Chapter III: Old Provence (1)

The Papal Palace at Avignon

By Charles Dickens

[Footnote: From "Pictures From Italy."]

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-piecrust, battlemented wall, that never will be brown, tho it bake for centuries.

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very quaint and lovely. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the street rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions--the man who had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning--might have opened it quite naturally.

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk delightful, tho the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral, where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self-possest dog, who had marked out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be.

Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack; while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there to see state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, tho we dropt some money into a prisoners' box outside, while the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high, up, and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit.

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, tho it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and marshaled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't know how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she had resided in the palace from an infant--had been born there, if I recollect right--I needn't relate.

But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror--looking back and walking stealthily and making horrible grimaces--that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.

Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to this courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another minute--in the dismal tower of oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks down into it.

A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, as of old.

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.

High up in the wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day, I ask her what it is. She folds her arms,, leers hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la Question!"

The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out again.... A cold air, with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark lofty tower; very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung those who were past all further torturing, down here. "But look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would without the aid of the directing-key--where they are. "What are they?" "Blood!"

In October, 1791, when Revolution was at its height here, sixty persons; men and women ("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"); were murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone of the strong building in which the deed was done, remains upon another, there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.... Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again, into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the hat with the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round as grave.

"Voilà!" she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin energy, tho it is no light weight. "Voilà les oubliettes! Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!"

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside--of wives, friends, children, brothers--starved to death, and made the stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the accurst wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph.

I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! The light in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon! It can not look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to a traveler who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well.

Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.

When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick wall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its household implements are scraps of dress against the wall; and a sober looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin) knitting at the door--looked exactly like a picture by Ostade.

I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given, me the assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.

The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of the Inquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. I could think of little, however, then, or long afterward, but the sun in the dungeons.

The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its chambers of cruelty--that was its desolation and defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber and its prisons.

The Building of the Great Palace

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

It will now be convenient briefly to trace the growth of that remarkable edifice, at once a castle and a cloister, a palace and a prison, which constitutes the chief attraction of Avignon to-day, and which, altho defaced by time and by modern restorers, remains in its massive grandeur a fitting memorial of the great line of pontiffs who have made that little city famous in the annals of Christendom.

We have seen that Pope John XXII., having allotted a piece of land to his nephew, Arnaud de Via, for the erection of a new episcopal palace, was content to modify and enlarge the old one for pontifical uses, and that Benedict XII., with characteristic straightforwardness, purchased the new fabric from Arnaud's heirs and, having handed it over to the diocesan authorities, proceeded to transform the old building into a stately and spacious apostolic palace for the head of Christendom.

He was moved to this purchase after mature reflection, for it was a matter of urgent importance that the pontiff of the church of Rome should possess a palace of his own at Avignon as long as it might be necessary for him to remain there. The relation between Curia and Episcopate being thus clearly defined, Benedict appointed a compatriot, Pierre Poisson de Mirepoix, master of the works, and, since about two-thirds of the existing palace dates from Benedict's reign, Pierre Poisson may be regarded as its first architect.

More, probably, is known of the construction of the papal palace of Avignon than of any other relic of medieval architecture. Thanks to the researches of Father Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, and other scholars, the sums paid to the contractors, their names, the estimates of quantities, the wages of the chief workmen, and the price of materials, are before us, and we can trace day by day and month by month the progress of the great pile. The whole of the craftsmen, with the exception of the later master painters from Italy and some northern sculptors, were either Avignonais, Gascons or Provençals.

The first work undertaken by Pierre was the enlargement of the papal chapel of John XXII. This was doubled in length, and the lavish decorations executed by John's master painter, Friar Pierre Dupuy, were continued on the walls of the added portion; payments for white, green, indigo, vermilion, carmine and other pigments, and for colored tiles, testify to the brilliancy of its interior.

