinated as he saw that even in the extravagance of their combinations, the builders, with true southern finesse, had avoided both the grotesque and the monstrous.

As a whole, Saint-Pierre is a fine Cathedral; through many stages of building, enlarging, and re-constructing, its style has remained consonant; but the general impression is not altogether harmonious. The perspective of the western front, which should be imposing, is destroyed by a hill which slopes sharply up before the very portal. The facade is attached to the immense, unbroken wall of the old episcopal Palace, and the majesty, which is a Cathedral's by very virtue of its height alone, is entirely destroyed by a seemingly interminable breadth of wall. Reversing the natural order of things, the finest view is that of the apse. And this modern part is, in reality, the chief architectural glory of this comparatively new Cathedral and its comparatively modern town.

[Sidenote: Beziers.]

"You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned Cathedral-city and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church and State. The Cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape--majestically beautiful--imposing by mere size. As you go nearer, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes twilight is darkening. And even now, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, ... the Cathedral is still the governing force in the picture, the one object which possesses the imagination, and refuses to be eclipsed." These words are the description of Beziers as it is best and most impressively seen. From the distance, the Cathedral and its ramparts rise in imposing mass, a fine example of the strength, pride, and supremacy of the Church.

As we approach, the Cathedral grows much less imposing, and its facade gives the impression of an unpleasant conglomeration of styles. It is not a fortress church, yet it was evidently built for defence; it is Gothic, yet the lightness and grace of that art are sacrificed to the massiveness and resistive strength, imperatively required by southern Cathedrals in times of wars and bellicose heretics. The whole building seems a compromise between necessity and art.

It is, however, a notable example of the Gothic of the South, and of the modifications which that style invariably underwent, through the artistic caprice of its builders, or the political fore-sight of their patrons, the Bishops.

The facade of Saint-Nazaire of Beziers has a Gothic portal of good but not notable proportions, and a large and beautiful rose-window. As if to protect these weaker and decorative attempts, the builder flanked them with two square towers, whose crenellated tops and solid, heavy walls could serve as strongholds. Perhaps to reconcile the irreconcilable, crenellations joining the towers were placed over the rose-window, and at either end of the portal, a few inches of Gothic carving were cut in the tower-wall. The result is frank incongruity. And the traveller left without regret, to look at the apse. It cannot be denied that the clock-tower which comes into view is very square and thick; but in spite of that it has a simple dignity, and as the apse itself is not florid, this proved to be the really pleasing detailed view of the Cathedral. The open square behind the church is tiny, and there one can best see the curious grilled iron-work, which in the times of mediaeval outbreaks protected the fine windows of the choir and preserved them for future generations of worshippers and admirers. It was after noon when the traveller finished his investigations of Saint-Nazaire; and as the southern churches close between twelve and two, he took dejeuner at a little cafe near-by and patiently waited for the hour of re-opening. Had there been nothing but the interior to explore, he could not have spent two hours in such contented waiting. But there was a Cloister,--and on the stroke of two he and the sacristan met before the portal.

In describing their "monuments," French guide-books confine themselves to facts, and the adjectives "fine" and "remarkable"; they are almost always strictly impersonal, and the traveller who uses them as a cicerone, has a sense of unexpected discovery, a peculiar elation, in finding a monument of rare beauty; but he is never subjected to that disappointed irritation which comes when one stands before the "monument" and feels that one's expectations have been unduly stimulated. The Cloister of Beziers is a "fine monument," but as he walked about it, the traveller felt no sense of elation. He found a small Cloister, Gothic like the Cathedral, with clustered columns and little ornamentation. It was not very completely restored, and had a sad, melancholy charm, like a solitary sprig of lavender in an old press, or a rose-leaf between the pages of a worn and forgotten Missal. In the Cloister-close, stands a Gothic fountain; but the days when its waters dropped and tinkled in the stillness, when their sound mingled with the murmured prayers and slow steps of the priests,--those days are long forgotten. The quaint and pretty fountain is now dry and dust-covered; while about it trees and plants and weeds grow as they may, and bits of the Cloister columns have fallen off, and niches are without their guarding Saints.

