Two Summers in Guyenne Part 10

Near the castle gateway is the 'Logis des Senechaux,' a small building of the fifteenth century with turrets capped by extinguisher like roofs, and within a stone's throw of this is a small church, dating from the twelfth century, the artistic interest of which has been lamentably deteriorated by renovation and sc.r.a.ping. The influence of the Byzantine cathedral that rose in the old Roman city by the Isle spread far, and numerous churches in Perigord bear witness to the imitative zeal which it inspired, especially in the application of domes to the vaulting of the nave. This arrangement is frequently to be found in connection with the pointed arch, and such is the case at Bourdeilles. The apse is beautiful, with its five tall windows and its columns with Corinthian capitals in the intervening wall s.p.a.ces.

Although the church is in no style that is recognised as pure, it is typical of one that has been developed in the district, and which is by no means without grace; but the sc.r.a.ping that it has undergone has robbed it of the proper tint and tone of its age, and the ideal interest that belongs to this.

But here is something from which the gray mantle that the centuries have silently spun has not been lifted. I have gone down to the waterside to follow the stream onward, and am held by the quiet charm of a half Gothic bridge that was thrown across it five or six hundred years ago; the miller's house just below, with its bright little garden flaming with flowers a few inches above the water, and two great wheels turning slowly, slowly, as if time and change and the rush of life were the vain words of tiresome fools. On the side of the bridge looking up-stream, each pier is built out in the form of a sharp angle This was intended to lessen the push of the current upon the masonry in time of flood. A great many old bridges in Guyenne show a similar design.

My road had now on one side the reedy Dronne, and on the other overleaning rocks topped with trees or shrubs, whose foliage reached downward as if it were ever troubled by the futile longing to touch the cool green water, and every little ridge or shelf was marked out by a line of ancient moss.

Old alders had plunged their roots deep into the banks of the river, and wherever the sunshine struck upon the upper leaves was a cicada scratching out its monotonous note in joyous frenzy.

A long range of densely-wooded, rocky cliffs now stretched along the right bank; but I, keeping to the road on the other side, soon left the stream and rose upon a hill dotted with low juniper bushes. The scene in the widening valley below was full of summer light and gladness. Men were mowing, and women were turning the fallen swathes in the waterside meadows, and upon all the slopes above were patches of yellow corn ready for the sickle. In the green depth between the hills the river flowed vaguely on in the shadow of tall poplars, and was sometimes hidden by its reeds.

Here and there upon the higher ground, half concealed by walnut-trees, were small chateaux or farmhouses, with a castellated air derived from great dovecots and towers, which last once served for the defence of the manor-house or the little castle. When the fury of the religious wars followed upon that tidal wave of dilettantism and sensuality which swept over Europe from the south to the north, and which we call the Renaissance, and when Huguenots and Leaguers gave such frequent dressings of blood to the vineyards of Perigord, every house and church that was in any way fortified was used as a stronghold in the event of sudden attack.

From the broad landscape I turn to the wayside flowers: the agrimony, the little lotus, the candy-tuft--getting rare now that I have left the arid stony region--the blue scabious, and, pleasanter than all, the purple patches of dwarf thyme.

It was not yet evening when I came to Lisle, a rather large village near the Dronne. Here I fell in with a plasterer, and he being a good-tempered man, with some spare time on his hands, he offered to show me before dinner the picturesque ruin of an old bridge, known in the district as the Pont d'Ambon. On our way to the river he talked much, and especially about his village, in which he took a very lively interest. It had not changed its principles, he said, for a hundred years.

'And what are its principles?'

'Republican. We don't go to church here, although there is no ill-will towards the cure.'

'And is all the country about here Republican?'

'Oh no, not at all. There is a village close by that is full of religion.

We are often called savages. When the cure asked the commune to give him 200 francs a year for saying an extra ma.s.s on Sundays, the majority of the inhabitants signed their names to a paper offering him 300 francs a year if he would say no ma.s.s at all.'

I said to myself that the cure of Lisle was not to be envied the piece of vineyard that he had been sent to look after. I had often heard stories such as this. Faction fighting provides the chief intellectual stimulus in many a village and small town of France. Where Republicanism is strong, the mayor's party is often at bitter feud with those who share the views and uphold the authority of _M. le cure_. The sign that the 'advanced'

Republicans give of their political faith is never to set foot inside the church unless it be at a wedding or a funeral. But what is especially worth the attention of the philosophical observer is the extent to which prevailing ideas in politics and religion differ in the same district.