Meanwhile work was proceeding on the massy new tower, the Turris Magna, now known as the Tour des Anges, the best preserved of all the old towers. The foundations were laid on April 3, 1335, and it was roofed with lead on March 18, 1337. The basement formed the papal wine-cellar; the ground floor was the treasury, or strong room, where the specie, the jewels, the precious vessels of gold and silver and other valuables were stored; many payments are recorded for locks and bars and bolts for their safe-keeping within the ten-feet-thick walls of the tower.

The next great work put in hand was the east wing, which was raised on a space left by John's demolished, or partially demolished, structure. On November 20, 1337, two masons (lapiscidarios), Pierre Folcaud and Jean Chapelier, and a carpenter, Jacques Beyran, all of Avignon, contracted to carry out the plans of a new architect, Bernard Canello, for the completion of Benedict's private apartments, and on the same day Lambert Fabre and Martin Guinaud, housewreckers, were paid eighty-three gold florins on account, for the demolition of the old buildings. This wing, since wholly remodeled by the legates and the modern corps of engineers, comprised the papal Garde Robe, the Garde Meuble, the private kitchen and offices and, on the floor above, the papal dining-room, study and private oratory. The walls were, of course, embattlemented, and in 1337 the most exposed portions of the new buildings were defended by a stout rampart....

The whole ground floor, 110 feet by 33, was occupied by a great reception hall (Camera Paramenti), where distinguished visitors were accorded a first welcome before being admitted to a private audience, or accorded a solemn state reception in consistory, as the import of their embassy demanded. The popes were also used to receive the cardinals there, and two doorkeepers were appointed who must be faithful, virtuous and honest men and sleep in the hall; their office being one of great trust, was highly paid, and they were generally laymen. It was probably in this hall that St. Catherine was received by Clement VI. The Avignon conclaves were held there, for on December 31, 1352, four hundred and fifteen days' and nights' labor were employed in breaking down the walls between the dining-hall and the Camera Paramenti, clearing away the stones and making secret chambers for the lord cardinals, in which chambers were twenty-eight cells....

On September 5, 1339, John's old belfry was pulled down and Jean Mauser de Carnot, who asserted he had excavated 11,300 basketfuls of rubbish, was paid at the rate of twelve deniers the hundred for the work. Evidently these were good times for the basket makers as well as builders. December 22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond Durand and Jacques Gasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed new tower, with its barbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was on the site and which retained the appellation of the Tour de la Campane, or Bell Tower. The embattlemented and machicolated summit, but not the chastelet, of this mighty tower has recently been restored; its walls are nearly twelve feet thick....

Benedict's last undertaking was the erection of the Tour de Trouillas, next the Tour des Latrines, and on April 20, 1341, sixteen rubbish baskets were bought for the "Saracens that excavated the foundations of the turris nova." The Tour de Trouillas, tallest and stoutest of the keeps of the mighty fortress, is 175 feet high as compared with the 150 feet of the Tour de la Campane, and its walls fifteen feet thick as compared with twelve feet. It should be noted, however, that the latter tower appears the taller owing to the elevated ground whereon, it stands....

Having bought, by private agreement or by arbitration, all the houses adjacent to the palace on the south side, Clement next proceeded to demolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful wing of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the great new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August 9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock above the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons had raised their beautiful building.

On that day, by order of our lord the pope, one hundred florins were handed over by the papal chamber to Master John of Loubières to distribute among the masters to celebrate the placing of the keystone in the vaulting of the new chapel of the palace and the completion of the said chapel. On All Saints' Day of that same year Clement recited (a month before his death) the first solemn mass in his great new chapel and preached a most eloquent sermon, praising God for the completion of his life's work. The lower hall, most famous of judicial chambers in Christendom and final Court of Appeal in all questions of international and ecclesiastical law, was later in opening.

Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely gardens on the east, with their clipt hedges, avenues of trees, flower-beds and covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by channels of water. John maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild and strange beasts; stately peacocks swept proudly along the green swards, for the inventory of 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some old and some young, whereof six were white.

* * * * *

But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass of architecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable walls and towers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains briefly to be touched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement left it, some analogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in that it stood outwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine of exquisite and luxurious art.

