Part 9 (1/2)

Besides, a good many of these much-besung ladies were no young brides, but mature and withering matrons. A troubadour attached himself to a lady as he attached himself to a seigneur, and, as a client of both, fawned on and flattered both. I cannot refer to Petrarch, for I believe his Laura was not a married woman, and the Platonism of his affection is more than questionable. He was not an acknowledged troubadour, but an exile, whom the haughty family of Sade would not suffer Laura to marry. But there is the case of Dante and Beatrice, and of Wolfram of Eschenbach, one of the n.o.blest and purest of singers, who idealised his lady Elizabeth, wife of the Baron of Hartenstein, and with him most undoubtedly the devotion was without tincture of grossness. It is precisely this unreal love, or playing at love-making, that is scoffed at by Cervantes in Don Quixote and the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.

Why, that unfortunate William de Cabestaing, whose heart was offered to his mistress, sang of her as cold to his suit:--

”Since Adam gathered from the tree The apple, cause of all our woe, Christ ne'er inspired so fair a she.

A graceful form, not high nor low, A model of just symmetry, A skin whose purity and glow The rarest amethyst surpa.s.s; So fair is she for whom I sigh.

But vain are all my sighs, alas!

She heeds me not, nor deigns reply.”

The Courts of Love held by ladies of high rank were originally courts in which the rules of minstrelsy were laid down, they p.r.o.nounced on the qualifications of a candidate, they polished and cherished the Langue d'oc in its purity, dictated the subjects upon which the troubadours were to compose their lays, judged their pretensions, settled their controversies, recompensed their merits, and punished by disgrace or exclusion those who violated the laws. In the twelfth century these Courts of Ladies drew up Provencal grammars, in which the rules of the dialect were laid down. One of these is the ”Donatus provincialis,” another was composed by Raimond Vidal. But these Courts of Love went further. They laid down rules for love; they allowed married women to receive the homage of lovers, and even nicely directed all the symptoms they were to exhibit of reciprocation. But it is quite possible that this was all solemn fooling, and meant no harm.

I wonder whether those golden locks carried off by the taverner had belonged to one of those queens of beauty sung by the troubadours! Probably so, for the church of S. Vincent was their mausoleum.

One of the n.o.ble families that owed feudal duty to the Lords of Les Baux was that of Porcelet, and their mansion is one of the very few that is not deserted and ruinous in the little town. It is now occupied by some Sisters of Mercy who keep in it an orphanage. The Porcelets were the first n.o.bles of Arles. King Rene of Anjou, who was fond of giving nicknames, sometimes flattering, sometimes the reverse to this, ent.i.tled the family Grandeur des Porcelets. Other of his designations were Inconstance des Baux, Deloyaute de Beaufort, Envie de Candole, Dissolution de Castelane, Sottise de Gra.s.se, and Opiniatrete de Sade.

A story is told of one of the sieges of Les Baux which is found elsewhere.

The garrison of the castle and the inhabitants of the town were reduced to great straits for food, when orders were issued that everyone should surrender what he had into a common fund, to be doled out in equal portions to all. As none complied with this order, a domiciliary visit was made to every house, when an old woman was found to have a pig, likewise a sack of barley meal. The Sieur des Baux ordered the pig to be given a feed and then to be thrown over the precipice. When the besiegers found that the besieged had a pig so well nourished they thought it was hopeless to reduce the place, and raised the siege.

In the thirteenth century the little eagle's nest of a town numbered three thousand six hundred inhabitants. At the present time it cannot count four hundred. Every two or three years sees another house deserted, and the tenants migrate to the valley or plain.

The houses are, like the castle, partly scooped out of the rock, and partly constructed. Whole chambers, kitchens, cellars are veritable caverns. There can be no doubt that the place has been colonised from prehistoric times, and that many of these caves are the dwellings of a primitive population in the Stone period. Vast quant.i.ties of Greek Ma.r.s.eilles medals and of coins of the Empire have been found here, as well as fragments of pottery of every age. A few years ago a beautiful bronze helmet of Greek shape was here discovered.

The place has served as a refuge for the inhabitants of Arles at various periods. Hither they fled before the Teutons and Ambrons in B.C. 102, when these invaders swept across the south of Gaul on their return from Spain; and opposite Les Baux, on the heights of Costa Pera, may be traced the walled camp and cisterns, where they took refuge and remained till the danger was overpast. Again, in A.D. 480, when Earic, king of the Visigoths, took possession of Arles, the inhabitants fled to the heights of Les Baux and constructed dwellings for themselves there in the rock. These chambers, scooped out of the limestone crag, are locally called Baumes.

Anciently the roofs of the castle caught the rains, and shoots conveyed the water into great reservoirs that remain, but since the destruction of the castle the inhabitants have had to pave one whole sweep of the plateau so as to catch the showers, and convey them away into a subterranean cistern where the water purifies itself for use.

After the Hotel Dieu ceased to be used as an hospital, it was converted into an arena for bull-fights, but as on several occasions the bulls escaped and fell over the precipices, the utilisation of the great hall for this purpose was abandoned.

I had a charming walk across the hills to S. Remy, near which are the remains of the Roman city of Glanum Liviae. These remains consist of a triumphal arch, and a lovely monument about fifty feet high, quadrangular at the base, adorned with well-preserved bas-reliefs representing a skirmish of cavalry, a combat of infantry, and a sacrifice after a battle.

Above this bas.e.m.e.nt rises a circular temple with Corinthian pillars, containing in the midst two statues. The triumphal arch is not in equally good condition. The bas-reliefs on it represent captive barbarians and their wives. I caught the evening train at S. Remy, and again ascended to the third-cla.s.s compartment in the upper storey. Presently after me came the guard: ”Would not Monsieur like to descend? There is female society downstairs.” ”But, a.s.suredly--only I have a third-cla.s.s ticket.” ”ca ne fait rien,” replied the guard, ”so have the ladies below, but we never send them up into the attics. Come, monsieur!” Accordingly I descended to a carriage-load of cheery Arles damsels and matrons in the quaint and picturesque costume of that town, and to a little French doctor and a couple of good-natured Zouaves.

”But--this is very remarkable,” said the doctor. ”Only an hour ago I saw a monsieur in the same hat and boots as yourself--only the face was not the same.” ”Very possibly. Are you a doctor, and do not recognise Jager garments? I am not, it is true, in coat and continuations of that sanitary reformer, because I had to discard them. The fact is, I had a complete suit, but having been out in the rain in them, they shrank on me to such an extent that I entered the house contracted like a trussed fowl, and had to be cut out of the suit with a penknife.”

”What countryman are you?” asked the doctor.

When I told him he shook his head. ”You have not an English p.r.o.nunciation.

Are you German?” I also shook my head. Then he attempted some words in English. I was obliged to laugh: he was unintelligible. As I could not understand his English--”Mais, Monsieur!” said the Arles women, ”you must be a Swiss.”

It was not complimentary, I must admit, to be thought to speak French with a German accent. It has come about thus, I suppose, that, though as a boy I lived in France for many years, yet of late I have been, almost annually, a visitor to Germany.

I only mention this incident, because I got into trouble later through a similar misapprehension as to my nationality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Range of the Alpines from Glanum Liviae.]

CHAPTER X.

THE CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS.