In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc Part 5

It is easy to explain the origin of these furious gales, _bise_ and _mistral_. The low sandy regions at the mouth of the Rhone, denuded of all vegetation, and the great stony plain of the Crau, heated by the direct rays of the sun, rarify the air over the surface of the soil, and this rises, to be at once replaced by the cold air from the Alps and Cevennes; the air off the snow pours down with headlong violence to occupy the vacuum formed by the heated ascending column of air off the plain, sweeping the valley of the Rhone, and reaching its maximum of intensity between Avignon and the sea, where it meets, and is blunted in its force by the equable atmosphere that covers the surface of the Mediterranean.

The violence of the wind is consequently due to the difference of temperature between the hot air of the plain and the cold air of the mountain.

An old saying was to this effect:--

"Parlement, Mistral et Durance Sont les trois fleaux de Provence."

Parlement exists no longer, or rather is expanded into a National a.s.sembly that is a discredit to all France, and not Provence alone; the Durance has become, thanks to Adam de c.r.a.ponne, an agent of fertilisation and wealth.

But the _mistral_ (_magistral_, the master-wind) remains, and still scourges the delta of the Rhone. In 1845 it carried away the suspension bridge between Beaucaire and Tarascon; the pa.s.sage of the Rhone is often rendered impossible for days, through its violence. It has been found necessary to plant rows of cypress on each side of the line that crosses the Crau, to break the force of the wind upon the trains. Indeed, throughout the district, the fields will, in many places, be found walled up on all sides by plantations of cypresses from thirty to fifty feet high, as screens against this terrible blast, to protect the crops from being literally blown out of the ground.

When I was a child of five years my father's carriage with post horses was crossing the Crau. It was in summer. I sat on the box with my father and looked at the postilions. Presently I saw a number of little figures of men with peaked caps running about the horses and making attempts to scramble up them. I said something about what I saw, whereupon my father stopped the carriage and put me inside with my mother. The heat of the sun on my head, he concluded, had produced these illusions. For some time I continued to see these dwarfs running among the pebbles of the Crau, jumping over tufts of gra.s.s, or careering along the road by the carriage side, making faces at me. But gradually their number decreased, and I failed finally to see any more.

One June day in the year 1884, one of my boys, then aged eight, was picking gooseberries in the fruit garden at home, when, standing between the bushes, he saw a little man of his own height, with a brown peaked cap, a red jacket, and green breeches. He had black hair and whiskers and beard.

He looked angrily at the boy and said something. The child was frightened, ran indoors and told his elder brother and sister. They brought him to me, and his elder brother repeated the story, but purposely varied the description of the apparition, so as to see whether the lad held to the same account, but the child at once corrected him, and told me his story, which his brother informed me agreed exactly with what in his alarm, he had first told. The little boy was looking white, and frightened. Again a case of sun on the head.

Now for another. A lady whom I know very well indeed, and who never deviated from the truth in her life--save when she swore at the altar to honour and obey me--was walking one day, when a girl of thirteen, beside a quickset hedge; her brother was on the other side. I believe they were looking for birds' nests. All at once she saw a little man dressed entirely in green, with jacket, breeches, and high peaked hat, seated in the hedge, staring at her. She was paralysed with terror for a moment, then recovering herself, she called to her brother to come round and see the little green man. When he arrived the dwarf had disappeared.

Now these are funny stories, and are to be explained by the fact that the sun was hot on the head. But it does not strike me that the explanation is wholly satisfactory. _Why_ should the sun on the head superinduce visions of kobolds? Is it because other people have suffered from a hot sun, and that the hot sun reproduces year after year the same phenomenon, that the fable of little men, pixies, gnomes, brownies, fairies, leprechauns is to be found everywhere? Or--is it possible that there is such a little creation only visible to man when he is subject to certain influences?

Sir Charles Isham, of Lamport, has collected a good deal of evidence of a similar nature. I do not venture to express an opinion one way or another.

I can remember still, with vividness, the impression produced on me by what I saw that hot day on the Crau, when but a child of five years; but I cannot for the life of me explain it satisfactorily to myself.

