In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc Part 1

In Troubadour-Land.

by S. Baring-Gould.

PREFACE.

With Murray, Baedeker, Guide Joanne, and half-a-dozen others--all describing, and describing with exactness, the antiquities and scenery--the writer of a little account of Provence and Languedoc is driven to give much of personal incident. When he attempts to describe what objects he has seen, he is pulled up by finding all the information he intended to give in Murray or in Baedeker or Joanne. If he was in exuberant spirits at the time, and enjoyed himself vastly, he is unable, or unwilling, to withhold from his readers some of the overflow of his good spirits. That is my apology to the reader. If he reads my little book when his liver is out of order, or in winter fogs and colds--he will call me an a.s.s, and I must bear it. If he is in a cheerful mood himself, then we shall agree very well together.

S. BARING-GOULD.

LEW TRENCHARD, DEVON,

_October 28, 1890._

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The Tiber in Flood--Typhoid fever in Rome--Florence--A Jew acquaintance--Drinking in Provence--Buying _bric-a-brac_ with the Jew--The _carro_ on Easter Eve--Its real Origin--My Jew friend's letters--Italian _dolce far niente_.

Conceive yourself confronted by a pop-gun, some ten feet in diameter, charged with mephitic vapours and plugged with microbes of typhoid fever.

Conceive your sensations when you were aware that the piston was being driven home.

That was my situation in March, 1890, when I got a letter from Messrs.

Allen asking me to go into Provence and Languedoc, and write them a book thereon. I dodged the microbe, and went.

To make myself understood I must explain.

I was in Rome. For ten days with a sirocco wind the rains had descended, as surely they had never come down since the windows of heaven were opened at the Flood. The Tiber rose thirty-two feet. Now Rome is tunnelled under the streets with drains or sewers that carry all the refuse of a great city into the Tiber. But, naturally, when the Tiber swells high above the crowns of the sewers, they are choked. All the foulness of the great town is held back under the houses and streets, and breeds gases loathsome to the nose and noxious to life. Not only so, but a column of water, some twenty to twenty-five feet in height, is acting like the piston of a pop-gun, and is driving all the acc.u.mulated gases charged with the germs of typhoid fever into every house which has communication with the sewers. There is no help for it, the poisonous vapours _must_ be forced out of the drains and _must_ be forced into the houses. That is why, with a rise of the Tiber, typhoid fever is certain to break out in Rome.

As I went over Ponte S. Angelo I was wont to look over the parapet at the opening of the sewer that carried off the dregs of that portion of the city where I was residing. One day I looked for it, and looked in vain.

The Tiber had swelled and was overflowing its banks, and for a week or fortnight there could be no question, not a sewer in the vast city would be free to do anything else but mischief. I did not go on to the Vatican galleries that day. I could not have enjoyed the statues in the Braccio Nuovo, nor the frescoes in the Loggia. I went home, found Messrs. Allen's letter, packed my Gladstone bag, and bolted. I shall never learn who got the microbe destined for me, which I dodged.

I went to Florence; at the inn where I put up--one genuinely Italian, Bonciani's,--I made an acquaintance, a German Jew, a picture-dealer with a shop in a certain capital, no matter which, editor of a _bric-a-brac_ paper, and a right merry fellow. I introduce him to the reader because he afforded me some information concerning Provence. He had a branch establishment--never mind where, but in Provence--and he had come to Florence to pick up pictures and _bric-a-brac_.

Our acquaintance began as follows. We sat opposite each other at table in the evening. A large rush-encased flask is set before each guest in a swing carriage, that enables him to pour out his gla.s.sful from the big-bellied flask without effort. Each flask is labelled variously Chianti, Asti, Pomino, but all the wines have a like substance and flavour, and each is an equally good light dinner-wine. A flask when full costs three francs twenty centimes; and when the guest falls back in his seat, with a smile of satisfaction on his face, and his heart full of good will towards all men, for that he has done his dinner, then the bottle is taken out, weighed, and the guest charged the amount of wine he has consumed. He gets a fresh flask at every meal.

"Du lieber Himmel!" exclaimed my _vis-a-vis_. "I do b'lieve I hev drunk dree francs. Take up de flasche and weigh her. Tink so?"

"I can believe it without weighing the bottle," I replied.

"And only four sous--twenty centimes left!" exclaimed the old gentleman, meditatively. "But four sous is four sous. It is de price of mine paper"--brightening in his reflections--"I can but sh.e.l.l one copy more, and I am all right." Brightening to greater brilliancy as he turns to me: "Will you buy de last number of my paper? She is in my pocket. She is ver'

interesting. Oh! ver' so. Moche information for two pence."

"I shall be charmed," I said, and extended twenty centimes across the table.

"Ach Tausend! Da.s.s ist herrlich!" and he drew off the last drops of Pomino.

"Now I will tell you vun ding. Hev you been in Provence?"

"Provence! Why--I am on my way there, now."

"Den listen to me. Ebery peoples hev different ways of doing de same ding.

You go into a cabaret dere, and you ask for wine. De patron brings you a bottle, and at de same time looks at de clock and wid a bit of chalk he mark you down your time. You say you will drink at two pence, or dree pence, or four pence. You drink at dat price you have covenanted for one hour, you drink at same price anodder hour, and you sleep--but you pay all de same, wedder you drink or wedder you sleep, two pence, or dree pence, or four pence de hour. It is an old custom. You understand? It is de custom of de country--of La belle Provence."

"I quite understand that it is to the interest of the taverner to make his customers drunk."

