"O princesso di Baus! Ugueto,Sibilo, Blanco-Flour, Bausseto,Que trounavais amount sus li roucas aurin,Cors subre-bèu, amo galoio,Dounant l'amour, largant la joioE la lumiero, li mount-joioDe Mount-Pavoun, de Crau li trescamp azurinEncaro vuei dins soun mirageSe representon voste oumbrage....Li ferigoulo meme an counserva l'óudourDe vòsti piado; e m'es vejaireQue vese encaro,—galejaire,Gentiéu, courriòu e guerrejaire,—Que vese à vòsti pèd canta li troubadour."
"O princesso di Baus! Ugueto,Sibilo, Blanco-Flour, Bausseto,Que trounavais amount sus li roucas aurin,Cors subre-bèu, amo galoio,Dounant l'amour, largant la joioE la lumiero, li mount-joioDe Mount-Pavoun, de Crau li trescamp azurinEncaro vuei dins soun mirageSe representon voste oumbrage....Li ferigoulo meme an counserva l'óudourDe vòsti piado; e m'es vejaireQue vese encaro,—galejaire,Gentiéu, courriòu e guerrejaire,—Que vese à vòsti pèd canta li troubadour."
"O princesso di Baus! Ugueto,Sibilo, Blanco-Flour, Bausseto,Que trounavais amount sus li roucas aurin,Cors subre-bèu, amo galoio,Dounant l'amour, largant la joioE la lumiero, li mount-joioDe Mount-Pavoun, de Crau li trescamp azurin
"O princesso di Baus! Ugueto,
Sibilo, Blanco-Flour, Bausseto,
Que trounavais amount sus li roucas aurin,
Cors subre-bèu, amo galoio,
Dounant l'amour, largant la joio
E la lumiero, li mount-joio
De Mount-Pavoun, de Crau li trescamp azurin
Encaro vuei dins soun mirageSe representon voste oumbrage....Li ferigoulo meme an counserva l'óudourDe vòsti piado; e m'es vejaireQue vese encaro,—galejaire,Gentiéu, courriòu e guerrejaire,—Que vese à vòsti pèd canta li troubadour."
Encaro vuei dins soun mirage
Se representon voste oumbrage....
Li ferigoulo meme an counserva l'óudour
De vòsti piado; e m'es vejaire
Que vese encaro,—galejaire,
Gentiéu, courriòu e guerrejaire,—
Que vese à vòsti pèd canta li troubadour."
"O princesses des Baux! Huguette,—Sibylle, Blanchefleur, Baussette—vous qui là-haut pour trône aviez les rochers d'or,—corps exquis en beauté, âmes allègres,—donnant l'amour, versant la joie,—et la lumière, les monticules—de Mont-Pahon, les landes azurées de la Crau,"Dans leur mirage d'aujourd'hui—reproduisent encore votre image....—Les thyms eux-mêmes ont conservé l'odeur—de vos traces; et il me semble—que je vois encore, guillerets,—courtois, coureurs et guerroyeurs,—que je vois à vos pieds chanter les troubadours."Mistral.
"O princesses des Baux! Huguette,—Sibylle, Blanchefleur, Baussette—vous qui là-haut pour trône aviez les rochers d'or,—corps exquis en beauté, âmes allègres,—donnant l'amour, versant la joie,—et la lumière, les monticules—de Mont-Pahon, les landes azurées de la Crau,
"Dans leur mirage d'aujourd'hui—reproduisent encore votre image....—Les thyms eux-mêmes ont conservé l'odeur—de vos traces; et il me semble—que je vois encore, guillerets,—courtois, coureurs et guerroyeurs,—que je vois à vos pieds chanter les troubadours."
Mistral.
CHAPTER XX
AN INN PARLOUR
After dinner—which by the way was of extraordinary excellence—we were invited to the parlour of mine host, and felt like travellers in some old romance on the eve of antique adventures. Nothing antique, however, happened, except, indeed, the odd gathering of the family and the guests of the hotel, and the talk that went circling cheerfully round the fire in the little dull-tinted room. The dulness of colouring was the result of long use; everything having faded into harmony and grown together through long and affectionate association.
Besides Madame and a pretty niece who was staying with her, there were two youths employed in the seed industry, who lived in the town and came in every evening for their dinner. They were on terms of friendly intimacy with the host and hostess who evidently regarded their office in other lights than that of mere commercial enterprise. They looked upon their guests as under their charge, and their desire was to minister to their comfort and pleasure in every possible way. Monsieur and one of the youths played draughts, Madame sewed and chatted, and Mademoiselle, the niece, made herself generally agreeable. Between the two youths was a mild rivalry for her smiles. We, as strangers, were treated with special courtesy.
