The Car That Went Abroad Part 11

If the d.u.c.h.ess Margaret made her own tomb more elaborate, it is at least not more beautiful than the others, while an altar to the Virgin is still more elaborate--more beautiful, its grouped marble figures in such high relief that angels and cherubs float in the air, apparently unsupported. Here, as elsewhere, is a wealth of ornamentation; and everywhere woven into its intricacies one may find the initials P and M--Philibert and Margaret--and the latter's motto, "_Fortune, infortune, fort une._" It has been called a mysterious motto, and different meanings have been twisted out of it. But my French is new and fresh and takes things quite obviously. "Fortune and misfortune strengthens or fortifies one" strikes me as a natural rendering. That last verb _fortifier_ may seem to be abbreviated without warrant, but Margaret was a queen and could have done that for the sake of euphony and word-play.

The unscarred condition and the purity of these precious marbles is almost as astonis.h.i.+ng as their beauty, when one considers the centuries of invasion and revolution, with a vandalism that respected nothing sacred, least of all symbols of royalty. By careful search we could discover a broken detail here and there, but the general effect was completeness, and the white marble--or was it ivory tinted?--seen under the light of the illumined stained windows seemed to present the shapes and shades of things that, as they had never been new, neither would they ever be old.

Chapter V

VIENNE IN THE RAIN

It is about forty miles from Bourg to Lyons, a country of fair fields, often dyed deeply red at this season with crimson clover, a country rich and beautiful, the road a straight line, wide and smooth, the trees on either side vividly green with spring. But Lyons is not beautiful--it is just a jangling, jarring city of cobbled crowded streets and mainly uninteresting houses and thronging humanity, especially soldiers. It is a place to remain unloved, unhonored, and unremembered.

The weather now put aside other things and really got down to the business of raining. It was fair enough when we left Lyons, but as we reached the top of a hill that overlooked the world I saw down the fields a spectral light and far deepening dusk which looked ominous. By the time we got our top up there was a steady downpour. We did not visit any wayside villages, though some of them looked interesting enough.

French villages are none too clean at any time and rain does not seem to help them. Attractive old castles on neighboring hilltops received hardly a glance; even one overhanging our very road barely caused us to check up. How old it looked in its wet desolation, the storm eating into its crumbling walls!

We pulled up at last at Vienne, at the end of the bridge facing the cathedral. History has been written about Vienne, and there are monuments of the past which it is not good form to overlook. The head of the family said she was not very particular about form and that she was particular about being wet and discomforted on a chill spring day.

France was full of monuments of the past, she said, and she had not started out to make her collection complete. She would study the cathedral from the car, and would the rest of us please remember to bring some fresh rolls for luncheon. So the rest of us went to the church of St. Maurice, which begins to date with the twelfth century and looks even older. Surrounded by comparatively modern buildings and soaked with rain it appeared, one of the most venerable relics I had ever seen. I do not think we found the inside very interesting. It was dead and dusky, and the seventh-century sarcophagus of St. Leoninus was, in the French phrase, not gay. On the whole there seemed a good deal of mutilation and not much taste.

We paddled through streets, asking directions to the Roman temple.

Vienne was an important town under the Romans, the capital of one of the provinces of Gaul. Of course the Romans would leave landmarks--the kind that would last. When we found the temple of Augustus and Livia at last, it did not look so much older than the church, though it is more than as old again. It was so positively Roman and so out of place among its modern French surroundings that it looked exactly like something that had been brought there and set up for exhibition. It took a heavy strain of imagination to see it as an integral part of the vanished Roman capital.

All about the temple lay fragments of that ancient city--exhibition pieces, like the temple. One felt that they should not be left out in the rain.

We hunted farther and found an Arch of Triumph, which the Romans generally built in conquered territory. It was hard to tell where the arch began and where it ended, such a variety of other things had grown up around and against it. Still, there was at least a section standing, Roman, and of n.o.ble proportions. It will still be Roman, and an arch, when those later incrustations have crumbled away. Roman work is not trivial stuff.

We might have lingered a little in the winding streets and made further discoveries, but the Joy had already sighted a place where the most attractive rolls and French cakes filled the window. The orders, she said, were very strict about the luncheon things. We must get them at once or we should not be able to locate the place again.

Curious things can happen in a brief absence. We returned to the car to find one of the back tires perfectly flat, the head of the family sitting serenely unconscious of her misfortune. We had picked up one of those flat-headed boot nails that Europeans love so well, and the tire had slowly and softly settled. There are cleaner, pleasanter things than taking off a tire and putting it on again in the rain, but I utilized a deep doorway on the corner for the dry work, and Narcissa held the umbrella while I pulled and pushed and grunted and pumped, during the more strenuous moments. Down the river a way we drew up in a gra.s.sy place under some trees and sat in the car and ate the _gateaux_ and other things, and under the green shelter I made coffee and eggs, the little cooker sitting cozily on the running-board. Then all the afternoon along the hard, wet, s.h.i.+ning road that follows the Rhone to Valence, where we spent two days, watching the steady beat from the hotel windows, reading, resting, and eating a good deal of the time; doing not much sight-seeing, for we had touched Valence on our northward trip eight months before.

Chapter VI

THE CHaTEAU I DID NOT RENT

In a former chapter I have mentioned the mighty natural portrait in stone which Mark Twain found, and later named the Lost Napoleon, because he could not remember its location, and how we rediscovered it from Beauchastel on the Rhone, not far below Valence. We decided now that we would have at least another glimpse of the great stone face, it being so near. The skies had cleared this morning, though there was a good deal of wind and the sun was not especially warm. But we said we would go. We would be getting on toward the south, at any rate.

We did not descend on the Beauchastel side, there being a bridge shown on the map, at La Voulte, where we would cross. The reader may also remember the mention of a chateau below Beauchastel, with a sign on it which said that the property was to let, and my failure to negotiate for it. Very well, here is the sequel: When we got to the end of the bridge opposite La Voulte, we looked across to one of the closely packed mediaeval villages of France with a great castle rising from its central height. It was one of the most picturesque things we had seen and I stopped to photograph it, declaring we must certainly visit it. So we crossed the bridge and at the end turned away toward Beauchastel, deciding to visit La Voulte later.

We were back almost immediately. The day was not as clear as it looked and the Lost Napoleon was veiled, behind a white horizon. Very likely it would be better by morning, we said, so we dropped our belongings at the tiny Beauchastel inn and made an afternoon excursion to the chateau.

Imagine my feelings when, on looking up from the road, I suddenly discovered once more the big sign, "_Chateau A Louer._" It was our chateau--the one I had formerly been discouraged from taking. It was providence, I said, knocking a second time at our door.

The others had another view. They said unless I would promise not to rent the premises I would not be permitted to examine them. I tried to make better terms, but finally submitted. We drove up into the narrow, ancient, cobbled streets a distance and left the car. Then we climbed.

It was a steep and tortuous way, winding around scary edges and through doubtful-looking pa.s.sages where, in weird holes and crannies, old and crooked people lived and were doing what they had always done since time began. I don't remember exactly how we finally made our way through crumble and decay--such surroundings as I have often known in dreams--to a gra.s.sy court where there was a semblance of genuine life. An old caretaker was there and he agreed to show us through.

It was called _La Voulte sur Rhone_, he said, and gave its name to the village. No one knew just when it had been begun, but some of it had been there in the eleventh century, when it had belonged to Adon de Clerieu. It had pa.s.sed through many hands and had been more than once reconstructed. At one time Guillaume de Fay held it; also Philippe IV and Louis de Bourbon Conde, and the great family of De Rohan. Kings had been entertained there, among them Louis XIII, an interesting fact, but I wished they had given better accommodations than the rambling, comfortless, and rather blind succession of boxes shown us as the royal suite. I also objected to the paper on the walls until our guide explained that it had been put there by an American tenant of the early Andrew Johnson period. He told us then that the chateau had been recently bought by a French author of two volumes of poetry, who was restoring portions of it and had reserved a row of rooms along the high terrace to let to other poets and kindred souls, so they might live side by side and look out over the fair land of France and interchange their fancies and dream long dreams. Standing on that lofty green vantage and looking out across the river and the valley of the Rhone, I was tempted to violate my treaty and live there forever after.

