Four Years in France Part 9

Seven years later, I have found the merchants of a provincial town, in which I am utterly unknown, ready to give me credit for my orders without the least symptom of suspicion or anxiety. In seven years I believe the wealth of France to have increased by one half; in seven years, the funds have risen from sixty-five to ninety-five: money might have been invested in land, seven years ago, at four and a half per cent; now, not more than three, or three and a half, can be obtained: but I am going beyond the limits of my four years residence.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] My wife has a great deal of sensibility.

[36] No, Miss, my dog will not bite you; if he were a tiger, he would lick such a beautiful hand.

CHAP. IX.

Avignon is surrounded by walls, as are most of the cities of France, and of the countries of the continent: a very great evil and inconvenience.

These walls hinder the influx of fresh air from the country, and thus make the cities more unhealthy; give to those who want to enter or go out of the town the trouble of going first to a gate; and crowd and embarra.s.s the inlets and outlets, by diminishing their number. Indeed, after sunset, this number, in order to save porters, is reduced to two; the two princ.i.p.al gates only, at opposite sides of the town, being attended by their guardians to watch and ward during the night. Often have I been obliged, at Avignon and at Florence, to shorten my evening walk, for the sake of arriving at the nearest gate before the Ave Maria of the evening. If I still continued without the walls, I was obliged to perform a circuit, first along a dusty road to a distant gate; and then, accompanied, it may be, by the females of my family, through the main street to my own habitation, more distant from this gate than from that by which I had gone out.

All this mischief, all this restraint, is endured, because, instead of a tax on the houses in which food is consumed, a duty is levied, at the gates, on the food itself; a duty, partial, because not paid by the inhabitants of the country; vexatious, because descending to so many and so minute objects; and expensive in its collection, because requiring perpetual superintendence. It is to be hoped the Chamber of Deputies of France will take some lessons, on the art of taxing, from the House of Commons, by whom that art has been so long and so successfully practised. Part of these tolls defray munic.i.p.al expenses.

The walls of Avignon are about three miles in circ.u.mference. A good road, bordered by trees, goes round the town; and, on the western side, is a public walk near the Rhone. The river is here divided into two branches by a long, narrow island: over each branch is carried a bridge on wooden piers, with a causeway across the island, uniting the two bridges into one road from bank to bank. The tolls, on this bridge, are let, by the city, at about fifty thousand francs a year; a large sum, and indicating an active intercourse in the direction of Bordeaux and Toulouse. There is a barrier at each end of the bridge, and the pa.s.sengers pay on setting foot upon it, but go off from it scot-free.

Why there are two receivers of one toll I know not, except that one may be a check on the other; but, as every "receiver is as bad as a thief,"

this expedient amounts only to "setting a thief to watch a thief."

That in the twelfth century,--an age of Cimmerian darkness, according to the Protestants,--a poor shepherd should have conceived the project of building a bridge over the Rhone; that he should have been prompted to this undertaking by motives of Christian charity, on observing how many were drowned in attempting the pa.s.sage by boats; that he should have devoted his life to the collection of alms for his purpose;--all this might procure for St. Benezet more favour than he will ever meet with in our _dis_-enlightened country. I leave it to my reader to judge of my reasons for not saying _un_-enlightened. The mischief is, they made the poor man a saint, instead of knighting him, like Sir Richard Arkwright.

A punster might have ent.i.tled him Pontifex Maximus; but this would have been still worse for his reputation.

The Reverend Alban Butler, in his learned, discreet, and pious work, "The Lives of the Saints," relates, that the building of this bridge was attended by many miracles. Part of these may have been contrived to encourage those to the enterprise who would not have been moved by the single consideration of its utility; as the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre, and "Deus vult," roused those who would never have made a common effort to defend Christendom against the Saracen. In part also, these miracles may have been real, notwithstanding the bold a.s.sertion that miracles have ceased. This a.s.sertion may be easily made, while every fact proving the contrary is rejected with supercilious incredulity; but it is an a.s.sertion in its own nature incapable of proof: the denial of the possibility of miracles would be inconsequent in the mouths of those who, by affirming them to have ceased, admit them to have existed. These men are not Deo a secretis.

