Two Summers in Guyenne Part 17

Celtic remains point to the conclusion that, long before the foundation of the first monastery, which was the beginning of the mediaeval town, the Gauls had an _oppidum_ on this hill. St. emilion became a fortified town in the reign of King John, who signed a charter here, and it may be said to have been thoroughly gained over to the English cause by Edward I., who granted numerous privileges to the burghers. For a short time the place fell into the power of Philippe IV., but it was in its collegial church in May, 1303, that the duchy of Aquitaine was ceremoniously restored by the Seneschal of Gascony to the King of England, represented on this occasion by the Earl of Lincoln. To reward the inhabitants for their fidelity, and to compensate them in some sort for the trials which they had endured in consequence, St. emilion was made a royal English borough, and enjoyed the special favour and protection of the sovereign.

It was in this fourteenth century that it rose to the height of its importance and prosperity. We can gather to-day from the ruins of its religious buildings and fortifications what that importance must have been.

Besides the monastery dating from the age of Charlemagne, whose monks early in the twelfth century were placed under the rule of St. Augustin, two great religious establishments were those of the Minor Friars or Cordeliers, and the Preaching Friars or Dominicans. Of the vast convent of these last nothing remains but a very stately and n.o.ble fragment of the church wall, standing isolated on the top of the hill.

During the Hundred Years' War St. emilion was besieged and taken by Du Guesclin; but although the burghers were often compelled to dissemble in order to save their throats, they were always ready to welcome an English army. They were among the first to follow the example of the men of Bordeaux, who raised the English flag for the last time in 1452.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth century St. emilion suffered grievously from the fury and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of the vile ruffians of both camps.

The excesses of the Norman barbarians when they burnt and pillaged the town in the ninth century were mild in comparison with those of the sixteenth-century Christians.

There are few spots more fascinating to the artist and archaeologist than this ruinous old stronghold of the English kings. One might ramble a long time over the cobble stones of its steep narrow streets, and about the ruined ramparts draped with green pellitory and the spurred valerian's purple flowers, with a mind held in continual tension by the picturesque.

At every angle there is a fresh surprise. The monolithic church, made by excavating the calcareous rock, which crops out and forms a kind of table near the top of the crescent-shaped hill, is said to have been mainly the work of monks in the ninth century. There is no other resembling it, with the exception of the one at Aubeterre, the idea of which was probably borrowed here. Steps lead down into the nave, where there is an odour of ancient death, and where the light darting through windows pierced in the face of the cliff reveals on each side a row of huge rectangular piers supporting round-headed arches, all forming part of the rock. These separate the nave from the aisles, of which there are three, the one farthest from the centre having been used chiefly for burial. All about are numerous tomb recesses. The piers and their arches are covered with green or black lichen, which adds not a little to the gloom and dismalness of this subterranean church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONOLITHIC CHURCH AND DETACHED TOWER AT ST. eMILION.]

Ornamental details of the exterior, such as the doorway with its has-relief of the Last Judgment, are of a much later period than the rude excavations of the interior. From the platform of rock immediately above the vast crypt rise a Gothic tower and spire dating from the twelfth century. This structure, which lends so much character to St. emilion, appears to belong to the church beneath; but such is not the case. Although separated, it is a part of the collegial, now parish, church, which is higher up the hill, just within the line of the ramparts. It is said to have been built by the English, but the Romanesque lateral doorway would be strong evidence of the contrary if there were no other. English influence, however, may have played some part in the extensive rebuilding which was carried out in the fourteenth century. The east end, scarcely forming an apse, and pierced in the centre with a high broad window with a narrower window on each side, suggests this, as do also the very ma.s.sive columns of the choir.

Close to the monolithic church is the cavern where the hermit emilion is supposed to have dwelt. In order to see it, I had to find a little girl who kept the key, and who led the way down the steps with a lighted candle. St.

emilion might have looked far before finding a more unpleasant place to live in than this cavern. It might be safely guaranteed to kill in a very short time any man with a modern const.i.tution, unless he were miraculously preserved from rheumatism and other evils of the flesh. The damp oozes perpetually from the slimy rock, and the air is like that of a well.