Madame and her husband did the honours of their homelysalonmost gracefully. The conversation turned on the Monuments of St. Remy, its objects of interest which strangers come to see, and its excursions: Les Baux above all, on the other side of the Alpilles.
"Une ville très ancienne, sculptée dans les rochers, toute élevée au dessus de la vallée—mais une cité vraiment remarquable, Mesdames. Vous devez certainment y aller."
And we decided at once to do so, arranging to have a trap to take us across the mountains on the following morning.
Meanwhile we gathered further information about St. Remy itself. There isLa Maison de la Reine Jeanne, in which the family of the famous Mistral has lived for generations. In the foundations were discovered the bones of an elephant and various weapons, all supposed to be relics of Hannibal's passage through the country at the foot of the Alpilles.
The famous poet, however, does not live in this historical home at St. Remy, but at Maillane, a little village of the plain about seven kilometres distant. The house, to which many a pious pilgrimage has been made, is square and white and stands in a little shady garden with a high wall and iron gate facing the village street. Thanks to the poet and his colleagues the ancient costume still lingers at Maillane and at St. Remy, and on Sundays the women go to church in the soft, white fichu and picturesque head-dress that one has learnt to associate with the women of Arles. The Provençal type is characteristic; dark eyes and hair, olive skin, and a singularly fine carriage of the figure and head.
GROVE AT ST. REMY.By E. M. Synge.
GROVE AT ST. REMY.By E. M. Synge.
Mistral and his fellow Félibres have much to do with the survival of art and old customs. One of this little band of modern troubadours lives still, as we learn,in the house of his family at St. Remy, and Mistral (as we have seen) is not far away across the plain, faithful always to the land that he loves so deeply and labours so hard to preserve in its ancient beauty, ancient faiths and ancient language. I had afterwards the privilege of visiting Mistral at Maillane and M. Girard and his wife at St. Remy, and of hearing them speak with intense enthusiasm and affection of the Provence that is passing away. M. Girard's angry melancholy at the erasure of all character and individuality from lands and peoples was pathetic and impressive.
He exhibited his fine collection of ancient furniture, crockery, pewter, and a thousand beautiful relics: among them a splendid example of the "Crêche," that quaint Provençal institution with which the children are made happy every Christmas. It is a modelled representation of the coming of the Magi, but on this root idea the artists of Provence have grafted many additions. The Virgin, beautifully sculptured and coloured, sits in a hilly landscape and holds a sort of grand reception: Magi and other distinguished visitors surround her, while shepherds, merchants, publicans and sinners, varied by ornate donkey-drivers and goatherds, are perched on hill-tops among companionable windmills about their own size; and peasants are lavishly distributed in very green meadows in the vicinity; all congregated to offer homage to the Madonna and the haloed Babe. Thecrêcheis reverently veiled with a curtain on ordinary days, and its owner drew this aside and lighted the candles to illumine the treasured heirloom which has delighted so many generations ... and not alone of children.
Our hostess of the Hôtel de Provence was learned about the seed industry of St. Remy, and explained how ruthlesslyevery bloom is nipped off and prevented from seeding if it does not answer truly to its type. That was how the splendid flowers were achieved: viz., by a persistent interference with the ordinary course of nature—a fact which gives food for thought. Besides flowers, St. Remy has some fine vegetables to boast of. I had often noticed strange, unknown, gourd-like things, bright red or yellow, in the shop windows. Thecornichon serpent, "ce légume extravagant," as somebody calls it, is said to measure nearly two metres! But that immoderate object we never saw.
We were out betimes next morning, in the rose-garden which was glistening with dew. The Garden of Pleasure truly, guarded by the mournful cypresses! That seemed full of significance: the Roses of Pleasure sheltered by those dark trees of Experience and Grief.
Burns sings that "pleasures are like poppies"; and so perhaps they are, but there are some that are more like roses—Roses of Provence!
They are the sort of pleasures of which that strangepot-pourrithat we call happiness is made. For surely thereissuch a thing as happiness, though the science of it is as hard to learn as any other; perhaps harder than them all. Maybe it is necessary for us unteachable mortals to have torn our way—bruised and bleeding—through that black line of cypresses before we come in sight of it.
