Part 6 (1/2)

Sir George Grove, in his 'Dictionary of Music,' gives an ill.u.s.tration of this same organ copied from Dom. Bedos' 'L'Art du Facteur d'Orgues,' Paris, 1766. This represents two slaves crouched and blowing into the organ bellows. I could not see these figures. I made my sketch carefully, and can hardly suppose the figures have been chipped away since the monument was placed in the museum.]

The instruments she could play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm.

This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to a supposition that Julia Tyranna was Christian. The inscription bears no trace of Christianity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Calpurnia's monument.]

Another interesting monument found there is that to Calpurnia, daughter of Caius Marius. Probably she died from the exposure and roughness of life camping out, when the barbarian hordes rolled west, and all the inhabitants of the towns were obliged to fly before them to the hills. I shall in a future chapter tell the story of Caius Marius and his great victory at Pourrieres over the Teutons, having first thrashed the Ambrons near Aix.

Suffice it now to note that here is the tombstone of his poor little daughter. I must, however, state that the genuineness of this inscription has been called in question. It is also worthy of notice how that the victory of Marius and delivery from the barbarians impressed the people of the neighbourhood. In the museum the name of Marius occurs on other monuments. The name of Marius is even now a popular Christian name in Provence.

But to return to Calpurnia. The place where the Arles inhabitants fled from the Teutons was the limestone range of Les Alpines, almost an island, so surrounded was it by lagoons and marshes.

Looking at Calpurnia's monument I fell into a dream, and saw her whole story unfolded before me. Caius Marius was a rough-mannered man, of peasant origin, but he had a wife Julia, of patrician rank, and who, I have not a shadow of doubt, flourished her n.o.ble origin before him, and talked very big of her grand relations. When little missie was born: ”I'll have none of your plebeian names, if you please, for my baby,” said Julia; ”you will please note that my family derives from the immortal G.o.ds. I shall call the child Calpurnia.” [1] Madame Julia was a good wife, and she followed her rough husband everywhere. At the beginning of windy March, tidings came that the Teutons and Ambrons were on the move. In April all the women and children of Arles, Glanum, Ernaginum, and Cabelio were cl.u.s.tered on the heights of Les Alpines, in extemporised cabins or in some of the prehistoric habitations they found scooped out of the limestone. Down came the rains. A gale and driving out-pour then as to-day, when M. Carnot comes into Provence. The roofs of the cabins let in water, the sides of the caves ran down with moisture. Then the wind changed, the sun shone out hot, but the _mistral_ tore over the country cold and sharp as a double-edged sword.

Poor Calpurnia could not stand it. She s.h.i.+vered and coughed, lost appet.i.te and spirits. Next came the tidings of the battle at Les Milles, and a couple of days later of the extermination of the enemy at Pourrieres. Now the refugees might in safety descend from their rocky refuges, and return to their homes.

[Footnote 1: See Appendix A, on this monument and the question of its genuineness; as well as for some other inscriptions in the Arles Museum.]

Then Julia went with the sick girl to Arles. Meantime Marius on the battlefield had received the ovation of his officers and soldiers, and the salutations of the delegates from the senate proclaiming him consul. But at the same time there appeared--I doubt not, though Plutarch does not say so--a slave with a note from Julia:--

”I am sorry to tell you that Calpurnia is very unwell. That horrible _mistral_ froze her, and she has done little else than cough night and day since. I have given her snail broth, but it has not relieved her much, and she is now spitting blood. Bother these Teutons, it is all their work. I always told you that you made a mistake in letting them come into Provence, and cross the Rhone. However, you were ever pigheaded, and now it serves you right. You will lose Calpurnia, who is the apple of your eye. Now if you had listened to me, etc., etc.

”Salve.”