The austere Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of the consistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorial decorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate; but with the elevation of the luxurious and art-loving Clement VI., a new spirit breathes over the fabric. The stern simplicity and noble strength of his predecessor's work assume an internal vesture of richness and beauty; the walls glow with azure and gold; a legion of Gallic sculptors and Italian painters lavish their art on the embellishment of the palace....

Such, in brief outline, was the progress of the mighty fabric and its internal decoration which the great popes of Avignon raised to be their dwelling-place, their fortress, and the ecclesiastical center of Christendom. Tho shorn of all its pristine beauty and robbed of much of its symmetry, it stands to-day in bulk and majesty, much as it stood at the end of Clement VI.'s reign, when a contemporary writer describes it as a quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers and constructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to look upon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the Audientia, the Capella major, and the terraces: and these were so admirably planned and contrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found in the whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the great chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a staging of stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was unparalleled for range and beauty.

The glowing splendor of frescoed walls was enhanced by gorgeous hangings and tapestries and by the magnificent robes and jewels of popes and cardinals. Crowds of goldsmiths--forty were employed at the papal court--embroiderers and silk mercers, made Avignon famous thoughout Europe. In 1337, 318 florins were paid for eight Paris carpets; in 1343 Clement VI. paid 213 florins for green silk hangings, and 254 florins for carpets adorned with roses; in 1348, 400 gold and silver vessels turned the scales at 862 marks, 5 ounces; in the inventory of 1369, despite the fact that the most precious had been sent to Rome, the gold vessels were weighed out at 1,434 marks, 1 ounce; the silver at 5,525 marks 7 ounces.

A cardinal's hat cost from 15 to 40 florins, and in 1348, 150 florins were paid for one piece of scarlet for the pope, and 75 to 100 florins for the garniture of a riding cloak. Clement VI. spent 1,278 florins in the purchase of cloth of gold, woven by the Saracens of Damascus; one payment to Jacopo Malabayla of Arti for summer and winter clothing for the papal household amounted to 6,510 florins, and the same obviously Hebrew merchant received 10,652 florins in 1341 for cloth and ermine and beaver; in 1347 Clement's furrier received 1,080 ermine skins, whereof 430 were used in one cloak, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two hoods, and 88 for nine birettas; in 1351, 2,258 florins went to Tuscany for silk, and 385 for brocade to Venice.

The richness of the papal utensils beggars description; jeweled cups, flagons of gold, knife handles of jasper and ivory, forks of mother-of-pearl and gold. A goldsmith in 1382 was paid 14 florins for repairing two of the last-named implements. The flabelli, or processional feather fans, cost 14 florins; Benedict XIII., paid 300 florins for an enameled silver bit; the Golden Roses cost from 100 to 300 florins. Presents of jewels were costly and frequent. Gregory XI. gave 168 pearls, value 179 francs, to the citizens of Avellino; Clement VII. presented the Duke of Burgundy with a ring of gold, worth 335 florins; an aguière of gold and pearls, valued at 1,000 florins, and two tables each over 200 florins. Richer gifts were lavished on sovereign princes. Reliquaries were of prodigious value; the gold cross containing a piece of the true cross at the Célestins weighed fifteen pounds. In 1375 a silver arm for the image of St. Andrew cost over 2,566 florins.

The cardinals were equally munificent. The most striking example of lavish splendor is afforded by the State banquet given to Clement V., by the Cardinals Arnaud de Palegrue and Pierre Taillefer in May, 1308. Clement, as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and twenty chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest tapestries from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with white ermine; the sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold.

The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who each received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts. Fifty cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which consisted of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in all. The meats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic stags, boars, horses, etc. After the fourth service, the cardinal offered his holiness a milk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold rings, jeweled with an enormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100 florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty prelates were given rings and jewels, and twelve young clerks of the papal house and twenty-four sergeants-at-arms received purses filled with florins.