By contrast, the Cathedral itself seems full of life. Its interior is an aisle-less Gothic room, whose fine height and emptiness of column or detail give it an appearance of vast and well-conceived proportions. Except the really beautiful windows of the choir, which are a study in themselves, there is very little in this interior to hold the mind; one is lost in a pleasant sense of general symmetry. As the traveller was sitting in the nave, a few priests filed into the choir, and began, in quavering voices, to intone their prayers, and in the peacefulness of the church, in the trembling monotony of the weak, old voices, his thoughts wandered to the stirring history which had been lived about the Cathedral, and within its very walls. For Beziers was and had always been a hot-bed of heretics. Here in the IV century, long before the building of the Cathedral, the Emperor Constantius II forced the unwilling Catholic Bishops of Gaul to join their heretical Aryan brethren in Council; here the equally heretical Visigoths gave new strength to the dissenters; and here, again, after centuries of orthodoxy which Clovis had imposed, a new centre of religious storm was formed. It was about this period, the XII and XIV centuries, that the Cathedral was built; and it is perhaps because of the strength of those French protestants against the Church of Rome, the Albigenses, that its essentially Gothic style was so confused by military additions. At the beginning of the troublous times of which these towers are reminders, Raymond-Roger of Trencavel, the gallant and romantic Lord of Carcassonne, was also Viscount of Beziers; and contrary to the fanatical enthusiasm of his day, was much disposed toward religious toleration; therefore in the early wars of Catholics and Protestants the city of Beziers became the refuge not only for the terrified Faithful of the surrounding country, but for many hunted Protestants. In the XIII century, the zeal of the Catholic party, reinforced by the political interests of its members, grew most hot and dangerous. Saint Dominic had come into the South; and in his fearful, fiery sermons, he not only prophesied that the Albigenses would swell the number of the damned at the Day of Judgment, but also advocated that, living, they should know the hell of Inquisition. Partisans of the Catholic Faith were solemnly consecrated "Crusaders" by Pope Innocent III, and wore the cross in these Wars of Extermination as they had worn it in the Holy Wars of Palestine. In 1209 their army advanced against Beziers, and from out their Councils the leaders sent the Bishop of the city to admonish his flock.

All the inhabitants were summoned to meet him, and they gathered in the choir and transepts of the Cathedral,--the only parts which were finished at that time. One can imagine the anxious citizens crowding into the church, the coming of the angered prelate, whose state and frown were well calculated to intimidate the wavering, and the tense silence as he passed, with grave blessing, to the altar. In a few words, he advised them of their peril, spiritual and material; he told them he knew well who was true and who false to the Church, that he had, in written list, the very names of the heretics they seemed to harbour. Then he begged them to deliver those traitors into his hands, and their city to the Legate of the Holy Father. In fewer words came their answer; "Venerable Father, all that are here are Christians, and we see amongst us only our brethren." Such words were a refusal, a heinous sin, and dread must have been written on every face, as without a word or sign of blessing, the outraged Bishop swept from the church and returned to the camp of their enemy.

The Crusaders' Councils were stormy; for some of the nobles wished to save the Catholics, others cried out for the extermination of the whole rebellious place, and finally the choleric Legate, Armand-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, could stand it no longer, and cried out fiercely, "Kill them all! God will know His own." The words of their Legate were final, the army attacked the city, and--as Henri Martin finely writes,--"neither funeral tollings nor bell-ringings, nor Canons in all their priestly robes could avail, all were put to the sword; not one was saved, and it was the saddest pity ever seen or heard." The city was pillaged, was fired, was devastated and burned "till no living thing remained."

"No living thing remained" to tell the awful tale, and yet with time and industry, a new and forgetful Beziers has risen to all its old prestige and many times its former size; the Cathedral alone was left, and its most memorable tale to our day is not that of the abiding peace of the Faith, but that of the terrible travesty of religion of the twenty-second of July, hundreds of years ago.

[Sidenote: Narbonne.]

"Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far more comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently imposing situation." These words, which were running in the traveller's mind, grew more and more derisive, more and more ironical, as he walked about Narbonne. Not in all the South of France had he seen a city so depressing. Her decline has been continuous for the long five hundred years since the Roman dykes gave way and she was cut off from the sea. Agde, almost as old, displays the decline of a dignified, retired old age; Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was as dirty, but not a whit as pretentious; Nimes was majestically antique; Narbonne, simply sordid.

