Cities Of The Dawn Part 8

In the neighbourhood is a hermit's cell, very curiously contrived in the rock, where there was a secret way of escaping to the deeper recesses and hiding in case of danger. There was the stone bed of the hermit who is said to have been the first to introduce Christianity into the province.

His name is held in high esteem and a church is dedicated to his memory.

It was upon the plains adjoining that Charles Martel gained his final victory over the Saracens. The Roman amphitheatre in Arles is in a fine state of preservation, with towers added in the Middle Ages.

Soldiers have a mission hall to themselves in Ma.r.s.eilles, which is full of them, and to the hall many come for peace and light. The aggregate attendance is set down at nearly 6,000. The hall offers them a warm, comfortable room, well lighted, with books, games, newspapers, and other conveniences. A lady gives them elementary lessons in French, arithmetic, reading, and writing. When the soldiers sailed to Madagascar they took with them, in spite of the priests, 3,000 copies of the New Testament. The labours of the agents of the McAll Mission are numerous and persevering. Last year they held about 500 meetings for adults.

They have five schools for children, besides two sewing schools for girls. There are three mothers' meetings, with a fair attendance, and a mission choir does good work.

Of more recent formation, and perhaps less well known, is the Society of Christian Endeavour. It has given proof of its existence in various ways. It was the Endeavourers who organized four series of lectures, of three each, which were given in the halls of the Grand Chemin de Toulon and the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Friends were much encouraged to see each time a large and attentive audience; the lectures had been announced by means of handbills distributed in profusion throughout the district.

The society takes charge also of the visitation of the sick, and the distribution of tracts in the suburbs, at the gates of the factories and workshops, etc. Some of the sisters have taken to heart the work among fallen women, and in one case, at least, they have been able to s.n.a.t.c.h one of these poor creatures from her life of sin, and place her in a neighbouring refuge. And so good work gets done, quietly and un.o.btrusively.

There were put in circulation last year through the Librairie Evangelique 12,000 almanacks, 4,500 Bibles and Testaments, 1,000 tracts, 1,000 books of various kinds, and 600 copies of the _Relevement_. Open Bibles and Testaments are constantly displayed also in the large shop-window, where the pa.s.sers-by can stop and read at their leisure-a thing which a goodly number of them do not fail to do. Nor are the Italians, of whom there are many in the town, overlooked. But I pa.s.s on

'To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, I turn, and France displays her bright domain; Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleased with thyself whom all the world can please.'

And pleasant recollections come to us of Oliver Goldsmith, who, as he tells us, oft led

'The sportive choir With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire.'

The traveller who does as the writer did-leaves the train at Ma.r.s.eilles, and travels home slowly, will find as much pleasure in that little trip as in any part of his pilgrimage to the East.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AVIGNON.

Leaving Ma.r.s.eilles, the place at which I tarried next was Avignon, where I had comfortable and cheap quarters at the Hotel Grillon. It was there I saw the only drunken man that came under my notice in France. It was market-day, and the town was full of country-folk, many of whom came to my hotel for the excellent _dejeuner_ provided for guests; amongst then was an individual-not a farmer, for he did not wear a blouse-who managed, in spite of the fact that he had had quite enough, to consume the quart bottle of _vin ordinaire_ which, in French country hotels, every one is supposed to take at lunch and drink. The allowance was too much for me.

The lunch in every case was so excellent and tempting that I could not manage another heavy meal, and was glad to content myself with tea. One thing surprised me at all the country hotels, and that was the predominance of the military element. At every meal there were great numbers of officers present, and, so far as I could judge by the way in which these sons of Mars did justice to the good things provided, all in first-rate physical condition. Avignon is full of soldiers-we met them everywhere. All round the place the old walls seemed turned into barracks.

I stopped at Avignon to see the burial-place of John Stuart Mill. He was fond of Avignon, and spent a great deal of his life there. I am afraid, on the whole, he was rather a hard, cold man. He had a sister living in Paris, but, often as he pa.s.sed through it, he never went to see her. I suppose he had learnt a good deal from G.o.dwin's 'Political Justice,'

which had a great influence at one time among superior people, I remember, when I read it many years ago. You never see the book now.