"Drunk!" repeated my Mosaic acquaintance. "I will tell you one ding more, ver' characteristic of de nationalities. A Frenchman--_il boit_; a German--_er sauft_; and an Englishman--he gets fresh. Der you hev de natures of de dree peoples as in a picture. De Frenchman, he looks to de moment, and not beyond. _Il boit_. De German, he looks to de end. _Er sauft_. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled; but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor to n.o.body, he says, _I will get fresh_, when he means de odder ding. Big humbug. You understand?"

One morning my Jew friend said to me: "Do you want to see de, what you call behind-de-scenes of Florence? Ver' well, you come wid me. I am going after pictures."

He had a carriage at the door. I jumped in with him, and we spent the day in driving about the town, visiting palaces and the houses of professional men and tradesmen--of all who were "down on their luck," and wanted to part with art-treasures. Here we entered a palace, of roughed stone blocks after the ancient Florentine style, where a splendid porter with c.o.c.ked hat, a silver-headed _baton_, and gorgeous livery kept guard. Up the white marble stairs, into stately halls overladen with gilding, the walls crowded with paintings in c.u.mbrous but resplendent frames. Prince So-and-So had got into financial difficulties, and wanted to part with some of his heirlooms.

There we entered a mean door in a back street, ascended a dirty stair, and came into a suite of apartments, where a dishevelled woman in a dirty split dressing-gown received us and showed us into her husband's sanctum, crowded with rare old paintings on gold grounds. Her good man had been a collector of the early school of art; now he was ill, he could not attend to his business, he might not recover, and whilst he was ill his wife was getting rid of some of his treasures.

There we entered the mansion of a widow, who had lost her husband recently, a rich merchant. The heirs were quarrelling over the spoil, and she was in a hurry to make what she could for herself before a valuer came to reckon the worth of the paintings and silver and cabinets.

In that day I saw many sides of life.

"But how in the world," I asked of my guide, "did you know that all these people were wanting to sell?"

"I have my agents ebberywhere," was his reply.

I thought of the _Diable boiteux_ carrying the student of Alcala over the city, Madrid, removing the roofs of the houses, and exposing to his view the stories of the lives and miseries of those within.

I was at Florence on Easter Eve. A ceremony of a very peculiar character takes place there on that day at noon. In the morning a monstrous black structure on wheels, some twenty-five feet high, is brought into the square before the cathedral by oxen, garlanded with flowers. This erection, the _carro_, is also decorated with flowers, but is likewise covered with fireworks. A rope is then extended from the _carro_ to a pole which is set up in the choir of the Duomo, before the high altar. For this purpose the great west doors are thrown open, and the rope extends the whole length of the nave. Upon it, close to the pole, is perched a white dove of plaster.

Crowds a.s.semble both in the square and in the nave of the cathedral.

Peasants from the countryside come in in bands, and before the hour of noon every vantage place is occupied, and the square and the streets commanding it are filled with a sea of heads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Carro.]

At half-past eleven, the archbishop, the canons, the choir, go down the nave in procession, and make the circuit of the Duomo, then re-enter the cathedral, take their places in the choir, and the ma.s.s for Easter Eve is begun. At the Gospel--at the stroke of twelve, a match is applied to a fusee, and instantly the white dove flies along the rope, pouring forth a tail of fire, down the nave, out at the west gates, over the heads of the crowd, reaches the _carro_, ignites a fusee there, turns, and, still propelled by its fiery tail, whizzes along the cord again, till it has reached its perch on the pole in the choir, when the fire goes out and it remains stationary. But in the meantime the match ignited by the dove has communicated with the squibs and crackers attached to the _carro_, and the whole ma.s.s of painted wood and flowers is enveloped in fire and smoke, from which issue sheets of flame and loud detonations. Meanwhile, ma.s.s is being sung composedly within the choir, as though nothing was happening without.

The fireworks continue to explode for about a quarter of an hour, and then the great garlanded oxen, white, with huge horns, are reyoked to the _carro_, and it is drawn away.

The flight of the dove for its course of about 540 feet is watched by the peasants with breathless attention, for they take its easy or jerky flight as ominous of the weather for the rest of the year and of the prospects of harvest. If the bird sails along without a hitch, then the summer will be fine, but if there be sluggishness of movement, and one halt, then another, the year is sure to be one of storms and late frosts and hail.

Now what is the origin of this extraordinary custom--a custom that is childish, and yet is so curious that one would hardly wish to see it abolished?

Several stories are told to explain it, none very satisfactory. According to one, a Florentine knight was in the crusading host of G.o.dfrey de Bouillon, and was the first to climb the walls of Jerusalem, and plant thereon the banner of the Cross. He at once sent tidings of the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre back to his native town by a carrier pigeon, and thus the Florentines received the glad tidings long before it reached any other city in Europe. In token of their gladness at the news, they inst.i.tuted the ceremony of the white pigeon and the _carro_ on Easter Eve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Florentine torch holder.]

Another story is to the effect that this Florentine entered the city of Jerusalem before the first crusade, broke off a large fragment of the Holy Sepulchre, and carried it to Florence. He was pursued by the Saracens, but escaped by shoeing his horse with reversed irons. Another version is that he resolved to bring back to Florence the sacred flame that burnt in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Accordingly he lighted thereat a torch, and rode back to Italy with the torch flaming. But to protect it from the wind, he rode with his face to the tail of his steed, screening the torch with his body. As he thus rode, folk who saw him shouted "Pazzi! Pazzi!"--Fool!