It is sad to think that over two thousand years ago she was a second Marseilles, that she was the first of Rome's transalpine colonies, and that under Tiberius her schools rivalled those of the Capital of the world. It is sadder to think that all the magnificence of Roman luxury, of sculptured marble--a Forum, Capitol, Temples, Baths, Triumphal Arches,--stood where dreary rows of semi-modern houses now stand. It is almost impossible to believe in the lost grandeur of this city, and that it was veritably under the tutelage of so great and superb a god as Mars.

The eventful Christian period of Narbonne was very noted but not very long. Her melancholy decay began as early as the XIV century. Of her great antiquity nothing is left but a few hacked and mutilated carvings; of her ambitious Mediaevalism, nothing but an unfinished group of ecclesiastical buildings. Long gone is the lordly "Narbo" dedicated to Mars, gone the city of the Latin poet, whose words repeated to-day in her streets are a bitter mockery, and gone the stronghold of mediaeval times. There remains a rare phenomenon for cleanly France,--a dirty city, whose older sections are reminiscent of unbeautiful old age, decrepit and unwashed; and whose newly projected boulevards are distinguished by tawdry and pretentious youth.

In the midst of this city, stands a group of mediaeval churchly buildings, the Palace of the prelate, his Cathedral, and an adjoining Cloister. They are all either neglected, unfinished, or re-built; but are of so noble a plan that the traveller feels a "divine wrath" that they should never have reached their full grandeur of completion, that this great architectural work should have been begun so near the close of the city's prosperity, and that in spite of several efforts it has never been half completed. It is as if a fatality hung over the whole place, and as if all the greatness Narbonne had conceived was predestined to destruction or incompletion.

Of the three structures, the least interesting is the former Palace of the Archbishops. This is now the Hotel-de-Ville, and as all the body of the structure between the towers of the XII century was built in our day by Viollet-le-Duc, very little of the old Palace can properly be said to exist. Besides its two principal towers, a smaller one, a gate, and a chapel remain. Viollet-le-Duc has constructed the Hotel-de-Ville after the perfectly appropriate style of the XIII century, but its stone is so new and its atmosphere so modern and republican that the traveller left it without regret and made his way up the dark, steep, badly-paved alley-way which leads to the door of the Cloister.

This Cloister, which separated the Palace from the Cathedral, is now dreary and desolate and neglected. Like the Cathedral, it is Gothic, with sadly decaying traces of graceful ornament. The little plot of enclosed ground, which should be planted in grass or with a few flowers, is a mere dirt court, tramped over by the few worshippers who enter the Cathedral this way. Two or three trees grow as they will, gnarled or straight. The sense of peaceful melancholy which the traveller had felt in the Cloister of Beziers is wanting here. This is a place of deserted solitude; and with a sigh for the beauty that might have been, the traveller crossed the enclosure and entered the church by the cloister-door.

Architecturally dissimilar, the fate of this Cathedral is not unlike that of Beauvais. Each was destined to have a completed choir, and each to remain without a nave. At Beauvais the addition of transepts adds very materially to the beauty of the Cathedral. At Narbonne no transepts exist. There is simply a choir, which makes a very singular disposition of the church both religious and architectural. Entering the gates which lead from the ambulatory to the choir, the traveller found that Benediction had just begun. On his immediate right, before the altar all aglow with lights, were the officiating priests and the altar-boys; on his left, in the choir, was the congregation in the Canons' stalls; and at the back, as at the end of a nave, rose the organ.

The traveller walked about the ambulatory, and leaning against the farthest wall, tried to view the church, only to be baffled. There was no perspective. The ambulatory is very narrow and the choir-screen very high. The impressions he formed were partly imaginative, partly inductive; and the clearest one was that of sheer height, straight, superhuman height that is one of the unmatchable glories of French Gothic. Here the traveller thought again of Beauvais, and wished as he had so often wished in the northern Cathedral and with something of the same intensity, that this freedom and majesty of height might have been gloriously continued and completed in the nave. Such a church as his imagination pictured would have been worthy of a place with the best of northern Gothic. Now it is a suggestion, a beginning of greatness; and its chief glory lies in the simplicity and directness of its height. Clustered columns rise plainly to the pointed Gothic roof. There is so marked an absence of carving that it seems as if ornamentation would have been weakening and trammelling. It is not bareness, but beautiful firmness, which refreshes and uplifts the heart of man as the sight of some island mountain rising sheer from the sea.

