Chapter L: De Fourcaud (4)

The Castle, as it now appears, is but the skeleton of the magnificent tomb of the Emperors. Procopius, writing in the Sixth Century, describes its appearance in his time. “It was built,” he says, “of Parian marble; the square blocks fit closely to each other without any cement. It has four equal sides, each a stone’s throw in length. In height it rises above the walls of the city. On the summit are statues of men and horses, of admirable workmanship in Parian marble.” Canina, in his _Architectura Romana_, gives a restoration of the mausoleum, which shows how it consisted of three stories: 1, A quadrangular basement, the upper part intersected with Doric pillars, between which were spaces for epitaphs of the dead within, and surmounted at the corners by marble equestrian statues; 2, a circular story, with fluted Ionic colonnades; 3, circular story, surrounded by Corinthian columns, between which were statues. The whole was surmounted by a pyramidal roof, ending in a bronze fir-cone.

The history of the Mausoleum, in the Middle Ages is almost the history of Rome. It was probably first turned into a fortress by Honorius, A.D., 423. From Theodoric it derives the name of “Carcer Theodorici.” In 537, it was besieged by Vitiges, when the defending garrison, reduced to the last extremity, hurled down all the magnificent statues which decorated the cornice, upon the besiegers. In A.D., 498, Pope Symmachus removed the bronze fir-cone at the apex of the roof to the court of St. Peter’s, whence it was afterwards transferred to the Vatican garden, where it is still to be seen between two bronze peacocks, which probably stood on either side of the entrance.

Belisarius defended the castle against Totila, whose Gothic troops captured and held it for three years, after which it was taken by Narses.

It was in 530 that the event occurred which gave the building its present name. Pope Gregory the Great was leading a penitential procession to St. Peter’s, in order to offer up prayers for the staying of the great pestilence which followed the inundation of 589; when, as he was crossing the bridge, even while the people were falling dead around him, he looked up at the Mausoleum and saw an angel on its summit, sheathing a bloody sword, while a choir of angels around chaunted with celestial voices, the anthem, since adopted by the church in her vesper service--“_Regina cœli, lætare--quia quem meruisti portare--resurrexit, sicut dixit, Alleluja_.”--To which the earthly voice of the Pope solemnly responded: “_Ora pro nobis Deum, Alleluja_.”[10]

In the Tenth Century the fortress was occupied by the infamous Marozia, who, in turn, brought her three husbands (Alberic, Count of Tusculum; Guido, Marquis of Tuscany; and Hugo, King of Italy), thither, to tyrannize with her over Rome. It was within the walls of this building that Alberic, her son by her first husband, waiting upon his royal stepfather at table, threw a bowl of water over him, when Hugo retorted by a blow, which was the signal for an insurrection, the people taking part with Alberic, putting the King to flight, and imprisoning Marozia. Shut up within these walls, Pope John XI. (931–936), son of Marozia by her first husband, ruled under the guidance of his stronger-minded brother Alberic; here, also, Octavian, son of Alberic and grandson of Marozia, succeeded in forcing his election as John XII. (being the first Pope who took a new name), and scandalized Christendom by a life of murder, robbery, adultery and incest.

In 974, the Castle was seized by Cencio (Crescenzio Nomentano), the consul, who raised up an anti-pope (Boniface VII.) here, with the determination of destroying the temporal power of the popes and imprisoned and murdered two popes, Benedict VI. (972), and John XIV. (984), within these walls. In 996, another lawful pope, Gregory V., calling in the Emperor Otho to his assistance, took the Castle and beheaded Cencio, though he had promised him life if he would surrender. From this governor the fortress long held the name of Castello de Crescenzio, or Turris Crescentii, by which it is described in mediæval writings. A second Cencio supported another anti-pope, Cadolaus, here in 1063, against Pope Alexander II. A third Cencio imprisoned Gregory VII. here in 1084. From this time the possession of the Castle was a constant point of contest between popes and anti-popes. In 1313, Arlotto degli Stefaneschi, having demolished most of the other towers in the city, arranged the same fate for S. Angelo, but it was saved by cession to the Orsini. It was from hence, on December 15, 1347, that Rienzi fled to Bohemia, at the end of his first period of power, his wife having previously made her escape disguised as a friar.

“The cause of final ruin to this monument,” is described by Nibby to have been the resentment of the citizens against a French governor who espoused the cause of the anti-pope (Clement VII.) against Urban VI. in 1378. It was then that the marble casings were all torn from the walls and used as street pavements.

A drawing of Sangallo of 1465 shows the upper part of the fortress crowned with high square towers and turreted buildings; a cincture of bastions and massive square towers girding the whole; two square-built bulwarks flanking the extremity of the bridge, which was then so connected with these outworks that passengers would have immediately found themselves inside the fortress after crossing the river. Marlianus, 1588, describes its double cincture of fortifications,--“a large round tower at the inner extremity of the bridge; two towers with high pinnacles, and the cross on their summits, the river flowing all around.”

The Castle began to assume its present aspect under Boniface IX. in 1395. John XXIII., 1411, commenced the covered way to the Vatican, which was finished by Alexander VI.; and roofed by Urban VIII., in 1630. By the last named pope the great outworks of the fortress were built under Bernini, and furnished with cannon made from the bronze roof of the Pantheon. Under Paul III. the interior was decorated with frescoes, and a colossal marble angel erected on the summit, in place of a chapel (S. Angelo inter Nubes), built by Boniface XIV. for the existing angel of bronze, by a Dutch artist, Verschaffelt.

Of the Castle, as we now see it externally, only the quadrangular basement is of the time of Hadrian; the round tower is of that of Urban VIII., its top added by Paul III. The four round towers of the outworks, called after the four Evangelists, are of Nicholas V., 1447.

The interior of the fortress can be visited by an order. Excavations made in 1825 have laid open the sepulchral chamber in the midst of the basement. Here, stood in the centre, the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian, which was stolen by Pope Innocent II. to be used as his own tomb in the Lateran, where it was destroyed by the fire of 1360, the cover alone escaping, which was used for the tomb of Otho II., in the atrium of St. Peter’s, and which, after filling this office for seven centuries, is now the baptismal font of that basilica. A spiral passage, thirty feet high and eleven wide, up which a chariot could be driven, gradually ascends through the solid mass of masonry. There is wonderfully little to be seen. A saloon of the time of Paul III. is adorned with frescoes of the life of Alexander the Great, by Pierino del Vaga. This room would be used by the pope in case of his having to take refuge in S. Angelo. An adjoining room, adorned with a stucco frieze of Tritons and Nereids, is that in which Cardinal Caraffa was strangled (1561) under Pius IV., for alleged abuses of authority under his uncle, Paul IV.--his brother, the Marquis Caraffa, being beheaded in the castle the same night. The reputed prison of Beatrice Cenci is shown, but it is very uncertain that she was ever confined here,--also the prison of Cagliostro, and that of Benvenuto Cellini, who escaped, and broke his leg in trying to let himself down by a rope from the ramparts. The statue of the angel by Montelupo is to be seen stowed away in a dark corner. Several horrible trabocchette (oubliettes) are shown.

On the roof, from which there is a beautiful view, are many modern prisons, where prisoners suffer terribly from the summer sun beating upon their flat roofs.

Among the sculptures found here were the Barberini Faun, now at Munich, the Dancing Faun, at Florence, and the Bust of Hadrian at the Vatican. The sepulchral inscriptions of the Antonines existed till 1572, when they were cut up by Gregory XIII. (Buoncompagni), and the marble used to decorate a chapel in St. Peter’s! The magnificent easter display of fireworks (from an idea of Michael Angelo, carried out by Bernini), called the girandola, used to be exhibited here, but now takes place at S. Pietro in Montorio, or from the Pincio. From 1849 to 1870, the Castle was occupied by French troops, and their banner floated here, except on great festivals, when it was exchanged for that of the pope.

Running behind and crossing the back streets of the Borgo, is the covered passage intended for the escape of the popes to the Castle. It was used by Alexander VI. when invaded by Charles VIII. in 1494, and twice by Clement VII. (Giulio de’ Medici), who fled, in 1527, from Moncada, viceroy of Naples, and in May, 1527, during the terrible sack of Rome by the troops of the Constable de Bourbon.

“The Escape” consists of two passages; the upper open like a loggia, the lower covered, and only lighted by loop-holes. The keys of both are kept by the pope himself.

S. Angelo is at the entrance of the Borgo, promised at the Italian invasion of September, 1870, as the sanctuary of the papacy, the tiny sovereignty where the temporal sway of the popes should remain undisturbed,--the sole relic left to them of all their ancient dominions.

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL

W. J. LOFTIE

Salisbury Cathedral, from the point of view of the architectural artist, is the most beautiful and the most perfect in England. The visitor who sees it first on a bright day, can never forget the impression it has made on his mind. Unlike the architects of the so-called “Great Gothic Revival,” the builders of Salisbury put their trust in proportion. Incidentally they made their details as elaborate and perfect as possible; but they were subordinated to the general effect, and when during the frightful ravages of the “restorers,” let loose upon the church in the past and present centuries, many of the best and most precious of these details and ornaments perished or were renewed, the main building survives, raising its exquisitely graceful spire into the blue sky, its thousand pinnacles all pointing upward and gleaming white against the deep green of the old trees and the emerald turf of the surrounding close. “How long,” asked an American visitor, “does it take to grow such turf?” “Oh! not long,” was the reply; “only a couple of centuries.” One feels at Salisbury that whether the answer was given there or at Oxford, of no place could it be more true. Though when we look near enough, we can see that fresh and white as is the general effect, the masonry of Salisbury is of great antiquity, except, of course, where it has been restored; and antiquity adds another charm, for Salisbury was the first complete cathedral built after the Romanesque tradition had died out, as St. Paul’s is the first built after it had been revived. In other cathedrals there are portions and fragments of the same style, and they are always the most beautiful features of the whole building. We can recall the western porch at Ely, and the angel choir at Lincoln, and the Chapter-house at Southwell; but here at Salisbury, we have the whole vast cathedral, all in the same supreme style, every part fitting into its place, and adding its contribution to the general effect, never in contrast, but always in harmony until the effect is attained. What that is may be read in countless books of travel or criticism. Salisbury cathedral, like the Parthenon and all the other--there are not many--buildings which tempt one to call them poems in stone--produces a different feeling in the minds of all who see it. I am not going to add another to the descriptions of the view. On the contrary, I am going about the prosaic task of trying to find out to what circumstances its beauty is due, and why the name of Richard Poore is honoured among lovers of good architecture with that of Christopher Wren, no other Englishman being worthy to make a third. The chief points to be noted about Salisbury are these. The effect does not in any way depend upon ornamental details. This may be proved by two examples taken from the building. The west front was greatly injured at different times, its carving broken, and its figures defaced. The carving has been copied and “restored,” and new figures have replaced the old. The front is now neat and spick and span, but the general effect is in no wise improved, but rather deteriorated, by having its antiquity destroyed. It is the same with the chromatic decoration of the interior, and with the “improvement” of the Chapter-house. The painting on the roof tends to lower it; the gaudy, shiny aspect of the Chapter-house goes far to spoil, if it could spoil, the exquisite design and subtle proportions.