The only portion really restored, so far, is a large a.s.sembly room, now used as a sort of museum. I hope the owner will reclaim, or at least clean, some of the other rooms, and that he will not carry the work to the point where atmosphere and romance seem to disappear. Also, I truly hope he won't give up the notion of that row of poets along the terrace, even if I can't be one of them; and I should like to slip up there sometime and hear them all striking their harps in unison and lifting a memnonic voice to the sunrise.

Chapter VII

AN HOUR AT ORANGE

Our bill at Beauchastel for the usual accommodation--dinner, lodging, and breakfast--was seventeen francs-twenty, including the tips to two girls and the stableman. This was the cheapest to date; that is to say, our expense account was one dollar each, nothing for the car.

The Beauchastel inn is not really a choice place, but it is by no means a poor place--not from the point of view of an American who has put up at his own little crossroad hotels. We had the dining room to ourselves, with a round table in the center, and the dinner was good and plentiful and well served. If the rooms were bare they were at least clean, and the landlady was not to blame that it turned cold in the night, which made getting up a matter to be considered.

Still, we did get up pretty promptly, for we wanted to see if our natural wonder was on view. It was, and we took time and sketched it and tried to photograph it, though that was hopeless, for the distance was too great and the apparition too actinic--too blue. But it was quite clear, and the peaceful face impressed us, I think, more than ever. The best view is from the railway embankment.

We got another reward for stopping at Beauchastel. We saw the old Rhone stagecoach come in, Daudet's coach, and saw descend from it Daudet's characters, _le Camarguais_, _le boulanger_, _le remouleur_, and the rest. At least they might have been those, for they belonged with the old diligence, and one could imagine the knife grinder saying to the hectoring baker, "_Tais-toi, je t'en prie" si navrant et si doux_.[13]

But now we felt the breath of the south. It was no longer chilly. The sun began to glow warm, the wind died. Sometime in the afternoon we arrived at Orange. Orange is not on the Rhone and we had missed it in our northward journey in September. It was one of our special reasons for returning to the south of France. Not the town of Orange itself, which is of no particular importance, but for the remnants of the Roman occupation--a triumphal arch and the chief wall of a Roman theater, both of such fine construction and n.o.ble proportions that they are to be compared with nothing else of their kind in France.

We came to the arch first--we had scarcely entered the town when we were directly facing it. It stands in a kind of circular gra.s.s plot a little below the present level, with short flights of steps leading down to it.

At the moment of our arrival a boy of about fifteen was giving an exhibition by riding up and down these steps on a bicycle. I sincerely wished he would not do it.

Whatever its relation to its surroundings nineteen centuries ago, the arch of Orange is magnificently out of place to-day. Time-beaten and weather-stained--a visible manifest of a race that built not for the generations or the centuries, but for "the long, long time the world shall last"--supreme in its grandeur and antiquity, it stands in an environment quite modern, quite new, and wholly trivial.

The arch is really three arches--the highest in the center, and the attic, as they call the part above, is lofty, with rich decorations, still well preserved. There are restored patches here and there, but they do little injury.

From whatever direction you look the arch is beautiful, imposing, and certainly it seems eternal. When the present Orange has crumbled and has been followed by successive cities, it will still be there, but I trust the boy with the bicycle will not survive.

The theater is at the other end of town. It is not an amphitheater or an inclosure of any kind, but a huge flat wall, about as solid as the hills and one of the biggest things in France. Strictly speaking, it was never part of any building at all. It was simply a stage property, a sort of permanent back scene for what I judge to have been an open-air theater.