The exterior of the Cathedral, imposing from a distance, is rather complicated in its unfinished compromise of detail. In the XV century, two towers were built which flank the western end as towers usually flank a facade; and this gives the church a foreshortened effect. Of real facade there is none, and the front wall which protects the choir is plainly temporary. In front of this wall there are portions of the unfinished nave, stones and other building materials, a scaffolding, and a board fence; and the only pleasure the traveller could find in this confusion was the fancy that he had discovered the old-time appearance of a Cathedral in the making.

The apse is practically completed, and one has the curious sensation that it is a building without portals. Having no facade, it has none of the great front entrances common to the Gothic style; neither has it the usual lateral door. The choir is entered by the temporary doors of the pseudo-facade; the ambulatory is entered through the Cloister, or a pretty little Gothic door-way which if it were not the chief entrance of the church, would properly seem to have been built for the clergy rather than for the people who now use it. If these portals are strangely unimportant, their insignificance does not detract materially from the stateliness of the apse, which is created by its great height--one hundred and thirty feet in the interior measurement--and the magnificent flying-buttresses.

These flying-buttresses give to the exterior its most curious and beautiful effect. They are a form of Gothic seldom attempted in the South, and exist here in a rather exceptional construction. Over the chapels which surround the apse rise a series of double-arched supports, the outer ones ending in little turrets with surmounting crenellations. On these supports, after a splendid outward sweep, rest the abutments of the flying arches. These have a fine sure grace and withal a lightness that relieves the heaviness imposed on the church by the towers and the immense strength of the body of the apse. They are the chief as well as the most salient glory of the exterior, and give to the Cathedral its peculiar individuality.

Apart from its buttresses, Saint-Just has little decorative style. Its crenellations and turrets are military and forceful, not ornate. For the church had its defensive as truly as its religious purpose, and formerly was united on the North with the fortifications of the Palace, and contributed to the protection of its prelates as well as to their arch-episcopal prestige.

In spite of the fostering care of the French government, the Palace, the Cloister, and the Cathedral seem in the hands of strangers. The traveller who had longed to see them in their finished magnificence realised the futility of this wish, but he turned away with another as vain, that he might have known them even in incompletion, when they were in the hands of the Church, when the Archbishop still ruled in his Palace, when the Canons prayed in the Cloister, and the Cathedral was still a-building.

[Sidenote: Perpignan.]

Perpignan, like Elne, is in Rousillon. The period of her most brilliant prosperity was that of the Majorcan dominion in the XII century. Later she reverted to Aragon, and was still so fine a city that for two hundred years France coveted and sought her, until she finally yielded to the greedy astuteness of Richelieu and became formally annexed to the kingdom of Louis XIII. Perpignan is a gay little town, much affected by the genius and indolence of the Spanish race. Morning is work-time, noon-tide is siesta, but afternoon and evening were made for pleasure; and every bright day, when the sun begins to cast shadows, people fill the narrow, shady streets and walk along the promenade by the shallow river, under the beautiful plane-trees. The pavements in front of the cafes are filled with little round tables, and here and there small groups of men idle cheerfully over tiny glasses of liqueur and cups of cool, black coffee; perhaps they talk a little business, certainly they gossip a great deal. Noisy little teams filled with merry people run down from the Promenade to the sea-shore; and after an hour's dip, almost in the shadow of the tall Pyrenees, the same merry people return, laughing, to a cooler Perpignan. In the evening, they seek the bright cafes and the waiters run busily to and fro among the crowded little tables; the narrow streets, imperfectly lighted, are full of moving shadows, and through the open church-doors, candles waver in the fitful draught, and quiet worshippers pass from altar to altar in penance or in supplication.

All the old buildings of the city are of Spanish origin. The prison is the brick, battlemented castle of a Majorcan Sancho, the Citadel is as old, and the Aragonese Bourse is divided between the town-hall and the city's most popular cafe.

The Cathedral of Saint-Jean, which faces a desolate, little square, was also begun in Majorcan days and under that Sancho who ruled in 1324. At first it was merely a church; for Elne had always been the seat of the Bishopric of Rousillon, and although the town had suffered from many wars and had long been declining, it was not shorn of its episcopal glory until there was sufficient political reason for the act. This arose in 1692, and was based on the old-time French and Spanish claims to the same county to which these two cities belonged.