If happiness is a will-o'-the-wisp, is it so because of the eternal nature of things, or because, as Carlyle frankly insists, men are mostly fools? Would not every desired object assume an elusive character if as soon as we came in touch with it, we flew off on the hunt for something else? On this principle we must go through life unpossessed of our own fortunes, strangers and pilgrims in our ownkingdom. Barbara and I agreed that we would not forget to gather the roses in our Provençal garden for the illusive sake of other roses further afield.
In this little mediæval pleasure city it seemed natural to speculate about the life of the Middle Ages, and we wondered if part of the sad secret of those times lay in that inveterate habit of the human mind to look for the Earthly Paradise round the next corner. For then, possibly, there was only a sage here and there who had learnt the folly of it through long and footsore wanderings in the desert which stretches unremittingly between the traveller and his mirage Eden. The restless barbarous manners of the age must have made the truth harder to understand than it need be to us who have many centuries of growing experience behind us, both as a hereditary influence and as an object-lesson in the conduct of life.
Incessant war and struggle, with no great results, but only further struggle, further war as the fruit of the lifelong contest: such was the mediæval life, and no one saw its absurdity. Not a trace of the old Greek spirit remained; not a vestige of the philosophies of the East, except perhaps in the cloister, and even here, at its best, the religion partook of the objective character of the general life, and placed the site of "heaven" for the saint, as the sinner placed his happiness,—round the next corner.
In those mad, picturesque, mediæval days St. Remy used to be the country retreat of the Counts of Provence. They here retired from the excitements of their capital at Aix, the learned little city a few leagues to the northeast, beyond the Alpilles. We afterwards visited Aix, and found another larger town of plane-avenues, moredignified, more important, but almost as silent and forgotten as St. Remy itself. One could not but wonder what the Counts had found of country joys at St. Remy that they could not have commanded at the old city of Sextius with its shady ways and gardens.
ROMAN MONUMENTS, ST. REMY.By E. M. Synge.
ROMAN MONUMENTS, ST. REMY.By E. M. Synge.
But, in fact, the human mind seeks not merely a change from excitement to repose; it demands a change of scene and a change of thought-atmosphere for its own sake.
During the whole of our stay at St. Remy we lived in an atmosphere of roses. We could not gather enough of them to please our host; and we used to have great bunches in our rooms placed on the window-sill, so that the sunlight filtered through their petals; and over them we could see the garden of their birth and the pale mountains beyond. Our very dreams were of roses and rose-gardens!
One evening, inspired by their loveliness, I arranged a wreath of them in Barbara's hair, added a creamy shawl flowing to her feet, and stood back to admire the result. It was something to be proud of! Our dull, discreetrégimeof ladylike nonentities had disappeared, and there was the poetry, the unapologetic grace of the classic world.
Barbara rose to try to see herself in the minute mirror.
She gasped in dismay.
"No, no! youdareto take it off! There are some more roses to come yet." (The victim made a comic face of resignation.) "I wantprofusion."
"Youdo!" said Barbara, sitting down to laugh. "Am I to wear this costume when we go to Les Baux to-morrow?" she asked.
"It depends on the weather."
But, alas! as soon as active opposition was withdrawn, Barbara removed the improvised costume, took the rosesout of her hair and the vision of the ancient world faded away. When we went down to dinner we both of us had on our sombre prison garments.
And though Barbara laughed, I knew that the world was a sadder and a drearier place because of it!
"C'est le Moyen-age tragique,—l'acropole de la Provence féodale."Paul Mariéton.
"C'est le Moyen-age tragique,—l'acropole de la Provence féodale."Paul Mariéton.
"C'est le Moyen-age tragique,—l'acropole de la Provence féodale."
Paul Mariéton.
CHAPTER XXI
LES BAUX
In all Provence, perhaps in all Europe, there is no more astonishing relic of mediæval life than that "crater of a feudal volcano" Les Baux,[21]a veritable eagle's nest of a city in one of the wildest and highest points of the Alpilles. It is a morning's drive from St. Remy across the little range to its steep southern side.
We plunge straight into their heart and begin to mount by gradual windings through little valleys, arid and lonely. Dwarf oak, lavender and rosemary make their only covering. But for their grey vesture one might imagine oneself in some valley of the moon, wandering dream-bound in a dead world. The limestone vales have something of the character of the lunar landscape: a look of death succeeding violent and frenzied life, which gives to the airless, riverless valleys of our satellite their unbearable desolation. It might have been fancy, but it seemed that in the Alpilles there was not a living thing; neither beast nor bird nor insect.