Indeed, there is a little well here called St. emilion's Fountain. The spring is intermittent; every two or three minutes the water is seen to rise with one or more bubbles. It never fails, no matter how prolonged the drought may be.

The little girl pointed out to me a great number of pins lying upon the sandy bottom of the basin. I asked her how they came there, and she said that they were dropped into the water by people--chiefly young girls--who wished to know when they would be married. If two pins that had been dropped in together crossed one another upon the bottom, it was a sign that the person who let them fall would be married within a year. As I could distinguish none that were crossed, I concluded that all who had made the experiment here were condemned to celibacy. This form of superst.i.tion--doubtless of Celtic origin wherever met with--is much more frequent in Brittany than in Guyenne.

Close to the 'grotto' is an old charnel-house quarried in the rock with a dome-shaped roof, at the top of which is a round hole that lets the light of heaven into the awful pit. This opening formerly served another purpose.

There was a cemetery above, and as the bones were turned up from the shallow soil to make room for others still clothed with their flesh, they were thrown down the orifice. For those who did not wish to be disturbed after death, the charnel-house was the securer place of burial. Here, as in the underground church, one sees numerous recesses in the wall which were made for tombs. Those who feel the need of sombre ideas will be as likely to find the incentive to them here as anywhere. Oh, what ghostly places are these old southern towns, with their heaps of ruins, their churches as dim as sepulchres, their crypts and charnel-houses filled with bones!

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONVENT OF THE CORDELIERS: THE CLOISTERS.]

Fellow-wanderer, come and see with me the convent of the Cordeliers. There are no monks here now. Since the Revolution their habitation has been open to all the winds of heaven, and the shadow of the wild fig-tree falls where that of their own forms once fell as they stood in the stalls of their chapel choir. In the cloisters, the ivy and the pellitory and the little cranesbill have crept with the moss and the lichen from stone to stone, and in the centre of the quadrangle stands a great walnut-tree that spreads its branches and long leaves over all the gra.s.sy ground. Birds that cannot be seen sing aloft under the flaming sky; but here in the shadow of the arcades and the dark foliage nothing moves except the snail and the lazy toad at evening amidst the damp weeds. The stones that we see here in this ruined convent bear testimony to the eternal restlessness of man's desire to give some fresh artistic form to his religious aspiration. Some were carved in the Romanesque period, others in the Gothic, others in the Renaissance. Witnesses of the human mind in different ages, all are crumbling and growing green together, sharing a common fate.

Among the many holes and corners full of curious interest at St. emilion, but which have to be searched for by the visitor, is the cave where during the Reign of Terror seven of the Girondins sought refuge, and where they remained hidden from their persecutors several months, notwithstanding the unflagging efforts made to discover their retreat. Their enemies were convinced that they were somewhere in the town, or, rather, underneath the town, for the rock on which it rests is honeycombed with quarries. These Girondins were Guadet, Salles, Barbaroux, Petlon, Buzot, Louvet, and Valady. Guadet was a native of St. emilion, and he had a relative there named Madame Bouquey. She and her husband were a brave and n.o.ble-minded couple at a time when the craven-hearted--always the accomplices of tyrants--were in the ascendancy everywhere. They sheltered Guadet and his companions in a cave under their garden. The fugitives had first thought of hiding in the old quarries, but they realized that they would be much safer in the cave.