CHAPTER VI.

LES ALYSCAMPS.

Difficulty of finding one's way about in Arles--The two inns--The _mistral_--The charm of Arles is in the past--A dead city--Situation of Arles on a nodule of limestone--The Elysian Fields--A burial-place for the submerged neighbourhood--The Alyscamp now in process of destruction--Expropriation of ancient tombs--Avenue of tombs--Old church of S. Honore--S. Trophimus--S. Virgilius--Augustine, apostle of the English, consecrated by him--The Flying Dutchman--Tomb of aelia--Of Julia Tyranna--Her musical instruments--Monument of Calpurnia--Her probable story--Mathematical _versus_ cla.s.sic studies--Tombs of _utriculares_--Christian sarcophagi--Probably older than the date usually attributed to them--A French author on the wreckage of the Elysian Fields.

I do not know a more perplexing place anywhere to find one's way in and out of than Arles. During a fortnight spent there I never could hit my inn aright once on coming from the railway station. The place is like a labyrinth; but one of those labyrinths that our forefathers delighted to construct of pleached alleys of box or lime were always to be traversed when you possessed the key. There is no key, no principle whatever upon which Arles has been built. Every public edifice seems to be dodging round the corner, like Chevy Slyme, hiding from some other public edifice with which it is on dubious terms, or not quite on social equality, and wishes to avoid the difficulties of an encounter.

Arles streets are about the worst paved in Europe. They are floored with the cobble-stones rolled down by the diluvium, and torture the feet that walk over them and rick the ankles. There are two melancholy inns in the Place du Forum, and it is hard to choose between them, probably it does not much matter. I was given a bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that did not fit, and as the _mistral_ was blowing, my hours in that room were spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was given another room where the draughts were the same, but I was without my coughing and hawking neighbour. No wonder that I was charged half a franc per night for my candle. It guttered itself in no time into the tray of the candlestick, as it was blown upon from four distinct directions simultaneously.

Arles--when not in a _mistral_--is charming, but the charm is in the past.

There one must be a _laudator temporis acti_, for the present is wholly wretched and bad. The fact is, Arles had a glorious past, from which it has been falling throughout the Middle Ages till it reached a point approaching extinction, and it has not as yet realised that better days are shining before it, and that there is a future to which it may look up.

So depressed did Arles become some time ago, that its only lively trade was in old coffins. It had a vast cemetery outside its walls, crammed with memorials of the dead of all ages; and as the curators of the museums of Paris, Ma.r.s.eilles, Avignon, Aix, &c., thirsted after sarcophagi, the mournful Arelois went to their necropolis, dug up as many as were wanted, and forwarded coffins to those who had made requisition for them.

Arles is planted upon a nodule of limestone rock that rises out of the diluvium of rolled stones. In former times it was almost the sole dry spot to be found for miles round, and as the dead of Pagan and Christian times alike seem to have objected to wet beds, their bodies were transported from all the country round to the plateau east of Arles and there entombed. This plateau was called the Elysian Fields, now Alyscamp, and is so thick with tombs that you walk over them as you follow the road that runs along the plateau. You see the gra.s.s at the side dead in one place, there is a tomb there; you see a bit of white marble cropping up in another, that is a tomb. You see a great stack of stones heaped up by the side of a railway cutting, they are all tombs. You look at the cutting itself, and see that to a certain depth it is honeycombed with tombs, some cut through, some sticking out. In every farmyard the pigs eat out of old sarcophagi. The fountains squirt into them, the bacon is cured in them. The farrier dips his hot iron into a sarcophagus. In the churches the altars are made of them. The foundations of the houses are laid in them. The very air seems to be pervaded with the dust of the dead, and this dust lies heavy on the spirits and energies of the inhabitants.