Within a few miles of a commune where Republicans and Freethinkers have complete control of local affairs, may be another that is altogether Royalist or Bonapartist, and where the cure is both popular and powerful.

There is, moreover, a very marked difference in the character of the inhabitants of neighbouring places. In one the prevailing characteristic may be mildness and affability of manners, whereas in another it may be truculence and incivility. Neither the influence of politics nor of religion sufficiently accounts for these differences in character. They seem to rest rather upon obscure and remote causes, such as racial and congenital tendencies. All this is especially observable in the South of France, where the present population has been formed from the blood of so many races, which is very unequally mixed even to this day.

When my talkative plasterer left the subject of local politics, he took up that of the moon. Like all country people, whether in France or in England, he had the strongest faith in the influence of the moon upon the weather.

He, moreover, maintained that moonbeams had a very corrosive and destructive action upon zinc. This fact, he said, had come under his observation scores of times in his business, which was that of roofing as well as plastering.

Thus talking, we came to the bridge, or, rather, its sole remaining arch, now almost completely hidden by ivy, briars, and other vegetation, by which it has been gradually overgrown. The plasterer had a sense of the picturesque, and he had not over-rated the beauty of this spot. A little below the early Gothic arch, from which the briars reached down to the water, was an old mill, in the shadow of a high, overleaning rock, and great trees made a vaulting over the gra.s.sy lane, at the end of which the turning-wheel could be seen, with just a sparkle of evening sunshine upon the dropping water.

The inn where I put up that night was a substantial hostelry, containing all that was needful for the entertainment of man and beast. Had I been a _Procureur de la Republique_ the law could not have been broken in a more solicitous manner than it was in my behoof. Not only did I have gudgeons, _en temps prohibe_, but also partridge. It was not until the bones were carried out that I felt that I had missed an excellent opportunity of setting a good example by declining to eat partridge in the month of June.

I must have been put into the best bedroom, for among other works of art which it contained was a bridal wreath of orange-blossoms under a gla.s.s.

I surmised that when it decked the head of my hostess, her form would not have taken up so much room in the kitchen as when I saw it downstairs, pa.s.sing with a slow and dignified movement in the midst of the saucepans and platters. I have often slept in rooms where there have been bridal orange-blossoms under gla.s.s. They always interest me, just as the faded family photographs do which so frequently deck the walls of the same room.

They get me on the lines of thought or sentiment which make us enter when we are by ourselves into all that is human.

The next morning, after seeing the church--a Romanesque and Gothic structure of considerable beauty--I returned to the Dronne, and, after crossing it, continued upon the road eastward until I saw the picturesque ruins of the Chateau de Marouette upon a hill above me. Then I left the road, and climbed the hill by a rocky path. This castle, dating from the close of the sixteenth century, shows a blending of feudal architecture with the Renaissance style. In this respect it is like many others in the district, but it is truly remarkable in having preserved an outer wall, strengthened with round towers at intervals, and enclosing two or three acres of land. The fortress was raised by a Baron de Jarnac, and must have been one of the last built to combine the double character of family residence and stronghold. The outer and inner ramparts, and the high, frowning, machicolated keep, perched upon the rock and overlooking the valley, prove that it was truly a _chateau-fort_, and one that ought to have been able to give a very good account of itself. A fantastic effect has been produced by attaching a plain modern house without any character to the best-preserved parts of the ruin. Agriculture must possess the thoughts of those who are now living there. The wide s.p.a.ce between the outer and inner walls, as I saw it in the early sunshine of the June morning, was a level floor of golden ears, nearly ready for the reaper.

A storm overnight had moistened the earth; the breath that came from the flowery banks and the glistening leaves of oak and chestnut was very fresh; all the birds that could sing were singing; the sound of the sweeping scythe and the voices of mowers rose from the valley, and the spirit of peace and gladness was over the land.

I took a road somewhat at random, and it led me by many windings away from the Dronne, up hills, where there were vines but no cornfields, and where the wayside trees were chiefly plums, laden with fruit fast purpling. And as I looked at the plums I thought of the time when, after being dried in the sun, they would become 'prunes,' and be scattered about the world, many of them, perchance, in England, where children would buy them with their pennies, as I had bought others myself, when I never supposed that I should walk by the trees that bore them under southern skies.

A road-mender whom I pa.s.sed saluted me with the words, '_Bon soir!_'

although the hour was eight in the morning. In these parts, however, _bon soir_ is frequently said at all hours. It is a colloquial peculiarity.