Another point to be noticed is this: Salisbury does not owe its beauty to size, nor yet altogether to the style in which it is built. This is easily proved. The great French cathedral of Amiens exceeds Salisbury in all its dimensions, and was built, allowing for the difference between France and England, in the self-same style. Both are examples of First Pointed, and Amiens is, according to Fergusson, at least twice as large in its cubic contents. “The French church covers 71,000 square feet, the English only 55,000. The vault of the first is one hundred and fifty-two feet in height, the latter only eighty-five.” There is still a more remarkable difference between the central spires of the two churches. That of Amiens rises to a height of 422 feet; that of Salisbury, the tallest in England, only to 404. Yet the great height of the roof at Amiens robs its spire of any preponderance it might otherwise boast, and leaves the comparatively small steeple of Salisbury a feature of grandeur and beauty only approached by the still lower dome of St. Paul’s, which rises at its highest part, the cross, to 365 feet above the ground level.

It will be seen, therefore, that Salisbury owes its effect to something beyond ornament or size. The extraordinary order and regularity of the masonry may have something to say to it, although the stones, as compared with what may be seen in Egypt, and elsewhere, are not very large. But you can trace the same course all round the church and the same stone, oolite from the quarry at Chilmark, has been used throughout. This communicates a certain look of stability to the structure, which is, in itself, more pleasing to the eye than any amount of ornament out of place, or intended, as in modern Gothic, to divert the eye from the poverty of the materials or the absence of proportion. The proportions of Salisbury, like those of St. Paul’s, or the Parthenon, are calculated to give the building its full measure of beauty, without anything extraneous.

That Salisbury should have this unity of age and design is owing to a curious fact in the history of the place. The “bishop’s stool” had been upon the bleak, chalk down which borders Salisbury Plain. The place was really a castle whose fortifications are still visible; the cathedral within the walls must have been Norman in design, to judge in dry seasons from the marks still visible among the grassy mounds, and from fragments of carved stone built into the wall or cross. Mr. Walcott gives its dimensions as follows: “A nave one hundred and fifty feet by seventy-two feet, a transept one hundred and fifty feet by sixty feet, and a choir sixty feet in length, in all two hundred and seventy feet.” The situation was in every way inconvenient, having been chosen for security not comfort. After the King took the fort and filled it with his own soldiers, a governor superseding the bishop, the position of the ecclesiastics became unendurable. The inhabitants in times of comparative peace and security migrated to the rich pastures by the Avon and the Bourne below, while cold winds in winter, and a scarcity of water in summer, finally determined Bishop Poore and his canons, for Sarum was a church of the old foundation, to seek a better country. The old legend says that the site of the new cathedral was determined by the fall of an arrow in Merrifield (or more likely Mirifield), shot by a stalwart archer from the ramparts. The church was raised in a green vale, surrounded by the downs. Pepys, in describing his journey from Hungerford says, “So, all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple, the Plain high and low; to Salisbury by night.”

“Of the cathedral,” Pepys remarks that it is “most admirable; as big, I think, and handsomer than Westminster, and a most large close about it.” Pepys’ comparison of Westminster and Salisbury is a very just one; both were built in the then new First Pointed style, but there is no doubt about the superiority of Salisbury in either design or completeness.

In the close, which occupies an extent of half a square mile, there are three gates, the South or Harnham, the East or St. Anne’s, and the North or Close Gate, built about 1327. The ground-plan of the church embraces a nave of ten bays, with aisles; a northern porch; a main and a choir transept of four and three bays each; to the east a choir and presbytery, each of three bays, and the so-called Lady Chapel, all having aisles. The cloister is on the south side, and to eastwards of the cloister is the Chapter-house. An octangular canon’s vestry and muniment room is to the south of the south-east transept. The pyramidal disposition of the leading lines is very observable from certain points of view. It is the only ancient cathedral in England begun and finished on a uniform plan and in one style. The foundations were laid under Bishop Poore, on the Feast of St. Vitalis (April 28), 1220, and it was built by Elias of Dereham, clerk of the works, and by Nicholas of Portland, and Richard of Farleigh, his successors, the last named completing the spire in 1375. The Beauchamp and Hungerford Chapels, both subsequently removed, were built in the Lady Chapel in the Fifteenth Century. Bishop Audley’s Chantry in the choir was built in 1502. In the close, near the north aisle of the nave, as at Chichester, was the Clochard or Campanile. There are several points of resemblance, of which this is one, between Chichester and Salisbury. This bell-tower was taken down in “cold blood” as we may say, or by way of “restoration” in 1799. About the same time Wyatt made many structural and other alterations, which are detailed with undisguised approbation by contemporary writers. Dodsworth gives particulars received from Wyatt himself. They are in form and language, and, I may add, conceit, so like what the “restorer” of to-day uses of a building which he has done his best to ruin, and are besides so interesting, historically, that I am tempted to quote some sentences. Wyatt was first let loose on Salisbury about 1789. He went to work without a doubt or a scruple. The Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels were “defects.” He “expressed his astonishment at the temerity of their builders. They were destroyed, though the consent of their owners had to be obtained first. Their fragments were used in the alterations, some in the organ screen, some in the choir. The walls and buttresses of the Lady Chapel were restored, the windows brought to their proper level, the seats which disfigured it removed, and the pavement was raised a few inches to give an ascent from the choir.” The phrase “proper level” is good. Then came almost the worst of Wyatt’s “restorations.” It was found “necessary” to remove several monuments. New sites were prepared--the result being what we now see in the nave, where the mixture of the fragments of one monument with the ruins of another of a different period has not even the merit of being picturesque. The tomb ascribed traditionally to Bishop Poore and nine others were destroyed, portions being neatly arranged as in a kind of museum “along the plinth between the series of pillars on each side of the nave.” Two small porches, one at the north end of the great transept, and the other on the south side, near the Lady Chapel, “were considered as neither adding to the beauty, nor to the convenience of the building. They were accordingly taken down.” The “accordingly” is another happy expression. We might be reading a report of Sir G. Scott, or Mr. Pearson, or Mr. Butterfield. Yet this was written close on a hundred years ago. A very interesting series of paintings, representing the months or the Zodiac, were on some of the eastern bays of vaulting. They were highly admired, we are told, by those “regard the mere antiquity of an object as a sufficient title to admiration.” These are precisely the words used lately by an architect about the north transept of Westminster Abbey. Wyatt promptly wiped off the traces of these decorations, and “judiciously coloured the arches and ribs of the choir like the original stone. As the Campanile intercepted the most striking view of the structure it was taken down.”