G.o.dwin shows how wrong is the indulgence of social and family affection.

Perhaps the philosopher's way of looking at such things is the right one, after all. As I was sitting with a friend, a philosopher, on board the _Midnight Sun_, a gentleman, to whom we were neither of us particularly attached, pa.s.sed us. 'I think I could save that man's life,' I said.

'Why should you?' he asked; 'ought we not to think of the greatest happiness of the greatest number?' The reply was irresistible, and I acquiesced. 'Is it not the survival of the fittest,' I asked myself, 'that best accords with Nature's scheme? "If," says G.o.dwin, "you are in a boat with your father and a philosopher, and you meet with an accident, you are to save the philosopher and leave your father to perish."'

Mill's philosophy seems to have been of a similar character. At any rate, his sister's husband complained much, to an acquaintance of mine, of the philosopher's neglect. But his worship of Mrs. Taylor, who afterwards became his wife, was intense. They sleep together in the same grave in the cemetery, a mile or two out of Avignon. On the tomb is the inscription: 'John Stuart Mill, born 20 May, 1806, died 4 May, 1873,' and that is all. On the surface of the tomb-a plain white flat one-is a long eulogium of his wife, who had died before him. Her influence, the inscription records, has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be felt in time to come. Following her life, we are told, this earth would become the type of heaven. Her death is described as 'an irreparable loss.' The grave is separated by an iron rail from the rest, and is fringed with a few evergreens. It is plain and simple, and certainly much more in accordance with English taste than the rest.

One should visit the cemetery, if only to see what a French cemetery is-all glitter and gla.s.s, for many of the flowers placed on the tombs are under gla.s.s, and the place was quite dazzling in the summer-or, rather, the autumn-sun. The ground is carefully laid out, and well planted with trees and flowering shrubs. It seems to me of considerable extent, and people come there every day to place fresh flowers on the graves of those they love. It was early in the morning when I was there, yet a good many ladies were engaged in their pious work. By most of the graves were chairs placed for the mourners, who love to repair to such a place. It is evident that family affection is strong in France.

Avignon, I should think, is a pleasant place in which to reside, with its mild atmosphere and a nice country all round. There is a broad promenade (if a short one), with a monument to a native worthy, and trees; [Picture: The Castle of the Popes, Avignon. From Ca.s.sell's 'Cities of the World.'] but away in the interior the streets are narrow and ill-fashioned. It boasts a cathedral, a museum, and an Hotel de Ville, and tramcars run backward and forward all day long. In the early days of the French Revolution it was all for union and the 'Contrat Social' of the worthy Jean Jacques Rousseau; and yet it burst forth with its 15,000 brave brigands, headed by Jourdain. In 1789 the French a.s.sembly declared that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and that His Holiness the Pope should say what indemnity was reasonable.

'Papal Avignon,' writes Carlyle, in his wonderful 'French Revolution,'

'with its castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest town, with its purple vines and gold-orange groves; why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and gold tiara-not rather to Louis XI. with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband?

For good and for evil! Popes, Antipopes, with their pomp, have dwelt in the Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; there Laura de Sade went to hear Ma.s.s; her Petrarch tw.a.n.ging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner.'

Speaking of Petrarch, naturally one's thoughts turn to Rienzi, the Italian liberator, who fell because the Roman people were not at that time prepared for freedom. 'When,' writes Lord Lytton, in his splendid novel, 'Rienzi,' 'the capital of the Caesars witnessed the triumph of Petrarch, the scholastic fame of the young Rienzi had attracted the friendship of the poet-a friendship that continued, with a slight exception, to the last.'