After the fifth service, a great tower with a font whence gushed forth five sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run during the interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then followed a concert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two trees--one of silver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded with sugared fruits of many colors. Various wines were then served, whereupon the master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed dances before the guests. Clement, by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber, where, lest he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wine and spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances and distractions of many kinds.

There is no reason to believe that the Avignon popes, either in their household expenditure or in their personal luxury, were more extravagant than their Roman predecessors or successors. Yet amid all this luxury, strange defects of comfort appear to the modern sense. Windows, as we have seen, were generally covered with wax cloth or linen, carpets were rare, and rushes were strewn on the floors of most of the rooms. From May to November, 1349, more than 300 loads of rushes were supplied for use in the dining-rooms and chambers of the apostolic palace. Subsequently mats were introduced, and in 1352 Pierre de Glotos, mat-maker to the palace of our lord and pope, was paid for 275 cannae of matting for the palace of Avignon and for the palace beyond the Rhone and the new chapel.

The Walls of Avignon

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

Intimately associated with the history of the palace of the Popes of Avignon is that of the unparalleled circuit of walls and towers which defended the city from the scourge of organized robber bands during the fourteenth century. The earliest quadrilateral fortifications embraced a relatively small area consisting of the Rocher des Doms and the parishes of St. Agricol, St. Didier, and St. Pierre; these walls, demolished and rebuilt on a more extensive scale in the twelfth century, embraced an area easily traceable on the modern map, from the Porte du Rhone, round the Rues du Limas, Joseph Vernet, des Lices, Philonarde, Campane, Trois Colombes, to the Rocher.

It was these fortifications that the Cardinal St. Angelo forced the citizens to raze in 1227. Until the acquisition of Avignon by Clement VI., the city was an open one and only defended by a double fosse. The origin of the papal walls has already been traced, and their subsequent fate may now be briefly given. The assaults of the Rhone proved more destructive than human artillery. The walls and towers having been hastily raised, towers fell by reason of bad foundation, and the upkeep of the fortifications was a continual drain on papal and communal finances.

In 1362 an irresistible flood of waters overthrew the Fortes St. Michel and Limbert, and large breaches were often made by these recurring inundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need of access to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of new gates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified to meet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The gates most exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of St. Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della Rovere by the addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers, a drawbridge, a new fosse which communicated with the great fosse before the main walls. Other modifications took place during the Huguenot wars.

Notwithstanding many repairs during the intervening centuries, the fortifications had, under the second Empire, suffered sad degradation, and at length Viollet-le-Duc was entrusted with their restoration. The famous architect set to work on their southern side and had completed about one-third of the restoration when the disastrous issue of the Franco-Prussian war arrested all further progress until the Third Republic feebly resumed the task. The walls along the Rhone, especially useful in time of flood, were backed with stone, their battlements and machicoulis renewed. The visitor, however, will need no reminder that the present passive aspect of the ramparts conveys but a faint impression of their former state, when a broad and deep fosse, seven feet by twelve, washed their bases, above which they raised their once impregnable curtains full thirty feet.

Two of the old gates have been demolished--the Porte de Limbert in 1896, and the Porte de l'Oulle in 1900--the former, many times repaired, was the only existing example of the external aspect of a medieval gate, the latter had been rebuilt in 1786 in the Doric style. A new gate, the Porte Pétrarque, now the Porte de la République, was erected by Viollet-le-Duc when the walls were pierced for the new street; the Porte St. Dominique is also new. These noble mural defenses, three miles in circuit, twice narrowly escaped demolition--at the construction of the railway, when they were saved by a vigorous protest of Prosper Mérimée, and in 1902, when, on the pretext that they blocked the development of the city, the municipality decided to demolish the unrestored portions. Luckily the intervention of a public-spirited Prefect of Vaucluse proved successful, and they were again rescued from the housewrecker's pick. No visitor to Avignon should omit to walk or drive round the famous ramparts.

Their stones have been subjected to careful scrutiny by antiquarians and the masons' marks (tacherons)--about 4,500--carefully examined and reduced to about four hundred and fifty types. Opinions differ as to the meaning of these curious signs, but there is little doubt that M. Maire's suggestion is the correct one--the workmen were paid by the piece, and each had his own private mark which he cut on the stones he laid and thus enabled the foreman to check his work.