When we enter by the west door the first view is hardly so striking as the first view of the exterior. A closer examination and a comparison with other cathedrals shows how far Salisbury is in advance of everything else of its kind. The exquisite lightness and delicate proportions of the steeple are equally apparent in the nave and its aisles, the slender columns, the pointed arches, the light triforium, the lancets of the clerestory, and the soaring vault. The same “order,” as the classical architect would say, is practically carried round the church. As we advance eastward, and reach the crossing of the transepts, we observe the curious four centred buttressing arches erected by Bishop Wayte, 1415, to increase the supports of the tower. Similar precautions are seen in Canterbury, Hereford and Wells Cathedrals. Under the tower is a brass plate in the pavement which was placed here in 1737, and marks the fact that the spire inclines twenty-two and a half inches to the south-west. This inclination, which is perfectly visible on the outside, was first calculated by Sir Christopher Wren, who put iron “bandages” round the masonry, and made other repairs. No increase of the deflection has been observed since his time, although the spire was struck by lightning in 1741. The choir screen is by Skidmore. The organ is divided. Some ancient glass may be seen in the triplet windows at the ends of the transepts. The altar stood to the eastward of the second or choir transept, and some parts of the old stalls are still to be seen, but almost everything in this part of the church is new. The Audley chantry (1524), in the latest style of Gothic, is on the north side. There are some remains of the very curious and interesting if not unique iron chantry of Lord Hungerford, formerly in the Lady Chapel, made into a kind of pew or cage, about a hundred years ago, by the heirs of the family when Wyatt destroyed it. A somewhat similar example, or part of one, the Chantry of Edward IV. in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, has already been “restored” away.

The Lady Chapel is probably not correctly described by that name. The whole church is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It is perhaps more correctly called Trinity Chapel. Here the colouring, modern, of the roof, and other amendments and improvements made and suggested by Scott, for the most part, though Clutton also showed himself a worthy successor of Wyatt, are exceedingly offensive.

The cloisters are entered from the south-western transept. They are slightly later, in the same style as the church, but were evidently not built till it was finished. In churches of the old foundation cloisters were an ornament, a luxury, and not a necessity, as at Canterbury or Gloucester, where they were needed for the use of the monks. The cloisters of Salisbury are the largest in England, each walk being, within, 181 feet long, or from wall to wall, without, 195 feet. Over the east walk is a fine Library, containing many illuminated and other manuscripts, including some early liturgies.

THE CASTLE OF ANGERS

HENRI JOUIN

On the 7th of September, 1661, as night was falling, a company of musketeers crossed the drawbridge of the Castle of Angers. Scarcely had they entered the fortress when these musketeers expelled the garrison. This was the King’s order. A sub-lieutenant commanded these men: it was d’Artagnan. A prisoner had been confided to him: this was Nicholas Fouquet. The superintendent’s servant, La Vallée, and his physician, Pecquet, taking pity upon Fouquet, who was the prey of a quartan fever, obtained leave to share his captivity. The Castle then had shut within it three prisoners, who were subjected to the most rigorous treatment. We know by the official account of Fouquet’s detention that the bed in which he had to sleep on the 7th of September “was not of the cleanest.” Now for the rest, d’Artagnan, and his two officers, Saint Mars and Saint Leger, maintained an extreme reserve towards their guests. There is no news from outside. Pecquet, before leaving Nantes, had, it is true, fortuitously met Gourville. It was from him that Pecquet got the news of the arrest of Pellisson and the exile of Madame Fouquet. Sorrowful presage! The accused one began first of all to prepare his defence. He wrote several memoirs, but at the end of a few days, writing was prohibited. The president of Chalain, suspected of having wished to bribe a musketeer was also apprehended to be conducted to the Bastille. Louis XIV., Colbert, Le Tellier, and Séguier kept their eyes fixed on Angers. Fouquet lived there until the first of December, having no other pastime between his two attacks of fever than to contemplate with a melancholy look “_la fillette du Roi_.” This was the name by which they designated an iron cage, in which, according to legend, a queen of Sicily had been shut up by her husband “for having built the church of Saint-Maurice at Angers too magnificently.” This legend was not calculated to reassure the Superintendent. He knew that he was accused precisely of having used the money of the Treasury to build Vaux-le-Vicomte, the magnificence of which had offended the King. If, through misfortune, the thought of keeping him under such good guard, between these bars, had entered the heads of his enemies, of what advantage was the little bit of liberty that he still enjoyed? Moreover, he was not unaware of the refinements of cruelty that had been practiced for the past two centuries upon the prisoners of State. The “_fillette du Roi_,” made at the order of Louis XI., had not been empty at any period. Had not Cardinal Balue, bishop of Angers, known this instrument of torture at the _Château d’Onzain_, near Blois? Fouquet might well be afraid, for there entered perhaps far more passion than justice in his disgrace. They did not go so far, however, as to put him in a cage. The vigilance and the loyalty of d’Artagnan, and the thickness of the walls of the Castle seemed to Fouquet’s enemies, a sufficient safeguard against all danger of his escape. What is then the Castle of Angers?