Rienzi was one of the Roman deputies who had been sent to Avignon to supplicate Clement VI. to remove the Holy See back to Rome. It was on this mission that Rienzi for the first time gave indication of his extraordinary power of eloquence and persuasion. The pontiff, indeed, more desirous of ease than glory, was not convinced by the arguments, but he was enchanted with the pleader, and Rienzi returned to Rome laden with honours and clothed with the dignity of high and responsible office. No longer the inactive scholar, the gay companion, he rose at once to pre-eminence amongst all his fellow-citizens. Never before had authority been borne with so austere an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had thought to impregnate his colleagues with the same loftiness of principle, but in this respect he had failed. Now, secure in his footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people, and already a new spirit seemed to animate the populace of Rome. According to modern historians, Petrarch and Rienzi went to Avignon together, but, says Lord Lytton, it was more probable that Rienzi's mission was posterior to that of Petrarch. However that may be, it was at Avignon that Petrarch and Rienzi became most intimate, as Petrarch observes in one of his letters.

Perhaps it would have been better for Italy and better for the Roman Catholic Church had they never returned to Rome. If the reader doubts this, let him read Zola's 'Rome.' It was in 1309 that Clement moved his Court thither, and for sixty-eight years, until 1377, Avignon continued to be the Papal residence. The six successors of Clement V., all of them Frenchmen, like himself, were regarded by the Italians with feelings of dislike and contempt. They were little more than the ecclesiastical agents of the French monarchy.

The climax in the history of Avignon was reached when, in 1309, Clement V. removed thither from Rome, and made Avignon the seat of the Roman Pontiff and the metropolis of Christendom. By land, by sea, by the Rhone-the position of Avignon, writes Gibbon, was at all times accessible-the southern provinces of France do not yield to Italy itself; new palaces arose for the accommodation of the Pope and Cardinals, and the arts of luxury were soon attracted by the treasures of the Church. A part of the adjoining country had long belonged to the Popes, and the sovereignty of Avignon was purchased from the youth and distress of Jane, the first Queen of Naples and Countess of Provence.

Under the shadow of the French monarchy, amidst an obedient people, the Popes enjoyed a tranquillity to which they had long been strangers.

Italy deplored their loss, but the Sacred College was filled with French Cardinals, who regarded Rome and Italy with abhorrence and contempt.

What remains of the Papal Palace is now turned into barracks, of which you get a good view from the station as you leave for Lyons or Paris.

Dr. Arnold, who paid it a pa.s.sing visit, was struck with horror by the sight of its dungeons. From Avignon the Pope prosecuted a bitter persecution of his neighbours, the Waldenses. The King of France was alarmed, and sent an officer to inquire into the matter. The report was favourable. 'Then,' said the King, 'they are much better Christians than myself or Catholic subjects, and therefore they shall not be persecuted.'

He was as good as his word, and the Pope at Avignon had for a time to forbear, or Avignon might have had as b.l.o.o.d.y a record as Rome itself.

But at Avignon they do not think of these things. All round the old city are the mulberry trees and the silkworms; and the farmers want protection for their native industry, and to keep foreign raw silk out of the market.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE GREAT CITY OF LYONS.

In one of the first books which used to be placed in the hands of young people when I was a lad-Fox's 'Book of Martyrs'-we get rather an unpleasant idea of Lyons. 'There,' writes old Fox, 'the martyrs were condemned to sit in iron chains till their flesh broiled. Some were sewn up in nets and thrown on the horns of wild bulls, and the carcases of those who died in prison previous to the time of execution were thrown to dogs. Indeed, so far did the malice of pagans proceed that they set guards over the bodies while the beasts were devouring them, lest the friends of the deceased should get them by stealth, and the offal not devoured by the dogs was ordered to be burnt.' After this we get a little indignant as we turn to Gibbon, and read of the mild and beneficent spirit of the ancient polytheism, which seems to find such favour in his eyes. To-day all is changed. Christians, in the shape of Roman Catholics, have it all their own way; yet one of the handsomest places of worship I saw was that of the Reformed Church. One of the earliest reformers, Waldo, the leader of the Albigenses, was born at Lyons.

The McAll Mission is doing a good work at Lyons, though in some districts they have to report a falling off. They seek to get hold of the children, but they find in this respect the priests are as active as themselves. By means of the _uvres de patronage_ founded by the Catholics many of the children are drawn away. In one of the immense remote suburbs of Lyons the mothers' meeting plays an important part in the work of evangelization. In many quarters Bible-readings have been found to be very successful, and there is a Y.M.C.A., to which many young men belong. As a rule, French Protestantism is not aggressive, else it would not be what it is to-day. Still, during the last few years the churches have waked up wonderfully, and much good has been the result.