As we ascended, the landscape grew stranger and more tragic. The walls of rock closed in upon us, then fell back, breaking up into chasms, crags, pinnacles. The lavender and aromatic plants no longer climbed the sidesof the defiles; they carpeted the ground and sent a sharp fragrance into the air. The passes would widen again more liberally into battlemented gorges from which great solitary boulders and peninsulas rose out of the sea of lavender. Here and there this fragrant sea seemed to have splashed up against the rock-face, for little grey bushes would cling for dear life to some cleft or cranny far up the heights; sometimes on the very summit. As one follows the road it seems as if the heavily overhanging crags must come crashing down on one's head. What prevents it, I fail to this day to understand.
QUARRY IN VALLEY BELOW LES BAUX.By E. M. Synge.
QUARRY IN VALLEY BELOW LES BAUX.By E. M. Synge.
The whole place gives the impression of having been fashioned in some gloomy dream.
Every turn brings new and monstrous forms into view; the fantastic handiwork of earth's inner fires, patient modellings of the sun and wind. One thinks of the busy coming and going along these "footprints of the earthquake" in troubadour days, when knights and nobles flocked to the famous little court of the Alpilles, and the fame of the beautiful Passe Rose (Cecilia des Baux) brought troops of admirers from the ends of the earth—kings, princes, jongleurs, troubadours. Many a figure well known to history—the exiled Dante among them—has passed along these gorges. The Princes of Les Baux owned seventy-nine bourgs and had a finger in half the intrigues of Europe; a barbaric race, probably descendants of the ancient Ligurians, with wild mountain blood in their veins.
Further on, the valleys widen, and we see large oblong holes hollowed out of the creamy limestone, sometimes at regular intervals, producing an effect of arcades in the rock. Still further on we come upon majestic Assyrian-like portals, narrowing to the top in true archaic fashion and giving ingress to dark vestibules exciting to the fancy. They might well have been the entry to some subterranean Aladdin's palace whose gardens and miraculous orchards grow emeralds and diamonds as cherries grow in Kent. It was quite surprising to find that these grandiose excavations were the work of mere modern quarrymen still engaged in the prehistoric industry. Fine groups of horses and big carts and labourers before the Assyrian entrances had an effect curiously ancient and majestic. There was a time when the men of the Stone Age cut just such galleries and holes far up in the rocks at Les Baux and dwelt there like a flock of jackdaws, high above the hazard of attack.
It is asserted by the learned that the city, in fact, dates from the Stone Age, being inhabited by generation after generation of wild peoples, till gradually the dwellings were adapted to less uncivilised needs and added to by further sculpturing and excavation and by masonry whose material was hewn from the surrounding limestone.
In the city is a small museum containing many Stone Age implements.
It is indeed a place of strange memories.
In one of the tombs of the principal church was discovered the perfectly preserved body of a young woman with a mass of golden hair. The body crumbled to dust almost immediately, but the innkeeper took possession of the beautiful tresses, and called his inn in its honour,à la Chevelure d'Or.
Poor golden hair, it has set many a poet singing and vielle twanging in its day!
We have been wending our way steadily upward across a region that grows wider and more sweeping in its contours. The road rounds a corner. Suddenly we feel the wind in our faces and a blaze of light.
There is an exclamation, and then silence.
The carriage has stopped on the highest point of the pass just where the road has been cut through the low rock, and the driver points with his whip across a vast grey cauldron of a valley to a sort of shelving plateau high up on the shoulder of the opposite cliffs.
"Voilà Les Baux!"
The stupendous scene is spread out before us, wild and silent. The wind from the Crau to the south continues to blow through the cut in the rock; the sun glares down full upon the mysterious rock-city and lays bare the desolation of the valley.
Behind us a few sounds rise from the quarries, butthere is otherwise that perfect silence of high places which seems to brood and wait, eternally patient.
This is the spot which is said to have furnished Dante with the scenery of his infernal regions, and the mind at once accepts the tradition, so gloomily grand, so instinct with motionless despair is the scene.
Beyond measure extraordinary the aspect of that cluster of roofs and walls scarcely to be distinguished from the crags and escarpments out of which they grow—"window and vault and hall" fashioned in the living rock. Truly, as Madame our hostess had said, "une ville remarquable"!
The eye slowly learns to recognise the masonry among the natural architecture, to separate the fantastic limestone surfaces from broken dwellings and fallen towers.