Hearing that the 'Grotte des Girondins' was in the garden of the school, now kept by Christian Brothers, thither I went. A little boy in a long black blouse, with a leather belt round his waist, having obtained the permission, pulled open a trapdoor in the garden, and, candle in hand, led the way down a flight of steps into a cavern, about the same size as St.

emilion's, but much dryer and more comfortable. On one side of it was an opening, which was made perceptible by a very faint glimmer of daylight. I found that this opening was in the side of a well. The water was still far below, and the surface of the earth was about fifteen feet above. The trap-door entrance--so the Brothers a.s.sured me--did not exist in the last century, and the only entrance to the cave was by the well. It was, therefore, an admirable hiding-place, for the lateral opening was not distinguishable from above, and anybody looking down and seeing the water at the bottom would have thought it quite unnecessary to search any further there. The Girondins were let down by the rope, or they let themselves down. As time went on, the position of Monsieur and Madame Bouquey, on whom strong suspicion rested, became more and more difficult; and when the fugitives were informed that commissioners were on their way to St.

emilion, they resolved that, rather than expose their benefactors to further peril, they would make an attempt to escape in different directions. Louvet got to Paris, and was the only one of the seven who did not come by a violent death. Guadet and Salles were captured at St.

emilion, and were executed, as a matter of course. Barbaroux was also taken, after making an unsuccessful attempt to blow out his brains, and he, too, was guillotined at Bordeaux. Buzot and Petion stabbed themselves in a field between St. emilion and Castillon, where their bodies were found half eaten by wolves. The seventh, Valady, was brought to the scaffold at Perigueux. Monsieur and Madame Bouquey met the same fate. And it is with this page of modern history that the quiet little garden of the Brothers'

school, its well and hidden cavern, are so tragically a.s.sociated.

Near a ruinous _donjon_, called the Chateau du Roi, and attributed to Louis VIII., now much overgrown with herbs and shrubs, I stood on a bastion of the town wall, overlooking the crescent-shaped hollow, covered with houses, bits of fortification older than the outer wall, ruined convents--a chaos of lichen-tinted stones and tiles gilded by the warm yet tenderly softened suns.h.i.+ne of early evening. And as I gazed, I longed the more to be able to carry away a picture of that scene, with all its tones and tints, that would last in the memory, as I also wished to draw out of it all the meaning of what I felt. I left with a sense of failure, of weakness, of confused impressions, which was to me like a gnawing weevil of the mind, on the road to Libourne.

Vines, vines, nothing but vines, gradually shading down to the darkness of the night that covers them. Then, when the dusky gauze of the cloudless night is drawn all over it, the broad leafy land sleeps under the sparkling stars.

Here at Libourne I am in a town of whose English origin there can be no doubt. It was one of the thirteenth-century _bastides_ founded in Guyenne by Edward I. These _bastides_ were at the outset intended as places of refuge for serfs and other non-belligerents of the rural districts in time of war. Their character was that of free or open towns, and most of the burgs that still bear the name of Villefranche in the South of France were originally _bastides_. Not a few of them keep the name of _La bastide_, in combination with some other to this day. They are to be found all over Guyenne and a great part of Languedoc. They were often fortified with a wall, a palisade, and a moat. Their strong peculiarity, however, the one that has been preserved in spite of all the changes that centuries have brought, was the rectilinear and geometrical manner in which they were laid out. In contrast to the typical mediaeval town that grew up slowly around some abbey, or at the foot of some strong castle that protected it, and in the building of which, if any method was observed, it was that of making the streets as crooked as possible, to a.s.sist the defenders in stopping the inward rush of an enemy, the streets of the _bastide_ were all drawn at right angles to each other. Consequently, however old the houses may be, such towns have somewhat of a modern air. For the same reason, one of the chief attributes of the picturesque--an accidental meeting of various motives--is absent. To the inhabitants of these free towns a certain quant.i.ty of land was apportioned in equal parts, for which a fixed rent was paid to the king or other feudal lord.