But there was something further to complicate matters, and superinduce sickness in a delicate girl. To escape to the hills the good people of Arles could not follow a road, for the whole district between them and the range of Les Alpines was covered with one vast lagoon. They could not travel in boats, for the lagoon was shallow, so they went on rafts supported on inflated skins, about which I shall have something to say presently. So Calpurnia, creeping close to her mother, wrapped in her _pallium_, was exposed for hours on a raft at the beginning of April to the cold winds, and to the water oozing up between the joints of the raft.

The whole story works out like an equation. I fancy--but am not sure--a quadratic equation, somehow thus:--

As I, in a 19th cent. hotel, and in Jager underclothing: Calpurnia, on a raft and in a pre-historic cave:: a cold in the head I got: x

x X self in hotel and Jager costume = Calpurnia on a raft and in a cave X cold in the head.

x = pthysis.

I think this is right. I cannot be sure; and I cannot be sure, though I was educated to be a mathematician by a senior wrangler.

The facts were these. My dear father thought, and thought perhaps justly, that a cla.s.sical education was but a throwing back of the current of the mind into the past, whereas a mathematical education directed it to the future, and was the sole course which would prove Pactolean. So I was cut down in my cla.s.sical studies, and drawn out in those which were mathematical. Likewise I was sent the year before entering the university to a senior wrangler to ripen me. I then learned that what as a boy I was wont to call the Rule of Three was more properly termed equations, and that equations might be complicated to the highest limits of muddledom, and when so complicated were termed quadratics. After a course of equations that flattened out my head like the Camargue, I was thrust into what are called surds, a sort of wood of errors, in which one spends hours in hewing one's way to get at nothing of the slightest profit to man or beast; finally, I believe my good tutor, now a bishop, got tired of me. I was stupefied by surds; and I entered the university. Now, after thirty-seven years, I find that every ode of Horace, every chapter of Caesar, every line of Virgil I learned at school lies as a sprig of lavender in the folds of my memory--but I cannot even set and work out a common equation, or add up a sum in compound addition correctly.

I beg the pardon of the reader for this digression. I have made it because I think, should my reader be a father, this experience of mine may be of profit to him.

To return to the monuments of the Elysian Fields. A considerable number have been found here, also at Nimes, S. Gabriel, and Cavaillon, which are the memorials of _utriculares_. [1] There were guilds of these men. They appointed n.o.ble Romans as their patrons, and these patrons on their tombstones made mention of the fact. But what were these _utriculares_?

They were raftsmen who carried on trade over the lagoons, sustaining their flat vessels upon distended skins. The lagoons were so shallow that no vessel of deep draught could travel over them, and all the merchandise of central Gaul for the Mediterranean--the tin from Britain for instance--and all the goods of the Mediterranean for Gaul, had to be trans.h.i.+pped at Arles from the river boats, unable to cross the bar, on to these barges sustained on inflated skins that conveyed them to Fos, at the mouth of the lagoons, where they were again s.h.i.+pped for the sea voyage. After Marius had cut a ca.n.a.l, matters were better. s.h.i.+ps could come up through the lagoons to Arles, but none at any time of deep draught, and the raftsmen, the _utriculares_, carried on their trade till the Middle Ages, when the mouths of the lagoons became choked, and the lagoons themselves turned into noxious mora.s.ses. Here is one of their monuments, in the museum of Arles:--

”To the manes. To Marcus Junius Messia.n.u.s, of the guild of the utriculares of Arles, four times president of this corpora Junia Valeria raised this monument to him, her son, who died aged twenty-eight years, five months, and ten days.”

Here is another, found near Lyons:--

”To the manes and eternal repose of Caius Victorinus ... urix, also called Quiguro, citizen of Lyons, one of the corporation of utriculares there, who lived twenty-eight years,... months and five days, without giving offence to anyone. His mother, Castorina, raised this to the memory of her sole and very dear boy.”

The navigation on distended skins is now everywhere extinct except on the Euphrates. On some of the Nineveh sculptures may be seen men swimming across rivers sustained on these primitive air-vessels.

[Footnote 1: See Appendix C.]