The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age

Mistral's museum is just across from the church, but I have already spoken of that – briefly, when it is worth a volume. One should be in a patient mood for museums – either to see or to write of them – a mood that somehow does not go with automobile wandering, however deliberate. But I must give a word at least to two other such institutions of Arles, the Musée Lapidaire, a magnificent collection of pagan and early Christian sarcophagi and marble, mostly from the ancient burial field, the Aliscamp – and the Musée Réattu.

Réattu was an Arlesian painter of note who produced many pictures and collected many beautiful things. His collections have been acquired by the city of Arles, and installed in one of its most picturesque old buildings – the ancient Grand Priory of the Knights of Malta. The stairway is hung with tapestries and priceless arras; the rooms are filled with paintings, bas-reliefs, medallions, marbles, armor, – a wealth of art objects. One finds it hard to believe that such museums can be owned and supported by this little city – ancient, half forgotten, stranded here on the banks of the Rhone. Its population is given as thirty thousand, and it makes sausages – very good ones – and there are some railway shops that employ as many as fifteen hundred men. Some boat building may still be done here, too. But this is about all Arles can claim in the way of industries. It has not the look of what we call to-day a thriving city. It seems, rather, a mediæval setting for the more ancient memories. Yet it has these three splendid museums, and it has preserved and restored its ruins, just as if it had a J. Pierpont Morgan behind it, instead of an old poet with a Nobel prize, and a determined little community, too proud of its traditions and its taste to let them die. Danbury, Connecticut, has as many inhabitants as Arles, and it makes about all the hats that are worn in America. It is a busy, rich place, where nearly everybody owns an automobile, if one may judge by the street exhibit any pleasant afternoon. It is an old place, too, for America, with plenty of landmarks and traditions. But I somehow can't imagine Danbury spending the money and the time to establish such superb institutions as these, or to preserve its prerevolutionary houses. But, after all, Danbury is young. It will preserve something two thousand years hence – probably those latest Greco-Roman façades which it is building now.

Near to the Réattu Museum is the palace of the Christian Emperor Constantine. Constantine came here after his father died, and fell in love with the beauty and retirement of the place. Here, on the banks of the Rhone, he built a palace, and dreamed of passing his days in it – of making Arles the capital of his empire. His mother, St. Helene, whose dreams at Jerusalem located the Holy Sepulcher, the True Cross, and other needed relics, came to visit her son, and while here witnessed the treason and suicide of one Maximus Hercules, persecutor of the Christians. That was early in the fourth century. The daughter of Maximus seems to have been converted, for she came to stay at the palace and in due time bore Constantine a son. Descendants of Constantine occupied the palace for a period, then it passed to the Gauls, to the Goths, and so down the invading and conquering line. Once a king, Euric III, was assassinated here. Other kings followed and several varieties of counts. Their reigns were usually short and likely to end with a good deal of suddenness. It was always a good place for royalty to live and die. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century it was known as the "House of the King," but it was a ruin by that time. Only portions of it remain now, chiefly a sort of rotunda of the grand hall of state. Very little is left to show the ancient richness of its walls, but one may invite himself to imagine something – its marbles and its hangings – also that it was just here that M. Hercules and King Euric and their kind went the violent way; it would be the dramatic place for those occasions.

One may not know to-day just what space the palace originally covered, but it was very large. Portions of its walls appear in adjoining buildings. Excavations have brought to light marbles, baths, rich ornamentations, all attesting its former grandeur. Arles preserves it for its memories, and in pride of the time when she came so near to being the capital of the world.

Chapter VI

THE WAY THROUGH EDEN

There is so much to see at Arles. One would like to linger a week, then a month, then very likely he would not care to go at all. The past would get hold of him by that time – the glamour that hangs about the dead centuries.

There had been rain in the night when we left Arles, much needed, for it was the season of drought. It was mid-morning and the roads were hard and perfect, and led us along sparkling waysides and between refreshed vineyards, and gardens, and olive groves. It seemed a good deal like traveling through Eden, and I don't suppose heaven – the automobilist's heaven (assuming that there is one) – is much better.

