A Little Tour In France [82]
the case on the day of my pil- grimage to Les Baux. Nevertheless, I was as glad to keep going as I was to arrive; and as I went it seemed to me that true happiness would consist in wandering through such a land on foot, on September afternoons, when one might stretch one's self on the warm ground in some shady hollow, and listen to the hum of bees and the whistle of melancholy shepherds; for in Provence the shepherds whistle to their flocks. I saw two or three of them, in the course of this drive to Les Baux, meandering about, looking behind, and calling upon the sheep in this way to follow, which the sheep always did, very promptly, with ovine unanimity. Nothing is more picturesque than to see a slow shepherd threading his way down one of the winding paths on a hillside, with his flock close be- hind him, necessarily expanded, yet keeping just at his heels, bending and twisting as it goes, and looking rather like the tail of a dingy comet.
About four miles from Arles, as you drive north- ward toward the Alpilles, of which Alphonse Daudet has spoken so often, and, as he might say, so in- timately, stand on a hill that overlooks the road the very considerable ruins of the abbey of Mont- majour, one of the innumerable remnants of a feudal and ecclesiastical (as well as an architectural) past that one encounters in the South of France; remnants which, it must be confessed, tend to introduce a cer- tain confusion and satiety into the passive mind of the tourist. Montmajour, however, is very impressive and interesting; the only trouble with it is that, unless you have stopped and retumed to Arles, you see it in memory over the head of Les Baux, which is a much more absorbing picture. A part of the mass of buildings (the monastery) dates only from the last century; and the stiff architecture of that period does not lend itself very gracefully to desolation: it looks too much as if it had been burnt down the year before. The monastery was demolished during the Revolution, and it injures a little the effect of the very much more ancient fragments that are connected with it. The whole place is on a great scale; it was a rich and splendid abbey. The church, a vast basilica of the eleventh century, and of the noblest proportions, is virtually intact; I mean as regards its essentials, for the details have completely vanished. The huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath the church of Montmajour is a most extra- ordinary crypt, almost as big as the edifice above it, and making a complete subterranean temple, sur- rounded with a circular gallery, or deambulatory, which expands it intervals into five square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but a con- fused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapel, hollowed out of the rock, beneath these later structures, and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Tro- phimus, who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that after we had let ourselves down a good many steepish places to visit crypts and con- fessionals, we walked across a field to this archaic cruciform edifice, and went thence to a point further down the road, where our carriage was awaiting us. The chapel of the Holy Cross, as it is called, is classed among the historic monuments of France; and I read in a queer, rambling, ill-written book which I picked up at Avignon, and in which the author, M. Louis de Lainbel, has buried a great deal of curious information on the
About four miles from Arles, as you drive north- ward toward the Alpilles, of which Alphonse Daudet has spoken so often, and, as he might say, so in- timately, stand on a hill that overlooks the road the very considerable ruins of the abbey of Mont- majour, one of the innumerable remnants of a feudal and ecclesiastical (as well as an architectural) past that one encounters in the South of France; remnants which, it must be confessed, tend to introduce a cer- tain confusion and satiety into the passive mind of the tourist. Montmajour, however, is very impressive and interesting; the only trouble with it is that, unless you have stopped and retumed to Arles, you see it in memory over the head of Les Baux, which is a much more absorbing picture. A part of the mass of buildings (the monastery) dates only from the last century; and the stiff architecture of that period does not lend itself very gracefully to desolation: it looks too much as if it had been burnt down the year before. The monastery was demolished during the Revolution, and it injures a little the effect of the very much more ancient fragments that are connected with it. The whole place is on a great scale; it was a rich and splendid abbey. The church, a vast basilica of the eleventh century, and of the noblest proportions, is virtually intact; I mean as regards its essentials, for the details have completely vanished. The huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath the church of Montmajour is a most extra- ordinary crypt, almost as big as the edifice above it, and making a complete subterranean temple, sur- rounded with a circular gallery, or deambulatory, which expands it intervals into five square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but a con- fused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapel, hollowed out of the rock, beneath these later structures, and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Tro- phimus, who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that after we had let ourselves down a good many steepish places to visit crypts and con- fessionals, we walked across a field to this archaic cruciform edifice, and went thence to a point further down the road, where our carriage was awaiting us. The chapel of the Holy Cross, as it is called, is classed among the historic monuments of France; and I read in a queer, rambling, ill-written book which I picked up at Avignon, and in which the author, M. Louis de Lainbel, has buried a great deal of curious information on the