Péan de la Tuilerie--the _d’Argenville angevin_--comes to tell us. “The Castle is at one of the extremities of the city, on a rock, and surrounded with deep moats, cut in the rock, which is an escarpment on the bank of a river that flows at its base, and from which they lift, by means of a very convenient machine, all the munitions which are necessary. It is of a triangular form, all built of slate and flanked by eighteen round towers and a crescent, which is the gate of the faubourg.”

Péan de la Tuilerie wrote in 1778. His description is still very nearly exact. To speak the truth, this military post forms less of a triangle than a pentagon, but the appearance of the Castle remains what it was in the last century. The girdle of moats has been, however, a little changed. The Maine rolls no longer beneath its towers. It is not, as you will readily believe, that the course of the river has been turned. To change the position of the fortress would have been difficult. They considered it simpler to fill up the canal. Some factories, some counting-houses, and some private dwellings occupy the place of the moat, and the traveller seeks vainly at the present moment for that “very convenient machine,” of which Péan speaks. Moreover, it would be useless. The Castle has no more need of munitions. English, Bretons and Normans have left it. Their attacks are ended. Angers ignores to-day those savage incursions and perpetual threats, which for several centuries, troubling its repose, kept its independence in check. Then the Castle had to sustain repeated sieges. The silence that envelops it has grown out of the clank of arms and the cries of the combatants, who many times made this stone colossus tremble to its very foundations. Ah! the noble rampart of the city! Its great days and its glorious past, haunt my memory.

Who chose its site? Count Eudes, under the royal approbation of Charles the Bald. The Plantagenets seem to have embellished and fortified the north turret of the building, but it is to Louis IX. that the primitive castle is indebted to its transformation into a military post. Its imposing towers, firmly planted on their bases of schist, are the work of Louis IX. Its large canals hollowed out of the slate date from the last years of the Fifteenth Century. They give character to the citadel. You judge it most impregnable in measuring the depth of its moats with your eye; but how many times had the enemy been repulsed by the rain of projectiles thrown from the Castle?

In 1444, the English approached the city. They ravaged the country mercilessly, and pillaged and ruined according to their good pleasure. The army encamped near the fortress, intending to open the siege on the following day. On the following day the English troops took their departure. What could have been the cause of their retreat? One of the English chiefs was hit in the forehead by a shot and instantly killed. This occasioned such confusion that the assailants fled. An artilleryman thus saved the city.

The Fifteenth Century was, moreover, the great epoch for the Castle of Angers. Louis XI., profound politician and crafty of action, meditated upon uniting the Duchy of Anjou to the crown of France. This was shown on two occasions. The second time, the Prince being at war with Bretagne had levied previously upon the city of Angers for subsidies for his troops. He came again. Behnard Guillaume Cerizay, his secretary, and three chamberlains entered Angers. They convoked and consulted with the notables. At this time _plébiscites_ were unknown. People did not have the character to defend their rights and their interests. They were minors. But if the Angevin populace could have spoken, it would not have spoken better than its representatives. The notables chose for France. “The assembly,” wrote M. Port, “through the voice of the Chancellor of Anjou, pledged its faith to the King. On the following day, Louis XI. had come to the Castle offering a favourable reply to all requests, granting to the most zealous petitions leave to have a house in the city.” The Castle in which this act of submission to the King of France took place, was formerly the property of the Duc d’Anjou, who was at the same time Count of Provence and King of Sicily, René, son of Yolande, poet, amateur, bibliophile, collector, and patron of poets, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry-workers and illuminators who filled his court,

“_René le prince populaire,
Doux artiste aux yeux éblouis
Des peintres que, pour lui plaire
Lui fait offrir le roi Louis._”