I wish I could do justice to the Midi, but even Mistral could not do that. It is the most fruitful, luscious land one can imagine. Everything there seems good to eat, to smell of – to devour in some way. The vines were loaded with purple and topaz grapes, and I was dying to steal some, though for a few francs we had bought a basket of clusters, with other luncheon supplies, in Arles. It finally became necessary to stop and eat these things – those grape fields were too tempting.

It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon. One does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. You run along leisurely until you reach the brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. Then you are fresh and cool and deliberate. No need to hurry because of the long tug home again. You enjoy the things you have brought, unfretted by fatigue, undismayed by the prospect ahead. You are in no hurry to go. You linger and smoke and laze a little and discuss the environment – the fields, the growing things, the people through whose lands and lives you are cutting a cross-section, as it seems. You wonder about their customs, their diversions, what they do in winter, how it is in their homes. You speculate on their history, on what the land was like in its primeval period before there were any fields and homes – civilized homes – there at all. Perhaps – though this is unlikely – you know a little about these things. It is no advantage; your speculations are just as valuable and more picturesque. There are many pleasant things about motor gypsying, but our party, at least, agreed that the wayside luncheon is the pleasantest of all.

Furthermore, it is economical. Unless one wants hot dishes, you can get more things, and more delicious things, in the village shops or along the way than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, and for half the amount. Our luncheon that day – we ate it between Arles and Tarascon – consisted of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter, Roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some French cakes – plenty, and all of the best, at a cost of about sixty cents for our party of four. And when we were finally ready to go, and had cleaned up and secreted every particle of paper or other refuse (for the true motorist never leaves a place unsightly) we felt quite as pleased with ourselves and the world, and the things of the infinite, as if we had paid two or three times as much for a meal within four walls.

Chapter VII

TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE

It is no great distance from Arles to Tarascon, and, leisurely as we travel, we had reached the home of Tartarin in a little while. We were tempted to stop over at Tarascon, for the name had that inviting sound which always belongs to the localities of pure romance – that is to say, fiction – and it has come about that Tarascon belongs more to Daudet than to history, while right across the river is Beaucaire, whose name, at least, Booth Tarkington has pre-empted for one of his earliest heroes. After all, it takes an author to make a town really celebrated. Thousands of Americans who have scarcely heard the name of Arles are intimately familiar with that of Tarascon. Of course the town has to contribute something. It must either be a place where something has happened, or could happen, or it must have a name with a fine sound, and it should be located in about the right quarter of the globe. When such a place catches the fancy of an author who has the gift of making the ideal seem reality, he has but to say the magic words and the fame of that place is sure.

Not that Tarascon has not had real history and romance; it has had plenty of both. Five hundred years ago the "Good King René" of Anjou, who was a painter and a writer, as well as a king, came to Tarascon to spend his last days in the stern, perpendicular castle which had been built for him on the banks of the Rhone. It is used as a jail now, but King René held a joyous court there and a web of romance clings to his memory. King René's castle does not look like a place for romance. It looks like an artificial precipice. We were told we could visit it by making a sufficiently polite application to the Mairie, but it did not seem worth while. In the first place, I did not know how to make a polite application to visit a jail – not in French – and then it was better to imagine King René's festivities than to look upon a reality of misfortune.

The very name of Tarascon has to do with story. Far back, in the dim traditionary days, one St. Martha delivered the place from a very evil dragon, the Tarasque, for whom they showed their respect by giving his name to their town.

Beaucaire, across the river, is lighted by old tradition, too. It was the home of Aucassin and Nicollette, for one thing, and anyone who has read that poem, either in the original or in Andrew Lang's exquisite translation, will have lived, for a moment at least, in the tender light of legendary tale.