The city, once containing about eight thousand inhabitants, is now reduced to about a dozen or so, and these all live at the entrance to the town on the ascending road from the valley by which the traveller from the mountains must approach this grim little court of mediæval princes. The road is comparatively new, for it cuts through some of the great houses, and high up above us as we pass, we see the columns and frieze of a fine stone mantelpiece overhanging the road, evidently belonging to some seigneurial dwelling. Perhaps it was here that the lady of the golden hair passed her tumultuous life—it could scarcely have been peaceful at that time, in that place—with that hair!
A few silent inhabitants watch us as we go by. A cat peers suspiciously over a wall of which the roof has fallen in; a mongrel hunts for garbage in a rubbish heap in a windowless mansion.
Before theChevelure d'Or[22]there is a little group ofmen. Here the trap is put up and we set forth on foot up the steep main street of this "mediæval Pompeii."
The whole place is built on the shelving shoulder of the cliff; a sloping ledge whence one might expect the town to slip down at any moment into the cauldron-valley; just as from time to time great fragments of rock have evidently rolled down to eternal oblivion.
The impression of universal greyness strengthens as we move upwards through the silent streets: grey walls, grey tiles, grey paving stones and grey escarpments above, on whose highest summit stands the rock-excavated castle, now apparently inaccessible except to adventurous birds—or, perhaps, the ghosts of the Princes of Les Baux who for their crimes are unable to rest in their graves.
We clamber up and down the ruinous higher part of the town, among those pathetic rectangles of masonry open to the sky where human life throbbed so eagerly a little while ago; we mount some perilous-looking steps on the cliff-side, in hopes of reaching the castle, but find ourselves emerging in mid-air upon the edge of the plateau overlooking from an appalling height the windy spaces of the Crau.
The mountains run sheer to the plain. It is exciting to stand on that great altitude which commands the stony desert towards Arles and the mouths of the Rhone. It has something of the character of the scene from the Appian Way looking towards Ostia and the mouths of the Tiber. The approach to Les Baux from Arles is in some respects more impressive than the route from St. Remy, for then the whole immense height of the cliffs is visible from the level of the plain. On one of the little heights that rise here and there on this plain stands the windmill of Daudet, which gives the title to his famousLettres de Mon Moulin.
If we stand on the highest point of the city, the eye can run along the line of the Alpilles. Another little wave of hills sweeps forward on to the plain precisely as the smaller ocean waves go curling in on the shore, followed by the foaming line of breakers. The Alpilles seem, indeed, to be breaking on the shore of the Crau like the billows of a great sea.
A pathway perilously near the edge of the cliff fails to help us to approach that strange castle from which we are still separated by many feet of sheer rock.
DAUDET'S WINDMILL.By Joseph Pennell.
DAUDET'S WINDMILL.By Joseph Pennell.
As we stand looking across the chasm at the stronghold, its position seems to invest it with additional mystery and a solitude almost horrible.
An evil shadow hangs about it, and yet there is but little of the building touched by visible shades at this magnificent moment of a Provençal day. A shadow that no sunshine can dispel surely haunts the fortress of Les Baux. For a second, in the hot glare, fancy plays one a trick, and there seems to be floating from the summit the blood-red banner which the princes used tounfurl on days of combat, when the air rang with the strange battle-cry of the house: "Au hazard Balthazar!"
They claimed descent from Balthazar, one of the Magi who visited the new-born Christ in the manger, and a six-rayed star was the device of the family.
Their association with Christianity was certainly not of a very intimate kind. They were a blind, blood-stained race, believing in violence and retaliation as the one and only means of grace in this world and troubling themselves, till the moment of death, very little about the next. They generally reaped as they had sown; feared, hated, and often dying deaths as terrible as those which they had inflicted on their victims.
It is thought probable that the Princes of Les Baux were descended from the Visigoths who settled in Arles in the fifth century. There is a vast and ancient work by "Le Sieur de Bouche, Docteur en Theologie," printed at Aix-en-Provence in the 17th century. In the section treating of the Visigothic Kingdoms the author gives an account of their King Euric and the events in Provence of the year 475.
"L'on croit communement," he says, "que c'est en ce temps que le chateau de la Ville de Baux en Provence a esté bâty et qu'il a tiré son nom de quelque illustre et grand Seigneur Visigoth et Prince de la Maison Royale, laquelle était de la famille desBatthes...."
From the fifth to the fifteenth century the line can be traced. At the end of that era Charles III. of France died, and then the barony of Les Baux with the whole county of Provence, was united to the crown of France. Louis XIII. gave it to the Grimaldi who came in state each year from Monaco, to take up their abode here; but they finally had to give it back to the crown.
LES BAUX FROM THE ROAD TO ARLES.By E. M. Synge.