Over a hundred years before Charles VIII had plenarily ceded to Ferdinand and Isabella all power in Rousillon, even that shadowy feudal Suzerainty with which, in default of actual possession, many a former French king had consoled himself and irritated a royal Spanish brother. Ferdinand and Isabella promptly visited their new possessions, and made solemn entry into Perpignan. Unfortunately the Inquisition came in their train, and the unbounded zeal of the Holy Office brought the Spanish rule which protected it into ever-increasing disfavour. In vain Philip III again bestowed on Perpignan the title of "faithful city," which she had first received from John of Aragon for her loyal resistance to Louis XI; in vain he ennobled several of her inhabitants and transferred to her, from Elne, the episcopal power. The city was ready for new and kinder masters than the Most Catholic Kings, and in 1642 the French were received as liberators.

During all these years the Cathedral had grown very slowly. Commenced in 1324, over a century elapsed before the choir was finished and the building of the nave was not begun until a hundred years later. The High Altar, a Porch, and the iron cage of the tower were added with equal deliberation, and even to-day it is still unfinished. The most beautiful part is the strongly buttressed apse; the poorest, the unfinished facade, which has been very fitly described as "plain and mean." Looking disconsolately at it from the deserted square, scarcely tempted to go nearer, the traveller was astounded at the thought that for several centuries this unsightly wall had stared on generations of worshippers without goading them into any frenzy of action,--either destructive or constructive. His only comfort lay in the scaffolding which was building around it, and which seemed to promise better things.

The interior of the Cathedral is very large and lofty. It is without aisles and the chapels are discreetly hidden between the piers. Far above one's head curves the ribbed Gothic vaulting, and all around is unbroken space that ends in darkness or the vague outline of an altar, dimly lighted by a flickering candle. The walls are painted in rich, sombre colours, and the light comes very gently through the good old stained-glass windows. It is a southern church, dark, cool, and somewhat mysterious; quite foreign to the glare and heat of reality. People are lost in its solemn vastness, and even with many worshippers it is a solitude where most holy vigils could be kept, a mystic place where the southern imagination might well lose itself in such sacred ardours as Saint Theresa felt. The traveller liked to linger here; in the day-time when he peered vainly at the re-redos of Soler de Barcelona, at Mass-time, when the lighted altar-candles glimmered over its fine old marble, but best of all he liked to come at night. Those summer nights in Rousillon were hot and full of the murmur of voices. The Cathedral was the only silent place; more full than ever of the mysterious--the felt and the unseen. As one entered, the sanctuary light shone as a star out of a night of darkness; in a near-by chapel, a candle sputtered itself away, and a woman--whether old or young one could not see--lighted a fresh taper. Sometimes a man knelt and told his beads, sometimes two women entered and separated for their differing needs and prayers. Sometimes one sat in meditation, or knelt, unmoving, for a space of time; once a child brought a new candle to Saint Antony; always some one came or some one went, until the hour of closing. Then, the bell was rung, the door shut by a hand but dimly seen, and the last few watchers went out--across the little square, down this street or that, until they were lost in the darkness of the summer's night.

[Sidenote: Carcassonne.]

The train puffed into the station at Carcassonne, and the impatient traveller, throwing his bags into an hotel omnibus, asked for the Cathedral and walked eagerly on that he might the more quickly "see in line the city on the hill," "the castle walls as grand as those of Babylon," and "gaze at last on Carcassonne." His mind was full of the poem, and faithfully following directions, he hurried through clean, narrow streets until he came at length, not upon a poetic vision of battlemented walls and towers, but on the most prosaic of boulevards and the Church of Saint-Michel which has been the Cathedral since 1803, a large, uncouth building with a big, unfinished tower. There is no facade portal, and a small door-way in the north side leads into the great vaulted hall, one of the most usual and commonplace forms of the Gothic interior of the South. This room, which is painted, receives light from a beautiful rose-window at the West, and a series of small roses, like miniatures of the greater one, are cut in the upper walls of the nave; and little chapels, characterised by the same heavy monotony which hangs like a pall over the whole Cathedral, are lost in the church's capacious flanks.