Another is to address or speak of a gentleman and a lady as '_Ces messieurs._'

At length I reached a plateau, where I saw not far off, in a hollow surrounded by cornfields and fruit-trees, such a number of red roofs that I concluded I must have come to the little town of Montagrier. A young peasant soon undeceived me: I was near the village of Grand-Bra.s.sac. It was clear that I had gone much farther from the Dronne than I had intended, but, after all, it mattered little where I wandered. I now said that I would see Grand-Bra.s.sac, and that I might find something there worth the walk. I was rewarded beyond aught that I had expected or hoped for.

Here I found a very remarkable Byzantine-Gothic church of the thirteenth century, with a richly decorated front in strong contrast to the defensive motive so clearly expressed by the solidity of the structure, the smallness of the windows, and especially by the height of the entrance--some ten feet above the level of the ground. It is reached by steps. Over the doorway, which has a pointed arch ornamented with a star moulding, is a semicircular compartment containing several figures in high relief, the central one of which represents the Virgin enthroned. No satisfactory explanation of the others has yet been found. Beneath the compartment is a row of very fantastic bracket-heads, supposed to represent the Vices. Above it is a canopy with sculptured medallions on the under-surface, where the symbolical Lamb may be recognised amongst winged dragons and other monsters. Close to these is a monkey playing on the violin. Above this canopy is another, shaped like a low gable, and forming the upper frame of a further set of figures in relief, larger than those in the compartment below. The central and highest figure is that of Christ teaching. The Virgin is kneeling on the right, and St. John on the left. St. Paul is shown with the book of his Epistles, and St. Peter, wearing a bishop's mitre, is holding his keys. Among other details of this curious facade is the figure of a kneeling knight in a coat of mail. Upon the exterior side-walls are Roman arches _en saillie_, resting upon corbels and very wide pilaster-strips that are almost b.u.t.tresses. In the interior, the Byzantine influence is very apparent in the three domes, which combine with the Gothic vaulting of the narrow, dimly-lighted nave. The main walls are carried so high as to hide the roof of the domes, and this goes far to give to the church that air of a mediaeval fortress which at once impresses the beholder.

As the fortune of the road had cast me upon this village, I made up my mind to accept pot-luck here, for the morning was no longer young, and I knew not how far I might have to trudge before finding better quarters. So I resolved to take my chance at what looked like the best inn in the place, although it was a very rustic hostelry that would have repelled a wanderer less seasoned than myself to the vicissitudes of the highways and byways. I had, however, a cool little back-room with whitewashed walls to myself, and through the small square window near the table where I sat I could see something of the sunny world, with bits of tiled roof and green foliage, as well as the lemon-coloured b.u.t.terflies that fluttered from garden to garden. There was no lack of food in the auberge, for a pig had been very recently killed. There were several dishes, but they were all made up from the same animal. When something fresh came, I thought, 'This, at all events, must be mutton or veal'; but although it may have been cunningly disguised with tomatoes or garlic, I perceived that it was pork again. It was long after this adventure that I could look at a pig with a lenient and unprejudiced mind.

When I left Grand-Bra.s.sac, I so shaped my course as to return to the valley of the Dronne, but at a point much lower than that where I had last crossed the river. The weather was now very sultry; not a breath of wind stirred, and thunder-clouds were gathering in the sky. As the sun glared between the layers of vapour, the cicadas screamed from the tops of the walnut-trees, while I upon the dazzling white road felt that there was no need of so much rejoicing.

A great dark cloud with fiery fringe now stretches far up the sky from the south, and there is a constant long-drawn-out groan of distant thunder.

This storm is no loiterer; it is coming on at a rapid pace, and it will be a fierce one. Still, the haymakers keep in the meadow hard by the road, working for dear life to fill the waggon, to which a pair of oxen are harnessed, and to get it safely to the village on yonder hill before the floodgates of heaven are opened. I hasten on to this village, and reach it just before the rain begins to fall. It is almost deserted; everybody appears to be in the fields.

On the very top of the hill is a little old church surrounded by cypresses and acacias, and as the sun, about to vanish within the folds of the cloudy pall that is already drawn up to its flaming edge, darts burning rays upon the still motionless leaves, the cicadas again scratch out their note with the blind zeal of fiddlers who have made too merry at the marriage-feast.