LES BAUX FROM THE ROAD TO ARLES.By E. M. Synge.
It was surprising to find the remains of a hospital on the plateau above the city, with the niches visible for the beds of the patients; so surprising, indeed, that one is almost tempted to set learned authority at defiance. Perhaps, however, with all the brawls and tournaments of those amazing times, some such place was really necessary for repairing damaged knights.
As one looks downwards from this altitude, the city presents a strange aspect indeed. The grey buildings are flung together among the boulders, a tumultuous mass of human and natural handiwork. Truly
"The wind of ruin has passed this way."
"The wind of ruin has passed this way."
"The wind of ruin has passed this way."
Under the castle rock are the remains of a magnificent banqueting-hall, with caissoned vaulting like that of the Basilica of Constantine at Rome.
The Romans had been even at Les Baux, and it was they who built the walls which still here and there cling giddily to the sheer edge of the rock. But they had many successors. A Saracen tower stands shoulder to shoulder with Christian churches, and everywhere are signs of the great feudal era, with its religious enthusiasm, its din and its warfare.
Besides the Princes, who were Counts of Orange as well as Seigneurs of this little kingdom in the sky, there were powerful families in Les Baux.
The house of the Porcelets, one of the greatest, not only of the city, but of Provence, was nicknamed by King René,Grandeur des Porcelets. The Princes he calledInconstánce des Baux.
Out of the stern soil blossomed many a beautiful and accomplished lady, famed in troubadour song.
Berengaria des Baux was celebrated by the luckless Guilhelm de Cabestaing. Ranebaude inspired the world-famousSordel; the charms of Cecilia, the beautiful Passe Rose, as we know, kept half the troubadours of France busy with vielle and lute; and there were Étienette, Clairette, and a host of others whose true history one would give much to know.
WINDOW IN RUINED HOUSE OF A SEIGNEUR OF LES BAUX.By E. M. Synge.
WINDOW IN RUINED HOUSE OF A SEIGNEUR OF LES BAUX.By E. M. Synge.
But the scene of their lives is at once eloquent and reticent. Their homes are stonily silent, and not evena wild bird makes its nest in the tempting crannies of the great mantelpieces where the flames must so often have leaped and roared.
It is the mistral that roars now on winter nights in the grass-grown chimneys.
"De la solitaire demeureUne ombre lourde d'heure en heure,Se détache sur le gazon,Et cet ombre, couchée et morteEst la seule chose qui sorteTout le jour de cette maison."Alphonse Karr.
"De la solitaire demeureUne ombre lourde d'heure en heure,Se détache sur le gazon,Et cet ombre, couchée et morteEst la seule chose qui sorteTout le jour de cette maison."Alphonse Karr.
"De la solitaire demeureUne ombre lourde d'heure en heure,Se détache sur le gazon,Et cet ombre, couchée et morteEst la seule chose qui sorteTout le jour de cette maison."
"De la solitaire demeure
Une ombre lourde d'heure en heure,
Se détache sur le gazon,
Et cet ombre, couchée et morte
Est la seule chose qui sorte
Tout le jour de cette maison."
Alphonse Karr.
CHAPTER XXII
RAIMBAUT DE VACQUEIRAS AND GUILHELM DES BAUX
There is a particular stately house off the main street that suggested itself as the house of the golden-haired lady of Les Baux. Her burial place pointed to her having belonged to a family of importance. She was probably the wife of some tempestuous seigneur, and her life, cut short so early, had doubtless been one of storm and peril.
We were filled with an immense desire to know more of her, and as we piled conjecture on conjecture, she gradually assumed a definite form and personality, and we felt towards her a sort of baffled sympathy.
We called her Alazais, for that name had pursued us since we began to interest ourselves in the annals of Provençal chivalry.
She was graceful, delicately fashioned, with a certain reserved strength in the courtesy of her manner, and her eyes—Barbara and I were disposed to part company about her eyes, one leaning to blue, the other to brown; so we split the difference, and Alazais received large pathetic eyes of hazel.
We sit down on the parched hill-side by a heap of stones, and let the genius of the place work its spells.And busily it begins to weave as the afternoon light throws its glamour over the grey of rock and ruin, while a little wind comes up from the Crau and plays across the grass.
Raimbaut de Vacqueiras—Guilhelm des Baux—the mere names of these two strong personalities seem almost to summon them to their old haunts. Fancy kindles with this glowing sun and this tremendous scene; the forlorn city begins to stir and breathe, and then suddenly—some distant sounds from below seem strangely like the clatter of horses' hoofs—a twelfth-century cavalcade on its way to the castle!