I have said that the _bastides_ were not picturesque. In their early days they must have been quite hideous; but time, that plays havoc with human beings, lends to such of their works as may offer to it the resistance of a long, hard struggle an interest which becomes at length a beauty. There is usually to be found in these towns the thirteenth-century _place_, or square, which formed, as it were, the heart of the commune. Along each of the four sides is a Gothic arcade, on which the first and all the higher storeys of the houses rest. Thus, there is a broad pavement completely vaulted over on each side of the quadrilateral, where people can walk, sheltered from the sun or rain, These old squares, wherever they are found, are now always picturesque.

Libourne, from being a small _bastide_, grew to such importance, on account of its position on the right bank of the Dordogne and the wine trade that it was able to carry on by water, that it rivalled Bordeaux before the close of the English domination, and the question of making it the capital and the seat of the Prince of Wales and Aquitaine was seriously pondered.

To-day it preserves all the plainness of its line-and-rule origin; but it has a few redeeming features, such as one side of its ancient square, with broad pavement under Gothic arches, a picturesque town-hall of the sixteenth century, and a curious mediaeval tower, with machicolated embattlements, now capped with a very tall and pointed roof, and known as the Tour de l'Horloge. It is a remnant of the fourteenth-century ramparts.

The people of Libourne were steadfast partisans of the English to the last, and after 1453 they did not seek to distinguish themselves by their resignation to the rule of the French kings. When in 1542 the insurrection against the salt-tax, commencing at La Roch.e.l.le, spread over Saintonge and the whole of Western Guyenne, the Libournais threw themselves heartily into the movement. When the time of repression came they were made to smart sorely for their turbulent spirit. The Place de l'Hotel de Ville, of which one side remains very much as it was then, bristled with gibbets, and 150 persons were hanged in a single day. The man who had rung the tocsin that called together the insurgents was suspended by the neck to the hammer of the bell, as a warning to others not to ring it again unless they had a better motive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOUR DE L'HORLOGE AT LIBOURNE.]

Standing by the broad river, a little above the point where the Isle is falling into it, carrying down all manner of craft with the tide, I see at a distance of a couple of miles or so towards the west the hill that is known in history as Le Tertre de Fronsac. There Charlemagne built a castle, of which nothing now remains. The hill owes its modern celebrity entirely to its wine. It is not everybody who knows the virtue of the genuine Fronsac, especially that which was yielded by the old vines before the phylloxera destroyed them, but most people are familiar with the brand.

But for this, the _tertre_ would long since have ceased to be famous, notwithstanding Charlemagne.

The hill has a strange appearance, for it rises abruptly from the river bank in the midst of the plain. It did not tempt me to walk to it in the scorching heat, but as a steamboat was going there, I paid two sous and went on board. I had never been in such a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l of a steamer before.

It rocked and tumbled like a coracle, and spat and fumed and snorted like a veritable devil composed of an engine, a couple of paddle-wheels, and a few boards. Helped by the tide that was pouring out, it went down stream at a rate that was almost exciting, and in a few minutes I was landed at the bottom of the famous hill. I made a conscientious attempt to reach the top, but was stopped just where it began to grow interesting by a notice-board that warned me, if I ventured any farther, I should be prosecuted and heavily fined. Such things are not often seen in France. Vineyards are generally open, but here they were fiercely protected with walls and fences and notice-boards. The land was evidently very precious. I had wandered into truly civilized country, where land and manners were too highly cultivated to please me, and I again regretted the rocky wastefulness that I had left behind me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HILL OF FRONSAC.]

I turned back, and wandering about the village, which is a straggling one, looked for the church, hoping that this at least would show something of interest. Not being able to find it, I asked a man to tell me the way to it, and he, stopping, said:

'_L'eglise pour aller prier dedans?_'

What does he mean by asking me that? I thought. Could there be a church at Fronsac that was not used for praying?

'Yes, that is the kind of church I am looking for.' 'Very good,' rejoined the man. 'Now I know what you want I can inform you. I put that question to you because there are some people here called Leglise.'

It was to the church _pour prier dedans_ that I went, not to Mr. Church.