Butler tells us also that, on occasion of part of the bridge falling down by the impetuosity of the waters, in 1669, nearly five hundred years after the death of St. Benezet, his body, which had been buried in a little chapel on the bridge, was taken up, and found entire, without the least sign of corruption: even the bowels were sound, and the colour of the eyes lively and sprightly, though the bars of iron around the coffin were much corroded by rust, on account of the dampness of the situation. Butler did not know that animal muscle is changed by moisture into a substance resembling spermaceti, as proved by the experiments of Lavoisier, and Sir George Gibbes. The substance is called by the French chymists _adipocire_. The philosopher will, I hope, allow his obligation to me for having attempted to account for one miracle in a natural manner. Let him say, "The man is reasonable, _quand meme_."[37]

The remains of the bridge of St. Benezet still bestride the eastern branch of the Rhone, and are an object of great picturesque beauty. The arches are very lofty: under the first of them, the great public road is now carried; a circ.u.mstance which seems to show that the river has formed for itself a narrower, it may be, a deeper bed. Inundations however are not unfrequent, particularly in the beginning of summer, on the melting of the snows of the Alps; and I am told at this time, December 1825, that there has lately been five feet depth of water in the town of Avignon. I have seen the water wash the walls of the city.

The Rock, as it is called, of Avignon, has every appearance of having been separated by the Rhone from the hills on the other side of the river. How or when this separation was effected, is a question that might puzzle a writer of theories on the formation of the earth. If we can believe, what philosophers would readily enough believe were not the fact a.s.serted in the Bible,--that the earth was at one time covered with water, even the tops of the mountains,--and if we can suppose also that currents existed in this deluge;--then, on the subsiding of the waters, these currents might meet with the summits and ridges of hills, and work and wear for themselves a pa.s.sage, the waters of the deluge gradually retiring, but, in the mean time, sustaining the currents at the requisite height. But humility in Scriptural interpretation is recommended by the remark, that the very first word of Scripture, "In the beginning," is incomprehensible and inexplicable.

On the southern slope of this rock is built the Palace of the Popes; as its roof is continued in one horizontal line, the height of the building at the southern extremity is enormous: its princ.i.p.al front is towards the west, overlooking a part of the city and the hills of Languedoc: it is now in a ruined and neglected state, as far as a building can be so which is still in use: part of it serves for a prison: another part is a caserne, of which the pope's chapel is the dormitory. Close upon the northern end of the palace is the cathedral; a church which, at the beginning of the revolution, was plundered of an immense quant.i.ty of silver and some gold plate, which was sent off to the national crucible at Paris; amongst other treasures was a silver bell of no very diminutive size. The tombs even were ransacked; a skull was brought to my house by my children's drawing-master, from which my younger son designed an admirable and edifying death's head. The model, I was a.s.sured, had been the cranium of a pope. They were beginning to repair this church, with the purpose of restoring it to its former destination.

On one side of it is a little chapel with a dome, which served as the model for the dome of Ste. Genevieve. The copy is sufficiently exact.

Behind the palace, on the east, rises a tower, which, from having been used as an ice-house, was called the _glaciere_; and the glaciere of Avignon is a name ever memorable in the annals of horror. From the top of this tower five hundred, according to those who exaggerate; thirty, according to those who extenuate,--of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of the city, after receiving a stunning blow on the head, were thrown down on the ice within, and their bodies immediately covered with quick lime.

Such was the vengeance of the people on those who, without trial, from the notoriety of the fact, were convicted of the crime of aristocracy.

The Revolution had been quietly accomplished: the people declared that it was their will to unite themselves to France; sent a deputation to the national a.s.sembly; and cried "Vive le Roi." The vice-legate, who governed the city for the pope, addressed the people from his balcony; told them he had no force to oppose this their movement, that they had his prayers for their happiness, and that he would retire. This was all on his part. The national a.s.sembly accorded to the Avignonais their wish; and formed of this papal territory and that of Orange, (formerly a patrimony of the princes of that house,) the department of Vaucluse.