We begin at the Porte du Rhône, and skirt the older part of the walls on the northwest with their different style of corbels and machicoulis. M. Maire has no hesitation in assigning this portion to the time of Clement VI., by reason of the coarser nature of the masons' marks. Turning southwards, we pass the Porte St. Dominique, and reach the Porte St. Roch (formerly the Porte du Chamfleury, and only opened at plague times) and the Porte de la République. We soon note the unrestored portions, the site of the old Porte Limbert, and turn northward to the Porte St. Lazare.

Before we reach this gate we may fitly make a digression, and in pious memory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetière to the grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2. A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory--the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. It is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of his gentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. His house, a charming little hermitage approached by an avenue of plane trees not far from the cemetery, was sold in 1905, and a few relics were bought and still are cherished by the rare friends the somewhat self-centered philosopher made in the city. The present owner has preserved the library and study, where the "Essay on Liberty" was written, much as it was in Mill's days.

To the peasants who met the tall, bent, spare figure, musing and botanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as "Monsieur Émile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to England, Mill was wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the Protestant Church in Avignon: two hundred for expenses of public worship; one hundred for the poor, always charging M. Rey to write to England if any further need arose.

Mill, a great Englishman of European fame, to the amazement of his French friends, was followed to his last resting-place by no more than five mourners. As we write news comes that the civic authorities have decided to recall to posterity the association of the great thinker with Avignon by giving the name of Stuart Mill to a new boulevard, and that a bust has been unveiled to his memory near the pleasant city he loved so well. Mill was much gratified that his pamphlet on "The Subjection of Women" converted Mistral to the movement for their enfranchisement, and their legal equality with men.

Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

The royal city of Villeneuve, altho geographically and politically sundered from Avignon and the County Venaissin, was socially and economically bound up with the papal city. The same reason that to-day impels the rich citizens of Avignon to dot the hills of Languedoc with their summer villas was operative in papal times, and popes and cardinals and prelates loved to build their summer places on the opposite bank of the Rhone.

How silent and neglected are the streets of this once wealthy and important city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In the hot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the narrow High Street, it appears to awaken echoes in a city of the dead.

Making our way northward, we pass the restored seventeenth-century portal of the palace of the sainted Cardinal of Luxembourg; the weather-worn, neglected, late Renaissance portal of the so-called Hôtel de Conti; the ruined Gothic portal of the palace of Cardinal Pierre de Thury, through which we pass to the old court-yard and a chapel subsequently restored and now used as the chapel of the Grey Penitents.

We pass many another relic of departed grandeur, and beyond the Place Neuve on our right come upon a great portal which opens on a vaulted passage leading to one of the most bewildering and extraordinary congeries of ruined monastic buildings in France, now inhabited by a population of poor folk--two hundred families, it is said--who, since the Revolution, have settled in the vast buildings of the once famous and opulent Charterhouse of Villeneuve. Founded by Innocent VI., three years after his elevation to the papal chair, and enriched by subsequent endownments, the Charterhouse of the Val de Bénédiction, the second in importance of the Order, grew in wealth and importance during the centuries until it was sacked and sold in small lots during the Revolution to the ancestors of the present occupants.

The circuit of its walls was a mile in extent; its artistic treasures were prodigious. The Coronation of the Virgin came thence; the Pietá of Villeneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of Notre Dame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its vast possessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined by bombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in its present picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast. The state is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years are passed the more valuable artistic remains will have been swept and garnished and restored.

As we return from the Chartreuse we turn left along the Place Neuve, and climb to the mighty fort of St. André, which occupies the most venerable site in the royal new city, for on the hill where it stands tradition relates that St. Cesarie, Bishop of Arles, was buried, and that there, in the sixth century, the first Benedictines settled. The primitive settlement, destroyed in the ninth century, was extensively rebuilt in 980, and within its walls, churches were dedicated to St. Andrew, St. Michael, and St. Martin. In the twelfth century the rich and powerful monastery, a strongly fortified, self-sufficing community, was held under the counts of Toulouse, and from their overlordship it was subsequently admitted by the counts to be within the territory of the republic of Avignon, whose consuls in 1210 compelled the abbot to demolish his walls and promise never to rebuild them.