According to my wont, I pay a visit to the dead, who lie scattered all around the old church. Scattered do I say? Why, the very ground on which I walk is made up of them. When another dead villager is buried, what occurs is merely a displacement of human remains. As one body goes down, the bones and dust of others come up to the surface. Wherever I walk I see bones, and if I were an anatomist I could tell the use and place of each in the human economy. One might well suppose that in these rural districts, where land is of so little value, there would be but slight disturbance of dead men's bones. Observation, however, tells a very different story. These country churchyards are very small, and n.o.body but the stranger seems to think that there is any reason why they should be larger. There is little or no buying of graves 'in perpetuity' here, and very little grave-marking, except by mounds and wooden crosses. Years pa.s.s quickly, while the briar and the thistle and the bindweed grow apace, like the new interests and affections that spring up in the minds and hearts of the mourners. Who are they who carry flowers to the graves of their grandfathers?

Think of the population of an entire village being swallowed up every fifty or seventy years by this patch of ground that would make but a small garden, and of this movement going on century after century! It is surely no matter for marvel that it has become as difficult to hide the bones as the pebbles whenever a bit of soil has been lately turned. They lie even about the sides of the rough path that goes round the church. Some fragments are so honeycombed that they are as light in the hand as touchwood; others have undergone little, if any, chemical change. Here people must often walk upon the bones of their not very remote ancestors; but they know, if they think about the matter at all, that their turn will come to be similarly treated by their own descendants. There is no better place for meditating upon all the vanities than one of these old rural cemeteries. Turn not away, you other wanderers who may chance to stray into these little fields consecrated to the dead, and excuse your unwillingness to reflect by muttering, 'Horrible!' There is nothing horrible, after all, in these poor bones. What matters it whether they are bleached by the sun or blackened by the clay? It is good for you and for me to see them here, and to realize how soon all men are forgotten, how quickly their bones, mingling with others, give no more clue to the individual life to which they once belonged than a particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does to the matter from which it parted.

It is not good, however, to stay moralizing in a cemetery until a thunderstorm bursts over your head. I remained so long here that I had to run for refuge in a manner quite out of keeping with my solemn train of thoughts. I entered the first doorway that I saw open, and thus I found myself in a cobbler's shop. The cobbler was seated on a stool at a low table covered with tools and odds and ends in the middle of the room, sewing a boot, which he held to his knee with a strap pa.s.sed under his foot. His apprentice was sitting near munching a piece of bread. Both looked up with an astonished, not to say startled, expression when I appeared simultaneously with a dazzling flash of lightning, followed immediately by a terrific thunder-clap. The thought expressed in the eyes of the cobbler as he looked up was, 'Are you a thunderbolt, or Robert the Devil?'

I spoke to him and calmed him; but although he was satisfied that I was human, he evidently could not make me out. Nor was this surprising, for the village--St. Victor by name--lies quite off the track of all but the inhabitants of a small district. The man, however, made me welcome, and offered me a chair. The sky was now the colour of dull lead, the lightning-flashes were almost momentary, and the thunder roared incessantly. Mingling with this sound and that of the splashing rain was another--the clang and scream of the bell in the church-tower. It was rung as the tocsin, with that quick and wild movement which had startled me elsewhere in the depth of night with the cry of 'Fire! Fire!' The bell, however, was not rung now to give the alarm of fire, and to summon everybody to lend a helping hand in extinguishing the flames, but to persuade the storm either to go somewhere else or to act with moderation.

This old custom--now dying out--is no doubt founded on the religious belief that when the church bell is rung with faith a storm will do no harm; but the country people join to the religious idea the notion that the vibration of the atmosphere, caused by the ringing, dissipates the storm or turns it in another direction. Unfortunately for the ancient custom, churches have frequently been struck by lightning at the time when the bells were being rung, and science is positive in declaring that the electric fluid is attracted by an artificial commotion of the atmosphere. On the _causses_ of the Quercy, the peasants place bottles of holy water on the tops of their chimneys as a protection against lightning. The idea is that the evil power will not strike the dwelling of those who put up a sign that their habitation is blessed. These bottles on the chimney-tops puzzled me greatly, until at length I inquired the reason why they were there.

There was to me something exceedingly grand and elevating in this storm that raged upon the hilltop, while the bell in the open tower, tossing like a cask on the sea, proclaimed over all the house-tops and the fields the fierceness of the struggle between the celestial guardians of the church and village, and the demons that thronged the air. I felt that I might never have such an opportunity as this again, and wished to make the most of it. The cobbler nearly lost his temper at seeing me so wickedly elated.