The summit of the rock commands a very beautiful view. The eye traverses a fertile plain, bounded by the hills of the Venaissin, among which are distinguished those of the vallis clausa, where the far-famed fountain has its source: between the trees are caught glimpses of the Durance, which throws itself into the Rhone two miles below; almost under your feet, are seen the windings of the Rhone with its islands: on the opposite bank rises the chateau and little town of Villeneuve, surmounted by hills covered with the vine and the olive: immediately beneath, to the south, and west, lies Avignon, with its population of five and twenty thousand souls, which number still remained to it after ma.s.sacres, confiscations, and proscriptions. By these revolutionary measures, it had suffered more perhaps than any other city in France except Lyons, the "ville affranchie" of the Convention. "How would you have us be gay?" said a n.o.ble to me: "we see every day, we live in the midst of the a.s.sa.s.sins of our relations, and the possessors of our property." Virgil describes his Jove as viewing, from Olympus' height, the earth, "hominumque labores:" the rock of Avignon is but one of many elevated spots from which we look down on the bounty of Providence and on the misery of man.

The city contains a great many handsome hotels or family houses, but is not generally well-built; the streets, all but one,--the Rue Calade,--are narrow: the pavement is of small sharp-pointed pebbles.

Here is a public library, formed out of the libraries of the suppressed convents; a Museum, in which, among other objects, a valuable collection of coins deserves particular mention, as containing some very rare specimens of the coins of the Greek cities anciently founded in this part of France. There is also annexed to the Museum a small botanical garden. Here is a good infirmary or hospital for the sick. A large convent has been turned into a _succursal_ or subsidiary house to the invalids at Paris, insufficient to receive the increased number of disabled soldiers. The seven parishes of Avignon have been revolutionized into four, with churches not large enough for the congregations. I entered a fine Pantheon-like building, and found it to be a church, with vast Ionic columns supporting large galleries; the whole capable of containing two thousand people: it was used as a manufactory of saltpetre. The Jesuits' college is become a _college royal_: thus it retains its destination as a place of instruction; but its handsome church has been spoiled by laying a floor across it at mid-height: for this there was no reason, but that an administrator thought, as my informant said, that it was a clever thing to cheat the Almighty of a church, _escamoter une eglise au bon Dieu_.

The walls of the town are particularly well-built and handsome, if walls can ever be handsome: they are of the same sort of stone as the palace, and it is said that each contains precisely the same quant.i.ty of stone. They both date from the fourteenth century, when the popes sat, as the phrase is, at Avignon.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Notwithstanding.

CHAP. X.

Thirty English families, it was calculated, were settled, before the Revolution, in Avignon and its territory. The grandson of James II. had lived here for some time. I used to enter, with some little feeling of Jacobitical enthusiasm, the house of the Marquise D. which he had inhabited. The Pretender was accompanied by some who "thought his pretensions well-founded:" others were attracted by the sort of court, held here by the vice legate, and by the attentions which it was then the usage of the court of Rome to pay to foreigners, particularly to the English. It was convenient also that a war between England and France did not affect a subject of the former country at Avignon. The intercourse betwixt this city and Italy had caused more attention to be paid to literature and the fine arts than is usual in provincial towns: that these flourished here, the names of Vernet, Flechier, Poole, and others bear honourable testimony.

Avignon was now become French, and as such, on a par with other French towns. I chose it as a place in which to live for a few years, and superintend the education of my children: it was in my way to Italy, my ulterior object. I determined on the south of France on account of the health of Mrs. ----, who, though subject to violent coughs, which had more than once threatened her life, has not suffered from them since we have been to the southward of Lyons.

But the wounds inflicted by the Revolution, and during the reign of terror, were hardly stanched; the recollection of the evils they had endured was still recent,--still afflicted the spirits of those who formed the first cla.s.s of society at Avignon. I have already mentioned the feeling with which one of them expressed himself on this subject.