Be this as it may, Lyons is the finest city next to Paris that France can boast of. It has a population of about half a million, and the Rhone runs through it, adding much to its picturesqueness, as its banks are lined with stately houses and offices and shops. There are some twenty bridges over the river, most of them very handsome. At night you seem a little lonely as you watch the long rows of lamps that glitter along the banks. But by day the picture is reversed: there is busy life everywhere, and so clean and handsome are the buildings that you can scarcely realize that Lyons is planted with silk-mills, and that, in fact, it is the centre of the great silk trade of France. The trees, planted everywhere on the quays, which are used as promenades, make it a very charming residence.

Lyons has a very ancient history. It was adorned by successive Roman Emperors, and became the capital of Gaul. It was the princ.i.p.al mart for the Western provinces of the Empire. Agrippa made it the starting-point for four great military roads that traversed Gaul. Suddenly it disappeared. As Seneca writes: 'There was but one night between a great city and nothing.' Aided by Nero, however, it speedily rose from its ashes. The city fared badly in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Alaric, the scourge of G.o.d, sacked it. In 571 the Lombards ravaged it; in 715 the Saracens appeared, and left it a heap of ruins. Under Charlemagne it became a city of light and learning. Towards the end of the ninth century it came under the rule of the Archbishops and Chapter of St. John. In 1312 Philip le Bel annexed the city to France. The Lyons of to-day is a stately city, splendidly situated at the junction of the Rhone and the Saone-a junction which gave the great Pitt a fine pa.s.sage in one of his finest speeches.

The Lyonnais, says the writer of an excellent account of Lyons in Ca.s.sell's 'Cities of the World,' think the Place Bellecour the finest square in Europe. It is planted with trees, and ornamented with basins and fountains and two elegant pavilions, and is a very favourite promenade of the people of Lyons, especially when the military band plays. According to some, the name is derived from _bella curia_, and denotes the site of a Roman tribunal. In the Middle Ages the Place was a muddy swamp, often covered by the waters of the Rhone; it was gradually drained and improved by the Consulate, and surrounded with fine buildings. After the Peace of Utrecht, a bronze statue of Louis le Grand-the King who, by revoking the Edict of Nantes, nearly ruined Lyons, to please the Maintenon and her Jesuit [Picture: The Place Belleour, Lyons. (From Ca.s.sell's 'Cities of the World.')] friends-was set up in the centre. At the Revolution of 1792 the statue was pulled down and broken up. Some proposed simply to replace the King's head with a head of Brutus, but the mult.i.tude would not hear of it. On this spot perished some of the first victims of the fusillade in the terrible siege by the Republican army in the following year. When the siege was over, Couthon set his troop of _demolisseurs_ to work, and the beautiful facades of the Place Bellecour were soon irretrievably ruined, and the subsequent erections have not reproduced the monumental character of the original buildings. The Place was still covered with debris when, in April, 1805, the populace of the city, upon their knees, received the blessing of Pope Pius VII., who was then in France as the half-guest, half-prisoner, of Napoleon. On March 11, 1815, the Orleans princes hastened from the town as the advance guard of Napoleon, returning from Elba, was crossing the Pont de la Guillotiere. On the morrow the Emperor reviewed 15,000 soldiers in the Place Bellecour, amidst the acclamations of the populace.

But the Empire pa.s.sed away, and in 1825 the restored King placed a second statue of Louis XIV. in the centre of the Place.

Churches abound in Lyons. One of them, that of St. Nizien, in memory of a bishop of that name, is placed on the spot where one of its martyr bishops, St. Pothinus, a.s.sembled his flock. It has been rebuilt many times, and is interesting not only as the cradle of Christianity in Lyons-it was also the cradle of its civil liberty. Here the growing commune met in the days of its resistance to the bishops, and the bell of the ancient tower used to call the citizens together to elect their magistrate. Near the Church of Ainay was the ancient Forum, where Greeks, Orientals, Africans, Gauls, and Spaniards met to exchange the products of their various commerce. In the Forum was an altar dedicated to the Emperor Augustus and Rome, and near it was the Temple of Augustus.