Having lost much of his enthusiasm, the traveller asked for the old--he had almost said the "real"--Cathedral, and with new directions, he started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that perfect vision of Mediaevalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill of the Cite stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; yet beautiful in their mass of uneven, peaked tower-roofs and crenellations. He climbed wearily up the stony street of the hillside, and as he passed through the open gate, he realised that Hunnewell had written truly when he said "Carcassonne is a romance of travel." For he went into a town so quiet, into streets so still, so weed-grown, and lonely, and yet so well built, that he felt as a "fairy prince" who has penetrated into some enchanted castle, and it seemed as if the inhabitants were asleep in the upper rooms, behind those bowed windows, and as if, when the mysterious word of disenchantment should be uttered, all would come trooping forth, men-at-arms hurrying to clean their rusty swords, old women trudging along to fill their dusty pitchers at the well, and younger women staring from doors and windows to see the stranger within their streets.

The Cadets de Gascogne knew the city before the evil spell of modern times was cast about it. They know and miss it now. And although they may no longer wear the plumed hat and clanking sword of their ancestors, the spirit beneath their more conventional garb is as gay and daring as that of Cadets more picturesque. They have conceived a plan as exciting as any old adventure, an idea which they present to the world, not as Cyrano, their most famous member, was wont to convey his thoughts at the end of a sword, but none the less dexterously and delightfully. This plan, like the magic word of the traveller's fancy, is to make the old Carcassonne live again, not as the traveller had timidly imagined, in time of peace, but in the stirring times of war and battle, and its magic word is "the siege of Carcassonne." Truly it is but a matter of bengal lights, blank cartridges, and fire-crackers, though for the matter of that, Cinderella's coach was but a pumpkin, yet the effect was none the less real.

On the evening of "the siege," a rare, great fete, the forces of the Cadets with their lights and ammunition are in the "upper town", and long before dark, their friends and every inhabitant of the country for miles around have gathered in the houses which face the Cite, on the bridges, and along the banks of the little Aude. As the sunlight fades and the shadows creep along, a strange feeling of expectancy comes over everybody, a hush, almost a dread of danger. The towers on the hill-top loom dark against the sky and the battlements bristle in the moonlight, no sound comes from the Cite, and it seems to lay in unconcerned security. Memories of besieging armies which have vainly encamped in this valley return to the traveller's mind, memories of the treacheries of Simon de Montfort, and he wonders if any "crusading" sentinel ever paced where he now stands watching along the Aude, if any spy or even the terrible Simon himself had ever crept so near the walls to reconnoitre. Suddenly every one is startled by the sound of distant shots, which are repeated nearer the walls. Every one peers into the darkness. There is no sign of life on wall or tower, the attacking force must still be climbing the hill, out of range of the stones and burning oil of the defenders. More shots are fired, and now there are answering shots from the besieged; and so naturally does the din increase, that one can follow, by listening, the progress of the attack and the slow, sure gain of the invader. Some of the illusion of the anxiety and mental tension which war brings, steals over the watching crowd, and they breathlessly await the outcome of the struggle. The attacking party is now seen under the walls--now on them--they throw wads of burning cotton, which are at first extinguished. They still gain--they fire the walls in several places; and the defenders, who can be seen in the flashes of light, run frantically to the danger spots; but they are gradually overcome, beaten back by the intensity of the heat. Flames now burst forth from a tower; there is an explosion, and the fire curls and creeps along the walls unchecked. Another explosion follows, another burst of flames which soar higher and higher. The men of the Cite seem still more frantic and powerless. All the towers now stand out in bold relief,--as if they were just about to crumble into the seething mass below. Roofs within the walls are on fire, and finally a red tongue licks the turret of the Cathedral. In a few seconds its walls are hideously aglow, and the people in the valley--although they know the truth--groan aloud, so real is the illusion. The nave lines of the Cathedral are silhouetted as it burns, the fires along the walls growing brighter, spread gradually at first,--then rapidly, and the whole Cite is the prey of great, waving clouds of flame and smoke. Men and women, as if fascinated by this lurid and magnificent destruction, press forward to get the last view of the Cathedral's lovely rose, or the peaked roof of some tower which is dear to them. But slowly the deep red flames are growing paler, less strong, and less high. Then the glare, too, begins to die away; the fire turns to smoke and the light becomes grey and misty. "It is all over," some one whispers, and with backward glances at the charred, smoldering hill-top, they turn silently towards home.

A few, sitting on the stone parapet of the bridge, remain to talk of the evening's magic, of the inspiration of the Cadets de Gascogne, and other scenes which their memory suggests, of wars and rumours of other wars. And when at length they turn to go, they see the moonlight on the glimmering Aude, the peaceful lower city, and above, Carcassonne--the Invincible--rising from her ashes.