It was at the Castle of Angers, in a kind of little manor-house flanked by four turrets, that René first saw the light on the 16th of January, 1409. The Maugine was his nurse in the citadel, the Maugine, Tiphaine, to whom in after years he erected a tomb, the touching inscription upon which is from his hand. Married at the age of twelve to Isabelle de Lorraine, René d’Anjou, fighting everywhere for twenty-five years, made only rare appearances at the Castle of Angers; but soon comes the death of Isabelle and upon it quickly follows the second marriage of the prince with Jeanne de Laval, upon which he establishes his residence at Angers. Farewell war, diplomacy, treaties and conquests! René yields himself up to the charm of his young wife. To her the poet consecrates his loving stanzas of _Regnault and Jeanneton_, a kind of autobiography of the husband and wife. _The Shepherd and the Shepherdess_, a delicate pastorale composed in honour of Jeanne de Laval, will be put into its final form under the skies of Provence, at Tarascon; but it is in the Angevin country that the poet finds all his ideas as he strolls at the side of the beautiful Jeanne. The writers of the time show us René going out of the Castle without escort, accompanied solely by his royal spouse, and taking the _chemin de la Baumette_. After passing through the field-gate, the illustrious personages got into a fisherman’s boat below the _Basse-Chaîne_, and descended the Maine to that solitary hermitage, where Rabelais will presently come to study at the Cordeliers.

It is also from this Castle that René d’Anjou issues to cross his “beautiful city” on foot to his dear hermitage, where he loved to consort “with the citizens of Angers, the artists and the men of learning of his Court.”

René disappeared; Louis XI. reigned. A century elapsed. Henri III. yielded to the request of the common people of the city who wished for the destruction of the Castle. The citadel suffered. Letters patent from the King authorized the governor of Anjou to “raze to the ground the stones of all the walls, towers, lodgings, buildings and fortifications of the Castle.” Already the workmen are called. Who will direct this barbarous piece of work? Donadieu, Sieur de Puycharic, claims this honour. Puycharic is the governor of the Castle. They grant his wish. But a man of heart, a soldier, can he conscientiously annihilate the ramparts of a city? This military post of which he is the keeper has its past of glorious traditions. It is worthy of respect. Its services, it seems to him, ought to be taken into consideration. This is what Puycharic thought aside, and for ten years--you have read of this--for ten years--with clever ingenuity, Puycharic kept his army of destroyers busy without destroying anything. He yielded to the necessities of the hour by demolishing the outside buildings of the Castle which he had inherited from his predecessors; a garden pavilion, built by Louisa of Savoy, disappeared; the field-gate, whose defence was difficult, was altered; two useless towers lost their turrets, and in proportion as the waggons full of stones left the Castle, the common people exulted, proud of their success. From time to time, it is true, public opinion complained of the slowness of the workmen at the town’s expense. “Isolated during the troubles,” M. Port has said of him, “in the heart of the Angevin league, the valiant captain was not merely satisfied to guard the place but bravely attacked the foe in the field, one day the Lion d’Angers, another Brissac, Rochefort, Beaupreau, and Chemillé, fighting for about ten years in every kind of warlike adventure, fought against and fighting, holding the country in hand and preparing the place for the King.” His headquarters were at the Castle. It was here that he rallied his men and came to heal his wounds between encounters. Peace being restored, Puycharic, being appointed senechal of Anjou, dismissed his workmen, who were greatly astonished and perhaps greatly pleased at having repaired, embellished and fortified the Castle that they thought they were pulling down.

Puycharic died in 1605. His funeral was magnificent. He rests in the chapel of the Jacobins; and his brothers, the bishops of Saint-Papoul and d’Auxerre erected to his memory a monument surmounted by his statue.

THE PAGODA OF TANJORE

G. W. STEEVENS

Southward out of Madras you still run through the new India, the old India of the nursery. Now it is vivid with long grass, now tufted with cotton, then dark-green with stooping palm-heads or black with firs; anon brown with fallow, blue with lakes and lagoons, black with cloud-shadowing pools starred with white water-lilies. Presently red hills break out of the woods, then sink again to sweeping pastures dotted only with water-hoists and naked herdsmen.

Then in the placid landscape you are almost startled by the sight of monuments of religion. A tall quadrangular pyramid, its courses lined with rude statues, a couple of half-shaped human figures, ten times human size, a ring of colossal hobby-horses sitting on their haunches like a tea-party in Wonderland--they burst grotesquely out of meadow and thicket, standing all alone with the soil and the trees. No worshippers, no sign of human life near them, no hint of their origin or purpose--till you almost wonder whether they are artificial at all, and not petrified monsters from the beginning of the world.

These are the outposts of the great pagodas of Southern India--those sublime monstrosities which scarce any European ever sees, which most have never heard of, but which afford perhaps the strongest testimony in all India at once to the vitality and the incomprehensibility of Hinduism. The religion that inspired such toilsome devotion must be one of the greatest forces in history; yet the Western mind can detect neither any touch of art in the monuments themselves nor any strain of beauty in the creed. Both command your respect by their size: that which is so vast, so enduring, can hardly, you tell yourself, be contemptible. And still you can see nothing in the temples but misshapen piles of uncouthness, nothing in the religion but unearthly superstitions, half meaningless and half foul.

The nearest approach to a symmetrical building is the great pagoda of Tanjore. Long before you near the gate you see its tall pyramidal tower, shooting free above crooked streets and slanting roofs. Presently you see the lower similar towers, so far from the first that you would never call them part of the same building. In reality they are the outer and inner gateways--_gopura_ is their proper name--built in diminishing courses, garnished with carving and statuary. From a distance the massive solemnity of their outlines, the stone lace of their decorations, strike you with an overwhelming assertion of rich majesty. But you are in India, and you wait for the inevitable incongruity.