In the church was sacredly preserved some hair of the Virgin Mary, and part of the cradle and some of the swaddling clothes of our Saviour. In the western part of the city, beyond the Saone, are found some very interesting churches. St. Irenee was built by the Bishop St. Patient in the fifth century. In the crypt is a well into which, according to tradition, the bodies of 19,000 Christians were thrown when the Emperor Severus revenged himself on Lyons for its adherence to the cause of Albinus. Nearer to the river stands the Church of St. Just. In connection with it was a vast monastery, with ma.s.sive walls and towers.

In its cloisters many sovereigns found a safe asylum. Innocent IV. was one, another was the Regent Louise, while her son Francis I. was fighting in Italy, and here she received the famous letter after the Battle of Pavia: 'All is lost except honour.'

Still nearer to the river stands the Church of St. Jean Baptiste, the Cathedral of Lyons. In one of the chapels attached to the church was some wood of the true cross; in another is preserved the heart of St.

Vincent de Paul. The Chapter of the Cathedral of Lyons was the most important body of clergy in France; they were thirty-two in number, all Counts of Lyons, the rank of Premier Canon being held by the reigning King of France. Amongst the remarkable events that have occurred here was the Council General of 1245, when Innocent IV. hurled the thunders of the Church against Frederick II., and where, for the first time, the Cardinals wore the red dress to distinguish them from other prelates. In 1274 a Council General held here formed a short-lived union of the Latin and Greek Churches. In this church Henry II., Emperor of Germany, performed ma.s.s, in one of his efforts to desert his throne and take Holy Orders. And here, in 1600, Henry of Navarre renewed his marriage with Marie de Medicis. Close by is the Archiepiscopal Palace, the magnificent apartments of which have accommodated many kings and queens and eminent personages. Napoleon pa.s.sed a night here on his return from Elba. On that awful St. Bartholomew's Day, in the courtyard of the Palace, 300 Protestants were murdered.

Thence you ascend by steep and narrow steps to the Church of Notre Dame, on the hill of St. Fourvieres. All round are priestly residences and numerous shop for the sale of ecclesiastical millinery. Higher up are the merchants who deal in rosaries, devotional pictures, medals, and wax models of different parts of the body, for offerings in the church, when the time comes for the mult.i.tudes of pilgrims who throng thither to obtain pardon of sin and restoration of health. One would have thought that an anachronism in the France of to-day; but we know how credulity reigns rampant, in spite of the philosopher, in every nation in the world. It was our Thomas a Becket, who spent part of an exile in Lyons, who seems to have suggested a church on this spot. In 1643 Lyons was ravaged by a terrible pest, and the munic.i.p.ality dedicated Lyons to Notre Dame in perpetuity, and until the Revolution of 1789 the whole city celebrated, on the Feast of the Nativity, the anniversary of the event.

Pope Pius, in 1805, superintended the rededication of the building to Divine worship, and, amidst a grand display of flags, discharge of cannon, and ringing of bells from the summit of the hill, blessed the city of Lyons, as Innocent had done centuries before. In December, 1852, Lyons was _en fete_ day and night, on the occasion of the planting of a colossal statue of the Virgin on the top of the tower. Like ancient Ephesus, it lived on its saints. Happily, unlike Ephesus, it stuck to trade, and became wealthy, and populous, and great. The Quai de St.

Clair is the finest in Lyons, and was formerly the rendezvous of merchants and foreigners, and the centre of Lyonese trade. One of the many quays in Lyons, that known as Les Etroit, a charming promenade, is a.s.sociated with the memory of Rousseau, in the days of his youthful poverty.

Its modern Hotel de Ville is held to be one of the handsomest in Europe, and that is saying a great deal when we think of Brussels or Louvain.

Its cathedral of St. Jean Baptiste took three centuries to build. The city is one of the Roman Catholic strongholds, and to some of its churches resort every year as many as 1,500,000 pilgrims, who obtain similar privileges to those accorded to the devotees at Loretto.