But what an age we live in! Utilitarian and disrespectful of the past! The other day a cargo of mummied cat-deities arrived at Liverpool and was sold for manure. At Arles, the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway Company has bought up the Elysian Fields to convert them into a factory for their engines. The company are excavating Les Alyscamp for this purpose, throwing about the sarcophagi, Pagan or Christian, or using them for building materials--and sawn in half they make decent quoins for a brickshed--and strewing the dust of the dead of ages under the wheels of the locomotives.

One undesecrated, unrifled headland remains above the factories, on which is a venerable but abandoned church. The company would grub that up too, but the proprietor will not sell, as he believes the tradition that an incalculable treasure is hidden somewhere among these tombs.

But the Arelois not only expropriate the tombs of their forefathers, they have given away or sold other things as well. On the Alyscamp is the venerable church of S. Honore, half ruinous, in which, underground in the crypt is the ancient baptistery that had served the first Christians when the church was young. It was furnished with a large porphyry circular vessel for immersing adults. Louis XIV. saw it, coveted it for some water-works, and got the Arelois to give it him. Among the ruins of the theatre was found a Venus of Greek workmanship and of Parian marble. They sent it away also; it is in Paris.

The old church of S. Honore is now reached by a long avenue of poplars lined with Pagan Roman tombs. The nave of the church is in ruins, but the choir is in tolerable condition, and is the most interesting portion. It consists in fact of an early Romanesque basilica with three aisles ending in three apses. The pillars separating nave from aisles, three on each side, are great drums ten feet in diameter. The later, ruinous nave contains the reputed chapel of S. Trophimus, apostle of Arles. When the fourteenth century church was added, this little chapel was left standing within, and though now crumbling, it is comparatively watertight. It has, however, undergone recasing in Renaissance times, and to understand its structure the chapel must be entered. It is then seen to have been an open porch of four semicircular arches, and may possibly have been erected over the tomb of S. Trophimus. The only ornament about it is a moulding, which may give its date.

S. Trophimus, reputed apostle of Aix, is now said to have been that Asiatic who was a companion of S. Paul mentioned in Acts xx. 4, xxi. 27-29, and 2 Tim. iv. 12, 20. But the very early diptychs of the church of Arles mention S. Dionysius as the first prelate, and the cathedral was built in 625 by S. Virgilius, and dedicated to S. Stephen. It did not take the t.i.tle of S. Trophimus till the twelfth century, when the relics of this saint were brought to it from the little chapel just described. The exact date was 1152; the tradition of S. Trophimus having been one of the disciples of Christ and companion of S. Paul arose about this time. Not a trace of such a tradition appears in the Provencal poem composed by an eye-witness of the translation of the relics.

There was, no doubt, a bishop of this name at Arles, and probably early, but the first whose name is authenticated is Martia.n.u.s, who followed the Novatian heresy in 254. Gregory of Tours--and his testimony is confirmed by a MS. of the fifth century--says that S. Trophimus was sent into Gaul in the consulship of Decius and Gratus, i.e., 250, and that he was the first bishop of Arles, and Gregory of Tours is the earliest and most reliable authority that we have on the beginnings of the Christian church in Gaul.

The church of S. Honore was built by S. Virgilius, Archbishop of Arles A.D.

588-618, and the baptistery dates from his time. According to the legend, whilst he was erecting the basilica, the people toiled ineffectually to move the pillars to their destined place. At last they sent word to S.

Virgil that the truck was fast, and the pillars could neither be taken on nor carried back. Then Virgil hurried to the spot, and saw a little devil, like a negro boy, sitting under the truck, obstructing its progress. Virgil drove him away, whereupon the columns were easily moved. He was buried in this church, but I do not fancy his tomb is known. A strange story is told of him, how one night, as he was pacing the walls of Arles, or possibly walking in the Alyscamp, he saw a mysterious ship come sailing over the meres. In the starlight he discerned forms of sailors. The ship drew up near where he stood, and a voice called to him: "Reverend father, we know who thou art. Now we are bound for Jerusalem, and are here to ask thee to come on board with us." "No, thank you," answered Virgilius, "not till you have shown me who you are." Then he made the sign of the cross, and suddenly the ship resolved itself into a drift of fog that rolled away before the wind along the surface of the mere. This is the _second_ version of the world-wide-known myth of the Flying Dutchman. The earliest form comes to us in the legend of S. Adrian, a martyr in Asia Minor. As his widow Basilissa was sailing over the Black Sea with his body, to bury it at Byzantium, a phantom ship pa.s.sed by, which also vanished when adjured in the sacred name.