It comes at the very gate. The entrance is not under the stately gopura, but under a screen and scaffolding of lath and plaster daubed with yellow and green grotesqueness--men with lotus-eyes looking out of their temples, horses with heads like snakes, and kings as tall as elephants. There is to be a great festival in a day or two, explains the suave Brahman; therefore the gopuras are boarded up with pictures beside which the tapestries of our pavement-artists are truth and beauty. You walk through scaffold-poles into a great square round the great tower, and with reverence they show you that colossal monolith, the great bull of Tanjore. I wish I could show you a picture of him, for words are unequal to him. In size he stands, or rather sits, thirty-eight hands two. His material is black granite, but it is kept so piously anointed with grease that he looks as if he were made of toffee. In attitude he suggests a roast hare, and he wears a half-smug, half-coquettish expression, as if he hoped that nobody would kiss him.

From this wonder you pass to the shrines of the chief gods. The unbeliever may not enter, but you stand at the door while a man goes along the darkness with a flambeau. The light falls on silk and tinsel, and by faith you can divine a seated image at the end. Next you are at the foot of the great tower, and the ridiculous has become the sublime again. Every story is lined with serene-faced gods and goddesses, dwindling rank above rank, a ladder of deities that seems to climb half-way up to heaven. Then the Brahman shows you a stone bull seated on the ground, like a younger brother of the great one. “It is in existence,” he says, throwing out his words in groups, dispassionately, as though somebody else were speaking and it were nothing at all to do with him--“it is in existence--to show the dimensions--of four other bulls--which are in existence--up there.” You lay your head back between your shoulder-blades, and up there, at the very top, among gods so small that you wonder whether they are gods or only panels or pillars, are four more little brothers of the hare-shaped toffee-textured monster below.

Reduplication is the keynote of Hindu art. The same bulls everywhere, the same gods everywhere, and all round the cloistered outer wall scores on scores of granite, fat-dripping, flower-crowned emblems, so crudely shapeless that you forget their gross significance--but all absolutely alike. Next the Brahman leads you aside to piles and piles of what look like overgrown, gaudily painted children’s toys. This is an exact facsimile of the Tower, reduced and imitated in wood. It is all in pieces, but at the festival the parts are fitted together and carried on a car. Every god sculptured on the pyramid is represented in a section of this model, waiting to be fitted into his place. Only what is richly mellow in tinted stone is garishly tawdry in king’s yellow and red lead--and again you tumble from the sublime to the infantile.

Next, a little shrine that is a net of the most delicate carving--stone as light and fantastic as wood; pillar and panel, moulding and cornice, lattice and imagery, all tapering gracefully till they become miniatures at the summit. It is a gem of exquisite taste and patient labour. And the very next minute you are again among flaming red and yellow dragon-tigers and duck-peacocks, and the one is just as holy and just as beautiful to its worshippers as the other. From which objects of veneration the Brahman passes lightly to the domestic life of the frescoed rajahs of Tanjore. “This gentleman--marry seventeen wives--all one day--doubtless in anxiety of getting son.” It is quite true. The Rajah, having but three wives and no child, resolved to marry six more young ladies, and collected seventeen to choose them from. But the fathers and brothers of the rejected eleven were affronted; and rather than have any unpleasantness on his wedding-day, his Majesty tactfully married the whole seventeen, nine in the morning and eight in the afternoon. “And here,” pursued the Brahman automatically, showing a tank, “he will let in water--and here he will play--with all his females--and all that.”

That is all, except to write your name in the visitor’s book. As I went in to sign, I noticed a band of musicians standing at the door and thought no more of it. But as my pen touched the paper, suddenly reedy pipes and discordant fiddles and heady tom-toms began to play “God Save the Queen.” A huge chaplet of muslin and tinsel, like a magnified Christmas-tree stocking, was cast about my neck; betel and attar-of-rose were brought up in silver vessels, and flowers and fruits on silver trays. The pagoda keeps its character to the end: the compliment was sublime--and I ridiculous.

Yet the temple of Tanjore is the most simple and orderly of all its kind. Visit the great pagoda of Madura and you will come out mazed with Hinduism. All its mysteries and incongruities, its lofty metaphysics and its unabashed lewdness, seem to brood over the dark chambers and crannying passages. The place is enormous. Over the four chief gateways rise huge pyramid-towers, coloured like harlequins, red tigers jostling the multiplied arms and legs of blue and yellow gods and goddesses so thick that the gopuras seem built of them. In the pure sunlight you almost blush for their crudity, just as you would blush if the theatre roof were lifted off during a matinée. But inside the place is nearly all half-lighted, dim, and cryptic. You go through a labyrinth, that seems endless, of dark chambers and aisles. Now you are in thick blackness, now in twilight, now the sun falls on fretwork over pillared galleries and damp-smelling walls. But as the light falls on the pillar you start, for it is carved into the shape of an elephant-headed Ganesh, or a conventionally high-stepping Shiva. On you go, from maze to maze, till there is no more recollection of direction or guess at size: you are lost in an underground world of gods that are half devils; you hardly distinguish the silent-footed, gleaming-eyed attendants from the stone figures. Some of the fantastic images are smeared with red-lead to simulate blood: all drip with fat. A heavy smell of grease and stagnant tank-water loads your lungs.

You feel that you are bewitched--lost and helpless among unclean things. When you come out into the sun and the cleaner dirt of the town, you draw long breaths. If you could understand the Hindu religion, you tell yourself, you would understand the Hindu mind. But that, being of the West, you never, never will.