And there are voices. They come up faintly through the sunshine, the voices of phantom riders who are hastening up the steep incline.
If at this precise moment Guilhelm des Baux and his troubadour friend with their followers are not where they seem to be, that is a mere incident of Time, and what is Time? An unreality, a mode of human thought. And so the insistent sense of the gay procession is not entirely a dream!
Certainly it is insistent! The clatter stops half way at the littlePlacein front of the church of St. Vincent, and there some of the company appear to go up the hill to the fortress.
One instinctively listens. Are they exchanging parting words or jests with one of their number who stays behind? Perhaps Alazais herself is leaving or entering her prison of a home and the gallant troubadour has knelt to kiss her hand. It would be all in the day's work of those times.
Possibly Raimbaut de Vacqueiras was seriously in love with her. One may be allowed the supposition.
We half shrink from it, however, when it comes to the point, for it would have meant so tragic a story.
If it was not one of the Princes of Les Baux who served up the heart of her troubadour-lover, Guilhelm de Cabestaing,[23]as a dish to his wife, it was quite in their most approved manner.
The luckless wife having, all unconscious, tasted of the dish, her lord informed her what it was and asked her how she liked it.
"I like it so well," she replied, "that henceforth I will taste no other," and she flung herself headlong from the castle window.
The horror of the tale lingers in the thoughts even as they turn to other things: to the figure of the lady herself leaning over the parapet of the little platform that hangs over the valley; to the scene in the castle after the tournament when the gay company has gathered in the hall, and there is singing and playing of the vielle and verse-making and dance; to the love-songs of Raimbaut, thrilling and sweet above those of other troubadours. He was but too fitted to attract: handsome, courtly, quick-witted, warm-hearted, a warrior poet, a knight and a singer.
Our poor heroine had no chance! One can see her in the splendid barbaric hall, among the throng. White was herbliaut, or robe, finely embroidered in gold, and her long mantle was fastened to the shoulder with a clasp of sardonyx.
It was not merely the beautiful dress, but the noble manner of wearing it that counted in those strange little courts of the Middle Ages. If the life was wild and terrible, at least it had an exquisite and gracious side.
One can picture Raimbaut, too, as he hastens to greet Alazais; one can see her smile of welcome, grave and gracious, half ceremonious, half encouraging.
And then the scene grows clearer and more realistic, for we come upon a piece of solid history.
Between Raimbaut and his famous patron, Guilhelm des Baux, many little disagreements had disturbed of late the long friendship. Raimbaut, accustomed to ride and fight and make verses by his friend's side, had perhaps presumed upon the intimacy, and once he went so far as to rally the Prince upon a recent incident that had amused the district.
His Highness had been casually ravaging the estates of his neighbour, Count Aimar de Valence, and one day when he was on the Rhone in a small boat, some fishermen caught him and he had to pay a large ransom to Count Aimar, and be ridiculed into the bargain by Gui di Cavaillon, whose tenso on the subject was taken up and sung by all Provence. For notwithstanding the new sentiment obligatory on all noble and knightly persons, the men and women of the twelfth century had by no means escaped from the base clutches of the ancientrégimewhence they sprang, and to them the misadventure and mortification of a neighbour seemed exquisitely funny.
Even Raimbaut's sense of humour had not advanced beyond that primitive stage.
His jests made the Prince very angry, and a quarrel arose between the two which overthrew once and for all their affectionate relations.
Then Raimbaut knew that the end had come to this era of his life, and that he must go forth to seek his fortunes anew.
And Alazais, in whose honour he had made such innumerable verses? He must leave her too—love and friendship had come to naught at one blow.
How beautiful she had looked in her white robes—perhaps there had been something in her glance that hadmade him forget consequences—everything—except—what folly it was!
Quick, pen and paper! Acansonhad darted into his head. Farewell to joy and Alazais! Such a tribute was only expected and fitting whatever might be his real sentiments.
Raimbaut had got well into the third stanza, and the lady's hair had been compared to six different resplendent objects, when he was summoned to take part in the events of the evening.
"Holy Mary!" cries the poet, "can a man not be left in peace while he writes acansonto his lady?"
He goes muttering imprecations on idle folk who cannot even pursue their idling without the help of busy people.
Les Baux is among the places to which is attributed one of the most famous of the Courts of Love, and to this tribunal one may imagine the troubadour wending his way through the crowds who are parading the streets, singing and dancing the mouresca, their ancient Saracenic dance, drifted westward from the mountains of the Moors.