Now that Lyons is at peace, it exports to England, America, and Russia, manufactured silks to the amount of 18,000,000 yearly. It is to Jacquard that it owes its silk manufacture, and a statue of him properly graces the city. For many years it had been renowned for its manufactures, but in 1802, a workman originally, Jacquard lived to revolutionize the silk trade, and laid the foundation of its present prosperity. Its workshops for the construction of machinery, its manufactories of chemical products and coloured papers, are justly celebrated; but it is from the production of its silk fabrics that Lyons derives its chief fame. This industry, in which Lyons has no rival, was first brought from Italy. Florentines, Genoese, and others, driven away by revolutions, did for France what in after-times expatriated Frenchmen did for other countries to which they were compelled to flee by reason of tyranny at home. By decree of Louis XI., experienced workmen settling at Lyons were exempt from taxes levied on other inhabitants. Twelve thousand silk-weavers were busy at work in Lyons by the middle of the sixteenth century. At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, it seemed as if the silk industry was about to be annihilated. More than three-fourths of the looms were silenced; but in the course of a couple of generations the industry resumed its former proportions, and steadily increased, till Lyons became _par excellence_ the city of beautiful silks. The Lyonnese silk-weavers mostly work in their own dwellings. A man with his family will keep from two to six or eight looms going, often employing journeymen. The silk-merchants of Lyons, about 600 in number, supply the patterns and the silk; there are about 40,000 looms at work in the city and in the vicinity. Formerly, the weavers were nearly all grouped together in the northern part of the city, but the employers, in order to lessen the influence of the close trade organizations, have succeeded in distributing the industry throughout the neighbouring villages, though La Croix-Rousse still holds the lion's share. Its silks still maintain their prestige. The Empress of Germany last year purchased at Lyons white silk, with flowers, birds, and foliage in relief, at twenty-five pounds a yard, five-sixths of the price being the actual value of the raw silk. She intended to have a dress made of it, but it was so beautiful that she used it for a curtain. This is believed to be the highest priced silk goods ever made. Louis XIV. paid twelve pounds a yard for the cloth-of-gold material of which his dressing-gown was made. Lyons has been the birthplace of many distinguished and ill.u.s.trious personages-Germanicus, and the Emperors Claudius and Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-king; the ruler who preferred the solitude of the student to the splendour of the palace; the soldier who loved the arts of peace better than the glory of war; who left to the world his 'Meditations,' which, even at this era of the world's history, it does us good to read. Another native of Lyons whose works were at one time much read in England was J. B. Say, the famous political writer. Another of the modern glories of Lyons was Louise Labe, the Lyons Sappho, surnamed La Belle Cordiere. Another was Roland, the great statesman, the husband of a yet more ill.u.s.trious wife. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, was one of the victims of what Fox terms the fifth general persecution, and it is generally supposed that the account of the persecution in Lyons was written by him. He was beheaded in A.D. 202.

'Lyons,' says the Guide-Book, 'embraced with ardour the cause of the Revolution, and it suffered frightfully in consequence; but the Patriots knew nothing of the dark days to come, as they formed one bright May morning the Federation of Lyons, in which some fifty or sixty thousand of its citizens took part. What a picture Carlyle gives us of the Lyons guardsmen meeting at five on the Quai de Rhone, marching thence to the Federation Field, amid waving of hats and ladies' handkerchiefs, great shoutings of some two hundred thousand patriot voices and hearts-the beautiful and brave! 'amongst whom, courting no notice, and yet notablest of all, what queen-like figure is this, with her escort of house friends and Champagneux, the Patriot editor? Radiant with enthusiasm are those dark eyes in that strong Minerva face, looking dignity and earnest joy-joy-fullest she where all is joyful! It is Roland de Platiere's wife; that elderly Roland, King's inspector of manufactures here, and now likewise, by popular choice, the strictest of our new Lyons Munic.i.p.als-a man who has gained much, if worth and faculty be gain; but, above all things, has gained to wife Philipon, the Paris engraver's daughter.

Reader, mark that queen-like burgher woman, beautiful, graceful to the eye, much more so to the mind.'