The most fortunate amongst them,--at least he told me he so considered himself,--was the Marquis ----, who, after being obliged to fly and absent himself for fifteen years, recovered his estate with the loss only of the rents during those years. Almost every lady, at that time old enough to have been an object of persecution, had been put in prison, and there, with her companions, had discussed the question whether the guillotine was an easy mode of death. One of them said to me, "You see us _tristes_; but sometimes we forget ourselves, and then _le caractere national perce_."[38]

In 1795, almost every large house in Avignon bore on its walls a notice,--"Propriete nationale a vendre;"[39] and even houses not confiscated, as well as other property, were sold to relieve the immediate distress of their owners. A house, which I considered as the best in the town, which had been but lately built at an expense of two hundred thousand francs, was sold for thirty thousand to the father of my banker: its n.o.ble proprietor gave as a reason for acceding to so disproportionate a bargain, that his wife and daughter had nothing to eat.

Great wealth was a crime as well as royalism or n.o.bility. Two persons, in authority at Avignon during the reign of terror, were making out a list of emigrants: a third was present, who, having nothing else to do, was holding the candle to the two munic.i.p.al revolutionists. "Shall we set _him_ down in the list?" whispered one of them to the other, meaning the third, the candle-holder.--"Ce seroit un peu trop fort, puisqu'il est present."[40]--"Qu' importe? il n'osera pas reclamer, et il est riche."[41] Danton, who by the by, was minister of _justice_, said "La revolution est une mine qu'il faut exploiter."[42]

A revolutionary tribunal held its permanent sitting at Orange, and every day carts full of victims were sent off thither from Avignon. My friend the Marquise ---- was then a child of six years old; a plan was laid to take her in the cart and throw her into the Rhone by the way: she could not be convicted of _incivisme_, but she was an heiress. The plot was defeated by her _bonne_ or nurse-maid, who took care that the child should be out of the way at the time of the departure of the cart.

The trials at Orange were the pleasantest scenes imaginable. "Tu n'es pas royaliste? Tu n' as pas conspire contre l'etat?"[43] or some such questions, in an ironical tone, decided the fate of the prisoner. "Voila des hommes qui tranchent sur tout,"[44] said I to my narrator. He forgave the pun.

An elderly woman,--her understanding childish through age, and who was deaf withal,--was put in accusation with her son. "Tu as pleure la mort du roi,"[45] said the judges to the mother, charging her also with having put on mourning on the occasion. "O yes," said the old woman, "I was very sorry for the king, poor, dear, good man; and I put on a black silk ap.r.o.n and a black ribbon round my cap." The judges, seeing the people inclined by this simplicity to a sentiment of compa.s.sion, advanced to something more serious. "Tu as conspire contre l'etat."[46]

Here the son put himself forward: "Messieurs, do what you will with me; but my mother--you see her imbecillity; she is deaf: how can she have conspired against the state?" "Elle est sourde?" said the judge: "ecris, greffier, qu'elle a conspire sourdement contre l'etat."[47] This pun is not to be forgiven. Arrived at the place of execution, the mother, seeing the a.s.sembled crowd, asked her son the meaning of it; whether it was a fair, or some _fete_. He obtained as a favour from the executioner, that his mother might be the first to suffer death.

A n.o.ble had a conversation with a man who, though known as one of the chief a.s.sa.s.sins of that aera, lived quietly at Avignon. "I should imagine that, since you have failed of your purpose, you must feel some regret at having uselessly shed so much blood."--"Au contraire, our regret is that we did not shed more: mais ce sera pour une autre fois."[48]

In expectation of this _autre fois_, some of the few n.o.bles to whom any wealth was left were making up a purse in readiness for a second emigration:--let it be remembered this was in the year 1818. Others of them lived economically, indifferent as to the consideration in which they might be held after so many mortifications; or disgusted with the law of equal part.i.tion of inheritance, which reduced all their children to mediocrity of wealth,--an evil they wished to remedy by their savings. I recollect, in pa.s.sing, that I was well acquainted with a n.o.ble, an aristocrat, who detested every act of the const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, but thought this law of _partage_ perfectly just and reasonable: he was a younger brother.

From all that has preceded, it will be inferred that the public mind at Avignon was not in a state to abandon itself unreservedly to the pleasures of society. Yet fetes were occasionally given; b.a.l.l.s, with, now and then, a pet.i.t souper, were not uncommon during carnival; and every evening might be pa.s.sed in company, in the salon of some lady who had taken her day of the week for receiving. At these parties cards were supplied, but paid for by those who used them, at a price which, though moderate, covered the expense both of cards and wax candles. This practice, pretty well established in England, was defended by the example of the court, where it is permitted. We could not do better than follow the practice of the court. Ordinarily no refreshments were given: one conscientious lady, however, told her friends that her surplus card-money enabled her to treat them with ices and pet.i.ts gateaux. No invitation was sent after the first notice, which was considered as good so long as the weekly reception should continue.