What is, to us English, of interest in connection with S. Virgil of Arles is, that it was he who consecrated Augustine for his mission to Kent, at the command of Gregory the Great. So here, probably, in this ruinous, silent old church, our apostle of the English knelt and received his commission to go and preach the Gospel to us Angles. This same Virgil also built the cathedral, and dedicated it to S. Stephen. But of his work there not a trace remains. Another bishop of Arles of some note was Regulus, who when preaching one day was so troubled by the noise made by the frogs, that he interrupted his sermon to order them to be silent, and--they obeyed.

In a side chapel of the old church of S. Honoratus is a sarcophagus that contains the skull and bones and dust of a young girl. The coffin is of lead, and this perhaps accounts for the preservation. Along with it were found the gold ear-rings and other trinkets. On the ear-rings a cross, but the inscription on the tomb hardly leads one to believe the girl was a Christian. She was aged seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days, when she died. Her name was aelia. Here is the inscription in the lead, translated:--

aeLIA, DAUGHTER OF aeLIA.

Thou who can'st read these lines, read a sad mishap, and learn our plaintive lay.

Many call that a sarcophagus which contains bones, But this has become the home of unhallowed bees. [1]

Shame it should be so! Here lies a damsel of exceeding beauty.

There's more than grief in this: a dearly loved wife has been s.n.a.t.c.hed away.

She lived a virgin so long as Nature willed.

When she became a bride, the marriage vows were a joy to her parents.

She lived seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days.

Happy the father who lived not to see such sorrow.

The wound rankles in the bosom of her mother, her precious jewel, And her father, taken away in old age, still holds her clasped to his heart.

[Footnote 1: The ancients thought that bees were bred of dead bodies. See Virgil, Georgics. iv. 281-5.]

Here is the original with conjectural restorations. Would not old Dr.

Keates have whipped the Eton boy who wrote such barbarous Latin verses! But it must be remembered the Arles folk were Graeeco-Gallic, and not masters of Latin. Some of the words are run together. It runs thus--

aeLIA aeLIae

Littera.quinosti.lege.casum.et.d(_ice querelam_.) Multi.sarcophagum.dic.u.n.t.quod.con(_tinet ossa_:) Set.conclusa.decens.apibus.domus.ist(_a profanis_:) Onefas.indignum.jacet.hic.praeclara(_puella_.) Hoc.plusquam.dolor.est.rapta.est.s(_uavissima conjux_.) Pervixit.virgo.vbi.jam.natura.placebat.

Vixit.enim.ann.xvii.et.menses viii.diesque xviii.

O.felice.patrem.qui.non.vidit.tale.dolorem.

h.o.e.ret.et.in fixo.pectore.volnus.dionysyadi matri.

Et junctam.sec.u.m.geron.pater.tenet.ipse.puellam.

This is an exact copy. I am not responsible for the grammatical blunders, they were made clearly by the sculptor of the inscription, who did not understand what he cut.

Among the tombs extracted from the Alyscamp and now in the Museum of Arles, is another of a girl, and a very accomplished young lady she must have been; her name was Julia, and she was the daughter of Lucius Tyrannus. She died at the age of twenty; the inscription on her tomb records that in her morals and in her schooling she was a pattern to all other girls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Musical instruments from the tomb of Julia.]

What is particularly interesting about this monument is that it gives ill.u.s.trations of all the musical instruments she was able to play, and it affords us I believe, the earliest known example of the organ. [1] But what is even more curious is that on it is represented a guitar, very much the same as is now manufactured.

[Footnote 1: Nero on the night when he died was going to try a water-organ, when the news of the revolt of Galba and the defection of the troops reached him. I am puzzled about this organ on the tomb of Julia Tyranna.