In 1292 Philip the Fair was permitted to settle a small community there, to whom he accorded in 1293 valuable privileges and the same protection he granted to his good city of Paris. Philip, to whom the position was valuable as a frontier post, erected a castle there, maintained a royal garrison, and the new settlement became known as the New Town (Villeneuve). The walls and towers then raised were rebuilt in 1352 by John the Good, who exacted a toll, known as St. Andrew's penny, for maintenance on all merchandise that passes through the Senechaussée of Beaucaire.

Of these majestic ruins, restored in the sixteenth century and again in recent times, the Tour des Masques at the west angle with its simple battlements is the oldest portion, the massive machicolated towers that frown over the main entrance having been raised by John the Good. The ruined ravelin dates back to the seventeenth century. We enter and stroll about the desolate interior, crowned by a tiny Romanesque chapel of the twelfth century, that well deserves its name of Our Lady of the Fair View (Notre Dame de Belvézét), with a graceful apse (restored). From its summit, or from the tall old watch-tower of the monastery, a marvelous view is obtained of the gaping ruins of the Charterhouse of Avignon, the County Venaissin, the Cévennes, Mount Ventoux, and the distant Alps.

In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed in the fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a young captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed the city of Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists who had declared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon seized at St. André that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the English from its harbor.

The papal soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of Villeneuve, who dubbed them "patachines" ("pestacchina," Ital. for slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols--a pleasantry repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet "luzers" (lizards) against the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning themselves against the hot rocks of Villeneuve.

Descending the stately stairway that leads to the foot of the Rocher des Doms, and turning to the left, we soon reach the house of the "gardien du pont," who will admit us to all that remains of the miraculous pontifical structure of the twelfth century. The destructive hand of man and the assaults of the Rhone have dealt hardly with St. Benezet's work. Ruined during the siege of 1226, it was repaired in 1234-37, and in 1349 knit to the papal fortress at the Avignon end. In 1352, when Clement VI. rebuilt four of the arches, it is described as of stone and wood; it was cut during the siege of Benedict XIII., and repaired, or rebuilt, in 1418 and 1430; in 1602 three arches collapsed; in 1633 two more fell, and in 1650 the gaps were bridged by wooden struts and planks, which were carried away in 1670 by ice-floes.

Owing to the interminable dispute between the monarchy and the papacy as to liability for its repair, each power claiming jurisdiction over the Rhone, all attempts to preserve it from ruin were abandoned in 1680, when Louis XIV. refused either to allow the legates to take toll for the necesary repairs, or to undertake them himself.

Little is known of the original bridge, which consisted of twenty-two semi-circular arches (Viollet-le-Duc gives eighteen), much lower than the present elliptic ones, which date back to the thirteenth century, according to Labaude--or to the fifteenth century, acording to other authorities--when the bridge, having proved too low-pitched, was raised to its present level, and the flood arches over the piles were built. The four subsisting arches were, with the bridge chapel, restored during the last century. The old bridge formed an elbow upstream on the Villeneuve branch of the Rhone.

The chapel of St. Nicholas, too, has suffered many vicissitudes. The primitive Romanesque building was raised to the level of the new footway by dividing the nave into two floors and building a flight of steps, supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque apse, whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse and a Romanesque nave.

The "Pont d'Avignon" is known to every French-speaking child, and with many variants the old "ronde" is sung and danced from the remotest plains of Canada to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. The good folk of Avignon, however, protest that their "rondes" were not danced perilously on the narrow Pont St. Benezet, but under its arches on the green meadows of the Isle de la Barthelasse, and that "Sur" in lieu of "Sous" is due to northern misunderstanding of their sweet Provençal tongue.