Besides these reunions, to which all the acquaintance of the mistress of the house were of course admitted, there were sometimes parties by invitation, when the refreshments were sufficient and decorous. I endeavoured to set the fashion of tea, and gave a _the_, as much in conformity, as to the mode of it, with the notions of the country, as my imagination could make it out. A large table, covered with a cloth as at dinner time, bore upon it not only the tea equipage, with its usual accompaniments of tartines and toast, but also fruits, and cakes, and an immense round flat tart, showing preserve through a gridiron of pastry, with wine and syrups for those whom tea would deprive of sleep. The Marquise ---- followed my example, and gave a _the_, of which she condescended to ask my opinion: I told her, that in order that the tea should be good, it was indispensable that the water should be not only hot, but boiling; excusing at the same time the boldness of my counsel, on the ground that it was not obtruded, but demanded. She tried again, and succeeded to admiration. Tea is now in pretty general use at evening parties in the north of France.

While my elder children even were yet too young to bear their part in soirees, I contented myself with entertaining, now and then, a few Messieurs at dinner, after consulting a friend on the enterprise, with a declaration that I could not invite ladies, as their taste would require more research and delicacy of preparation than I could hope to arrive at. He admitted the difficulty would be lessened by this restriction however ungallant, and proceeded to tell me, that a dinner invariably begins by soup and bouilli: as this latter however must be insipid if the the soup is good, it is well to accompany it by a sausage, or some high-tasted meat: then come the entremets, then the roti with its salad: after which, said he, "tout naturellement on fait monter le poisson."[49] Nothing could appear to me more unnatural than fish after meat; but I was in such a complaisant disposition, that I agreed to every thing. The douceurs terminate the repast, succeeded by the dessert.

So many English travel in France, and so many write their travels, that these matters are well known: the repet.i.tion may be endured as a part of a family history; I speak of them with a due sense of their importance:

----------qualia vincant Pythagoram, Anytique reum, doctumque Platona.

Having discovered what might be considered as a good French dinner, en province, I set to work, not neglecting the improvements suggested by an English education, by no means so useless, on this head, as the French imagine.

It will be seen, that the arbitrary parts of a French dinner are the made dishes and the sweets: the bouilli and roti are obligatory; the former because you are hungry, the latter, lest you should still be so.

I approve of the order in which the fish appears, having seen many persons choke themselves in England by eating of it with an appet.i.te as yet unsatiated. Even to the fried fish I ventured, contrary to usage, to add a sauce, (in a sauce-boat be it well understood,) which those who partook of it admitted to be an improvement. A stuffed turkey, with sausage b.a.l.l.s, was allowed to be better than a dry roti: a hare, with a pudding and currant jelly, was declared to be delicious. I obtained permission to serve the cheese, as a thing of mauvaise odeur, by itself, recalling only the salad, instead of making it a part of the dessert. By these means, and by the help of stuffed loins of mutton, roasted tongues, or boiled, with but little flavour of salt, new college puddings, and other unknown luxuries too tedious to mention, (a phrase I ought to have employed long ago,) I have the patriotic consolation of thinking that I gave a favourable idea of the English kitchen, which, in defiance of popular opinion, I affirm to be better than the French, though their artists in this line are superior. The chief differences are, that the French make prepared and high-seasoned dishes of their vegetables, and think it barbarous to eat them, au naturel, along with their meat; and that they will not believe that their meat contains any juice, or gravy, or flavour, till they have extracted it by culinary process, and laid it beside the meat in the dish. Indeed their climate, which provides for them so many excellent things, refuses them pasture to fatten beef; but they have fine artificial gra.s.ses and hay: of every other object of gourmandise, except fat beef, they have all that the most voracious, or the most delicate appet.i.te can demand.

An invitation to dinner is always taken au pied de la lettre; it never trenches on the evening parties;--all retire immediately after coffee.