There is no doubt about its permanency. It is as high as an ordinary ten-or twelve-story building, longer than the average city block, and it is fifteen feet thick. That is the Roman idea of scenery. They did not expect to s.h.i.+ft it often. They set up some decorative masonry in front of it, with a few G.o.ds and heroes solidly placed, and let it go at that.

Their stage would be just in front of this, rather narrow, and about on a ground level. The whole was built facing a steep rocky hillside, which was carved into a semi-circle of stone seats, in the old fas.h.i.+on which Rome borrowed from Greece. This natural stonework did not stand the wash of centuries, or it may have been quarried for the chateau which the princes of Orange built at the summit of the hill. The chateau is gone to-day, and the seats have been restored, I dare say, with some of the original material. Every August now a temporary stage is erected in the ancient theater, and the Comedie Francaise gives performances there.

The upper works of the hill, where the chateau was, are rather confusing. There are cave-like places and sudden drops and rudimentary pa.s.sages, all dimly suggesting dungeons, once black and horrible, now happily open to the sun. And, by the way, I suppose that I am about the only person in the world who needed to be told that a line of kings originated at Orange. I always supposed that William of Orange took his name from an Irish society whose colors, along with a shamrock, he wore in his hat.

By some oversight the guidebook does not mention the jam that is sold at Orange. It is put up in tin pails, and has in it all the good things in the world--lumps of them--price, one franc per pail.

We did not stop at Avignon, for we had been there before, but followed around outside the ancient wall and came at last to the Rhone bridge, and to the island of our smoke adventure in the days of our inexperience, eight months earlier. This time we camped on the island in a pretty green nook by the water's edge, left the car under a tree, and made tea and had some of that excellent jam and some fresh rolls and b.u.t.ter, and ate them looking across to ancient Villeneuve and the tower of Philip le Bel.

Oh, the automobile is the true flying carpet--swift, willing, always ready, obeying at a touch. Only this morning we were at Beauchastel; a little while ago we were under the ancient arch at Orange and sat in the h.o.a.ry theater. A twist of the crank, a little turning of the wheel, a brief flight across wood and meadow, and behold! the walls of Avignon and a pleasant island in the river, where we alight for a little to make our tea in the greenery, knowing that we need only to rub the magic lamp to sail lightly away, resting where we will.

Our tea ended, the genii awoke and dropped us into Villeneuve, where, in an open market, we realized that it was cherry season. I thought I had seen cherries before, but never in this larger sense. Here there were basketfuls, boxfuls, bucketfuls, barrelfuls, wagonloads--the whole street was crowded with wagons, and every wagon heaped high with the crimson and yellow fruit. Officials seemed to be weighing them and collecting something, a tax, no doubt. But what would be done with them later? Could they s.h.i.+p all those cherries north and sell them? And remember this was only one evening and one town. The thought that every evening and every town in the Midi was like this in cherry time was stupefying. We had to work our way among cherry wagons to get to the open road again, and our "flying carpet" came near getting damaged by one of them, because of my being impatient and trying to push ahead when an approaching cherry wagon had the right of way. As it was, I got a vigorous admonishment in French profanity, which is feathery stuff, practically harmless. I deserved something much more solid.

Consider for a moment this French profanity: About the most violent things a Frenchman can say are "_Sacre bleu_" and "_Nom d'un chien!_"

One means "Sacred blue" and the other "Name of a dog." If he doubles the last and says "Name of a name of a dog," he has gone his limit. I fail to find anything personal or destructive or profane in these things.

They don't seem to hit anything, not even the dog. And why a dog?

Furthermore, concerning the color chosen for profane use--why blue? why not some shade of Nile green, or--or-- Oh, well, let it go, but I do wish I could have changed places with that man a few minutes!

We considered returning to Avignon for the night, but we went to Tarascon instead, and arrived after dark at a bright little inn, where we were comfortably lodged, and a relative of Tartarin brought us a good supper and entertained us with his adventures while we ate.