Orange

By Henry James

[Footnote: From "A Little Tour In France." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.]

I alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments. The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are so fine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theater. But for these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and theater, a place of some importance--should have given its name to the heirs apparent of the throne of Holland, and been borne by a king of England who had sovereign rights over it. During the Middle Ages it formed part of an independent principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the marriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the family of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that it was made over to France by the treaty of Utrecht.

The arch of triumph, which stands a little way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an imposing vestige of the Romans. If it had greater purity of style, one might say of it that it belonged to the same family of monuments as the Maison Carée at Nîmes. It has three passages--the middle much higher than the others--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the passages are richly sculptured, and the whole monument is covered with friezes and military trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, tho its workmanship is praised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Its general mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkably perfect; but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity of restoration. It is not, on the whole, of absorbing interest.

It has a charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright yellow color, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and on that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded by its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and a low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, very sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks of the memory. I can take down the modest composition, and place it before me as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fair French road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; the disgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; the solitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing along the "chaussée;" and in the middle I see the little ochre-colored monument, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, as everything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning.

It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman theater, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not prevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through a succession of little streets concerning which I have no observations to record. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are more impressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above the place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a citadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed by Louis XIV.

Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six meters high, and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone, simply laid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or even of Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all Orange put together--and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town--the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive the staves of the "velarium"--bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; tho how these flat arches were applied, or incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess to explain.

You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in proportion about as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the lodge of the custodian, who introduces you to the interior of the theater. Here the mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingenious Romans treated simply as the material of their auditorium. They inserted their stone seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and planted their colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It contains three doors, the middle one being the highest, and having above it, far aloft, a deep niche, apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly a confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished castle.

The whole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the softness of melancholy, of the theater at Arles; but it is more extraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies being enacted there--

"Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line."

At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immense in height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, as you face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to the theater. Various fragments are visible which refer themselves plausibly to such an establishment; the greater axis of the hippodrome would appear to have been on a line with the triumphal arch. This is all I saw, and all there was to see, of Orange, which had a very rustic, bucolic aspect, and where I was not even called upon to demand breakfast at the hotel. The entrance of this resort might have been that of a stable of the Roman days.

Vaucluse

By Bayard Taylor

[Footnote: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]

This district borders on the desert of the Crau, a vast plain of stones reaching to the mouth of the Rhone and almost entirely uninhabited. We caught occasional glimpses of its sealike waste between the summits of the hills. At length, after threading a high ascent, we saw the valley of the Durance suddenly below us. The sun, breaking through the clouds, shone on the mountain-wall which stood on the opposite side, touching with his glow the bare and rocky precipices that frowned far above the stream. Descending to the valley, we followed its course toward the Rhone with the ruins of feudal "bourgs" crowning the crags above us.

It was dusk when we reached the village of Senas tired with the day's march. A landlord standing in his door, on the lookout for customers, invited us to enter in a manner so polite and pressing we could not choose but do so. This is a universal custom with the country innkeepers. In a little village which we passed toward evening there was a tavern with the sign "The Mother of Soldiers." A portly woman whose face beamed with kindness and cheerfulness stood in the door and invited us to stop there for the night. "No, mother," I answered; "we must go much farther to-day." "Go, then," said she, "with good luck, my children! A pleasant journey!"

On entering the inn at Senas two or three bronzed soldiers were sitting by the table. My French vocabulary happening to give out in the middle of a consultation about eggs and onion-soup, one of them came to my assistance and addrest me in German. He was from Fulda, in Hesse-Cassel, and had served fifteen years in Africa....

Leaving next morning at daybreak, we walked on before breakfast to Orgon, a little village in a corner of the cliffs which border the Durance, and crossed the muddy river by a suspension bridge a short distance below, to Cavaillon, where the country-people were holding a great market. From this place a road led across the meadow-land to L'Isle, six miles distant. This little town is so named because it is situated on an island formed by the crystal Sorgues, which flows from the fountains of Vaucluse.