Raimbaut is greeted with reproaches for his tardy arrival. The business of the Court is in full swing: gracious ladies and courtly knights are judging compositions according to the rules of minstrelsy, discussing nice points of honour and conduct, burning questions concerning the purity and preservation of the language, the rights and duties of the love-lorn.
"Is it better to have wisdom or to be irresistible with the ladies?" is one of the recorded subjects.
"Who loves the more, he that is broken by his lady's coldness, or he that is stimulated thereby to distinguish himself the more?"
"Which is harder to bear, debt or love-sickness?"[24]
The jury look in vain to Raimbaut for his usual brilliant judgments. Alazais, we may imagine, had guessed the cause of his silence.
And she knows her own fate as she sits there, beautiful and calm; perhaps accepting it as the will of heaven; perhaps struggling desperately against the thought that the troubadour would go forth into the world and quickly fill the place of love in his heart—perhaps with another love!
"Come, Raimbaut, what is your opinion?" cries one of the young men, "You were not wont to be so moody."
It had to be explained to him that they were discussing the pains and penalties of love, and whether after all it did not offer too much grief and longing and too little reward to make it worth the while of a reasonable being; the proposition of a truly bold spirit in a mediæval Court of Love!
Raimbaut's reply is recorded in the history of his life: "A man forges cold iron who thinks he can make a gain without a loss."
Perhaps he looked back to the scene of his boyhood, the little town of Vacqueiras across the mountains, and recognised how he had enlarged his world by coming here and how he had so lost things dear to him, never to be regained.
And now there was to be another gain—and another loss.
One seems to see him in close debate with himself as to what he should do. From the little house at Vacqueiras he used to gaze on the grey towers of Les Baux on the heights and dream of it as a goal beyond which no sane hopes could wander.
Now, from the farthest point of the windy tableland above the Crau he can see, or almost see, more than onefamous city where he would be welcome. Aix, the stately little home of learning with its hot springs dear to the Romans, had still to wait for two centuries for its good genius, King René, and suggested few possibilities to the troubadour.
To the south lay Arles and Marseilles. Count Barral of Marseilles would make a merry and an easy-going patron; but there was an obstacle in that direction.... Just a little this side of Arles, in the extreme corner of the Camargue, he catches sight of a faint outline which he knows to be the church of Our Lady of the Marsh, Ste. Maria de la Mar, "Les Saintes Maries," as it is now called throughout Provence, and down on his knees goes the warrior poet and says a prayer to the Blessed Three, begging that they may be favourable to him in the decisive step he is about to take, and that they will direct his choice.
And now he has to wrench himself from the present scenes and to make his many farewells, one among them hard indeed to face.
Yet perhaps it was best he should go. There had been gruesome tragedies at Les Baux——!
The day of departure could not be long delayed; the Prince was relentless.
Just one glimpse of a beautiful, haunting face as Raimbaut rides past the sombre palace where the lady of his heart lives a life which a woman of to-day would deem that of a condemned prisoner.
She stands at the open door among a lively group who have collected to see him pass, as indeed all the people of Les Baux are waiting to bid their beloved champion and singer God-speed.
He uncovers his head, and Alazais acknowledges his salute with the rest. And suddenly Raimbaut's heart gives a leap, for he knows what he did not know before!But the cavalcade goes on down the street, and he rides on to his fate.
Long, pensive shadows of the ruins are stealthily gaining upon the golden light on the grass when we begin to descend to the lower town. The main street, down which Raimbaut de Vacqueiras seems to have passed but a moment ago, is horribly silent, and the city spreads its desolation upwards to the sinister castle—where no blood-red banner is now flying.
We go on to the platform in front of the church of St. Vincent, and stand looking over the parapet. The gloomy vale below is filled with the mysteries of twilight.
From this point one could watch those who go and come to the city from the side of the mountains, for they must emerge from or pass through the Gate of the Rocks on whose threshold we ourselves had our first sight of Les Baux that afternoon. Even as we look we can discern a small speck against the limestone—exactly so must the figure of Raimbaut have appeared to any eye that watched him from this balcony of rock. Did not Alazais so watch? And did he not turn and take one last long look at the city he was leaving? Presently, as she gazes (as we now gaze), there is no longer a black speck against the white; the valley is empty—and a faint breath of wind comes down it like a sigh.
And presently the sun begins to approach the edge of the cauldron, and the taller buildings take on a tint of vivid rose colour. How that golden hair must have flamed up into glory if its owner watched there on such an evening!