Perhaps he thought that I might draw down a judgment upon myself, and that he ran some risk of being included in it for having harboured me. He not only looked frightened, but frankly owned that he was afraid. He was one of those men--of whom I have known several--who can never overcome their horror of a thunderstorm. At length the storm began to move off and the bell stopped ringing; then the cobbler became quite cheerful. He brought out a great jar of spirit distilled from plums, and insisted upon my drinking some with him. He also invited me to 'break a crust,' but this offer I declined. Before I took leave of the good-natured man, he seemed to have fairly shaken off the bad impression I had made upon him by watching a thunderstorm with interest and pleasure.

The sky having cleared, I continued my journey towards Riberac, and reached the Dronne when the stormy day was ending without a cloud. There was hardly a breath of wind to shake the drops from the still dripping leaves, and the last groan of distant thunder having died away, there would have been deep silence but for the warbling of blackbirds and nightingales.

THE DESERT OF THE DOUBLE

I am now at Riberac--the Ribeyrac of Dante's commentators, who generally prefer to abide by the old spelling. One might expect this ancient little town to offer much interest to the archaeologist, but it does not. Its interest lies almost wholly in its literary a.s.sociations of Arnaud Daniel, and of him mainly because Dante chanced to meet him in purgatory. Here was the castle--there is nothing of it now--where the thirteenth-century troubadour was born whom Petrarch described as '_Il grande maestro d'amore,_' and whom Dante made Guido speak of as a poet in these words of unqualified praise:

'Questi ch' io ti scerno Fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno: Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi Soverchio tutti.'

Dante having asked for the name on earth of this gifted soul, the troubadour replied in the tongue that he had learned from his mother's lips at Riberac:

'Jeu sui Arnaulz che plor e vai cantan.'

Arnaud's modern critics admire him less than did Dante and Petrarch; but he had a gift of sweet song, and he owed it doubtless in no small measure to the influence of the lovely Dronne, on whose banks he must have often rambled in childhood--that season when impressions are unconsciously laid up which shape the future life of the intellect. No Englishman should pa.s.s through Arnaud's birthplace with indifference, for he was the first to put into literary form the story of Lancelot of the Lake.

Although Arnaud Daniel's castle has quite disappeared, much of the church, that was almost a new one in his time, still remains. It was originally Byzantine-Romanesque, but in the sixteenth century it underwent fantastic restoration, and was badly married to another style without a name. What struck me most on entering was the religious darkness through which one sees the suspended lamp of the sanctuary gleaming like a star, and behind it the dim outline of the altar. This crypt-like appearance is explained by the absence even of a single window in the apse, which is covered by a semi-dome. The Romanesque tower is very low and broad, with a broach spire roofed with stones.

What a contrast to the deep shadow of the church was the brilliant white light that I met outside, and to the grave-like silence the sawing sound of the cicadas, drunk with sunshine, in the neighbouring tree-tops!

I set out from Riberac to cross that tract of country between the Dronne and the Isle which is known as the Double. It is still one of the most forlorn wildernesses in all France; but, like the Camargue, it has been much changed of late years by drainage and cultivation, and is destined to become productive and prosperous. For incalculable centuries it had remained a baneful solitude, overgrown with virgin forest, except in the hollows between the low hills, which succeed one another like the undulations of the sea; and here, almost hidden in summer by tall reeds and sedges, lay the pools and bogs that poisoned the air and rendered the climate abominable. In the midst of this marshy, cretaceous desert, stretching between the Isle and its tributary, the Dronne, and close to a wretched fever-stricken village called echourgnac, a small community of Trappist monks established themselves in 1868. They did not go there merely as ascetics fleeing from the world, but also as philanthropists, prepared to sacrifice their lives for the good of humanity. Their mission was to drain and to cultivate this most unhealthy part of the Double, and to improve the condition of the peasants who eked out a miserable existence there. With what success the monks have applied themselves to their task of changing the climate by drainage, and a.s.sisting the peasants in their struggle, is proved by the sentiments of the people towards them. When, under the Third Republic, the unauthorized religious orders were expelled from France, the inhabitants of the Double threatened to resist by force any official interference with the Trappists at echourgnac, and the agitation was so great that the counsel given by the local authorities to the Government was to leave these monks alone. It was acted upon. The Trappists, like the Carthusians, were left undisturbed in this and in other parts of the country.