Originally Romanesque, it has been pulled about and changed almost as much as the Tertre de Fronsac, which I am sure I shall never wish to climb again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No Name]

BY THE GARONNE

I have reached--I need not say how--the south-eastern corner of the Bordelais, and am now at Bazas in very hot September weather, I am not only as warm as a lizard of the dusty roadside likes to be, but am hungry and thirsty. I therefore cast about for an inn that looks both cool and capable of giving a fair meal to a tired wanderer. My choice rests with one that swings the sign of the White Horse; for, to tell the truth, I have somewhat of a superst.i.tious belief in the luck that this emblem brings to the traveller. I place it immediately after the Golden Lion, my favourite beast on a signboard, although it deceived me once. The deception, however, befell in the Bordelais, where the inhabitants are far from being the most pleasant to be found in France; therefore I judged this _Lion d'Or_ charitably, and took account of all that might have frustrated its good intentions.

Having made up my mind to trust myself to the White Horse, I entered a large, _salle-a-manger_, which, after the glare of the mid-day suns.h.i.+ne, seemed as dark as a cellar that is lighted by a small air-hole. The shutters had been closed against the heat and the flies, but the rays that broke through had the ardour and brilliancy cast by molten metal in a smelting-house, and the sight very quickly accepted with relief the lessened light of the room. There was one other person present, and, although the table was long enough to accommodate fifty, my plate was set immediately opposite his. He was a young negro gentleman, with such a s.h.i.+ning ebony skin that he was almost refres.h.i.+ng to eyes that had just left the dazzling whiteness of the outer world. He gave me the impression of being a rather conceited African, but this may have been because my dress compared so unfavourably with his. He was the son of a merchant at St.

Louis in Senegal, and was just like a Frenchman in all but his colour. I asked him if he found the weather we were having sufficiently warm, and he replied:

'_Regardez comme je sue!_'

True enough, the beads of perspiration glistened upon his forehead like black pearls. What is the use, I thought, of being an African if one cannot keep dry in a temperature of 95 Fahrenheit?

I soon left my dark acquaintance, and went forth to roam about Bazas, which, like so many little old towns of Southern France, is in the early hours of a summer afternoon as quiet and deserted as a cemetery. The stones are so heated that a cat that begins to cross the road lazily, stopping to stretch or examine something in the gutter, will suddenly start off at a rush as if a devil had been cast into it.

The interest of Bazas to the traveller lies mainly in its church, which was formerly a cathedral. Its broad and imposing facade, encrusted with ornament, chiefly in the florid Gothic of the fifteenth century, but disfigured by a hideous eighteenth-century _fronton_ that crowns the gable, stands at the top of a broad and rather steep _place_, of which some of the houses are of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The tower built against the northern end of the front carries a lofty and graceful crocketed spire. Until the Revolution, this west front, ornamented as it was with nearly three hundred statues, was considered the most elaborately decorated in the South of France. Even now, although so many of the niches are vacant, it is exceedingly rich in sculpture. The central doorway is so lofty that it occupies more than half the height of the original facade, and the doorway on each side of it is only a little lower. The central tympanum is divided into five compartments filled with figures in relief.

The uppermost panel represents the Last Judgment. The interior admirably combines grandeur and lightness. The nave (without transept) is very long and lofty, and, together with its clerestory, is beautifully proportioned.

Finally, the effect of a delightful vista is obtained by the wide sanctuary. With its lofty and airy arcade separating it from the _pourlour_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAZAS.]

All the old part of the town is built upon a rocky hill, and it is still almost surrounded by ruinous ramparts. The church is just within the wall on the side where the rock is precipitous. Looking upward from the bottom of the narrow valley, the view of the ramparts high overhead, tapestried with ivy and other plants, and above these the tabernacle work, the crocketed pinnacles and spire, and the fantastic far-stretching gargoyles of the venerable cathedral, makes one feel that joy of the eye and the spirit which is the wanderer's reward for all the sun-scorch and other petty tribulations he may have to endure in searching for the picturesque.