THE VENDRAMIN-CALERGI

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

Following a vagabond method, let us regain the Grand Canal and give some details upon the Vendramin Palace, now occupied by the Duchesse de Berry. It is of a rich and noble architecture, probably by Pietro Lombardo; in the entablature and above the windows, little cherubs uphold storied shields adorned with exquisite taste, and contribute much elegance to this façade. A garden of somewhat restricted space contributes some green trees alongside this palace, which would not be distinguished from the others if the large white and blue posts with ropes did not indicate, by means of the fleur-de-lis painted upon them, a princely and semi-royal dwelling.

After having obtained permission to visit this palace, _valets_ in green livery welcome you very politely at the base of the staircase, the steps of which are laved by the waters, fasten your boat to the posts, and take you into a vestibule, where you wait until all the formalities of admission are complied with.

This vestibule is just as long as the palace; it opens upon a kind of court similar to the courts of our hotels.

Two hitched gondolas and a few earthen pots containing small firs and other poor plants that are dying of thirst are all that adorn the bareness of this vast waiting-room that is found in every Venetian palace,--an antechamber that is also a landing-place.

In the centre of this vestibule, a little to the left, a wide stairway between two walls is seen where the same decoration of miserable plants appear. A narrow carpet covers the steps leading to an immense hall resembling a vestibule, without furniture and without adornment. From this, you enter the dining-room, the walls of which are hung with family portraits.

This is a long square room. It is very well lighted by two enormous French windows.

An oval table stands in the centre and a screen shields the entrance. Upon the wall to the right you notice the portrait of the Duchesse de Bourgogne in a blue velvet dress; also of the Comte d’Artois and Madame la Princesse de Lamballe and several others. Upon the left wall opposite, is the full length portrait of Louis XV., and on either side of him, his daughters.

In this dining-room, a masked door opens into a dark chapel, so small that it will barely hold six persons. You can count four _Prie-Dieu_ there. On the right, a large door opens into a very modern drawing-room filled with pictures and a great number of small pieces of furniture: English tables, Parisian coffers,--nothing is lacking to produce that charming home-like feeling that is derived from luxurious trifles. Two portraits of Her Royal Highness are placed opposite one another; that by Lawrence in a dress of white satin, with a rose on her breast, exhibits the most charming little foot that can possibly be admired in a white satin slipper.

On walking through the dining-room, you enter, by a door on the left, a little salon, which seems relatively small after the preceding rooms, and perhaps overwhelmed by the sumptuous furniture that adorns it. It contains thirty splendid pictures; this is a kind of Uffizi or _Salon carré_, where scarcely one of the greatest names in painting is missing. Among these great masterpieces shines a Virgin by Andrea del Sarto, so beautiful that it would make cold chills run through the most elementary connoisseur and the most hide-bound and prosaic Philistine.

This Salon illumined by a soft and well distributed light, seems to me the select spot, the very heart of the building, and I left it with deep regret to go and visit the famous salon which contains those two porphyry columns whose value is so great that they are worth more than the entire palace. They are placed in front of a door, and thus produce as little effect as the lapis lazuli in the “Salon Serra” in Genoa, which you might well believe were painted and varnished, and which strongly resemble a metallic blue watered silk.

There is still another salon, but it is not remarkable in any way. In the four corners, four bracket pedestals support four busts: those of the Duc de Berry, of Charles X., and other members of the royal family.

The Vendramin-Calergi has gained an additional interest in
recent years on account of the fact that Richard Wagner died in
it on Feb. 13, 1883.--E. S.

A VISIT TO THE OLD SERAGLIO, CONSTANTINOPLE

PIERRE LOTI

The rising sun gilds the mosque, gilds it under the fresh plane-trees; in the air there is a white mist which is like the original veil of day. The little Turkish _cafés_ begin to open, and two or three _minims_ are already being shaved in the open air under the trees.

It is evidently very early, and I have time to stop here before returning to Pera. I sit down under the trellis ordering coffee with those warm little _bonbons_ that they sell here in the morning, and I think this better than the most delicate breakfast.

About two hours afterwards, about eight o’clock, a carriage takes me back to Stamboul in the company of an aide-de-camp of His Majesty; and in a solemn and desert-like quarter, where the grass pushes up between the stones of the pavement, our coachman stops before a forbidding enclosure like that of a Mediæval fortress.

These walls shut in a little corner of earth which is absolutely special and unique, and which is the extreme point of Oriental Europe,--a promontory that juts out towards neighbouring Asia, and which was, moreover, for many centuries, the residence of the Caliphs and a place of incomparable splendour. This, and the sacred suburb of Eyoub contain all that is most exquisite in Constantinople: this is the “Old Seraglio,”--a name that alone evokes a world of dreams.

They open for us a door in this wall, and, then, as soon as the barrier is passed, the delicious melancholy of interior things is revealed to us, and the dead Past takes us to itself and envelops us with its winding-sheet.

At first, there is silence and shadow. Empty, desolate courts, where the neglected grass pushes through the flag-stones and where still live ancient trees that were contemporaries of the magnificent sultans of former times: black cypresses as tall as towers, plane-trees which have acquired unwonted forms, all hollowed out by time, being supported only by immense shreds of bark and bent like old men.

Then come the galleries with colonnades in the ancient Turkish style, painted with strange frescoes, under which the great Solomon forced the ambassadors of the European kings to enter. And this place, happily never open to profane visitors, has not yet become a common promenade for tourists; behind the high walls, it preserves a little mysterious peace, it is all imprinted with the sadness of dead splendour.