We drove over to Beaucaire, and Narcissa and I scaled a garden terrace to some ruined towers and battlements, all that is left of the ancient seat of the Montmorencys. It is a romantic ruin from a romantic day. It was built back in the twelve hundreds – when there were still knights and troubadours, and the former jousted at a great fair which was held there, and the latter reclined on the palace steps, surrounded by ladies and gallants in silken array, and sang songs of Palestine and the Crusades. As time went on a light tissue of legend was woven around the castle itself – half-mythical tales of its earlier centuries. Figures like Aucassin and Nicollette emerged and were made so real by those who chanted or recited the marvel of their adventures, that they still live and breathe with youth when their gallant castle itself is no more than vacant towers and fragmentary walls. The castle of Beaucaire looks across to the defiant walls of King René's castle in Tarascon and I believe there used to be some sturdy wars between them. If not, I shall construct one some day, when I am less busy, and feeling in the romantic form. It will be as good history as most castle history, and I think I shall make Beaucaire win. King René was a good soul, but I am doubtful about those who followed him, and his castle, so suitable to-day for a jail, does not invite sympathy. The Montmorency castle was dismantled in 1632, according to the guidebook, by Richelieu, who beheaded its last tenant – some say with a cleaver, a serviceable utensil for such work.

Beaucaire itself is not a pretty town – not a clean town. I believe Nicollette was shut up for a time in one of its houses – we did not inquire which one – any of them would be bad enough to-day.

It is altogether easy to keep to the road in France. You do not wind in and out with unmarked routes crossing and branching at every turn. You travel a hard, level way, often as straight as a ruling stick and pointed in the right direction. Where roads branch, or cross, there are signboards. All the national roads are numbered, and your red-book map shows these numbers – the chances of mistake being thus further lessened. We had practiced a good deal at asking in the politest possible French the way to any elusive destination. The book said that in France one generally takes off his hat in making such an inquiry, so I practiced that until I got it to seem almost inoffensive, not to say jaunty, and the formula "Je vous demande pardon, but – quel est le chemin pour —" whatever the place was. Sometimes I could even do it without putting in the "but," and was proud, and anxious to show it off at any opportunity. But it got dusty with disuse. You can't ask a man "quel est le chemin" for anywhere when you are on the straight road going there, or in front of a signboard which is shouting the information. I only got to unload that sentence twice between Arles and Avignon, and once I forgot to take off my hat; when I did, the man didn't understand me.

With the blue mountains traveling always at our right, with level garden and vineland about us, we drifted up the valley of the Rhone and found ourselves, in mid-afternoon, at the gates of Avignon. That is not merely a poetic figure. Avignon has veritable gates – and towering crenelated walls with ramparts, all about as perfect as when they were built, nearly six hundred years ago.

We had heard Avignon called the finest existing specimen of a mediæval walled city, but somehow one does not realize such things from hearing the mere words. We stopped the car to stare up at this overtopping masonry, trying to believe that it had been standing there already three hundred years, looking just about as it looks to-day, when Shakespeare was writing plays in London. Those are the things we never really believe. We only acknowledge them and pass on.

Very little of Avignon has overflowed its massive boundaries; the fields were at our backs as we halted in the great portals. We halted because we noticed the word "L'Octroi" on one of the towers. But, as before, the l'octroi man merely glanced into our vehicle and waved us away.

We were looking down a wide shaded avenue of rather modern, even if foreign, aspect, and full of life. We drove slowly, hunting, as we passed along, for one of the hotels set down in the red-book as "comfortable, with modern improvements," including "gar. grat." – that is to say, garage gratis, such being the custom of this land. Narcissa, who has an eye for hotels, spied one presently, a rather imposing-looking place with a long, imposing name. But the management was quite modest as to terms when I displayed our T C. de France membership card, and the "gar. grat." – this time in the inner court of the hotel itself – was a neat place with running water and a concrete floor. Not very ancient for mediæval Avignon, but one can worry along without antiquities in a hotel.

Chapter VIII

GLIMPSES OF THE PAST

Avignon, like Arles, was colonized by the Romans, but the only remains of that time are now in its museum. At Arles the Romans did great things; its heyday was the period of their occupation. Conditions were different at Avignon. Avenio, as they called it, seems to have been a kind of outpost, walled and fortified, but not especially glorified. Very little was going on at Avenio. Christians were seldom burned there. In time a Roman emperor came to Arles, and its people boasted that it was to become the Roman capital. Nothing like that came to Avenio; it would require another thousand years and another Roman occupation to mature its grand destiny.

I do not know just how it worried along during those stormy centuries of waiting, but with plenty of variety, no doubt. I suppose barbarians came like summer leafage, conquered and colonized, mixing the blood of a new race. It became a republic about twelve hundred and something – small, but tough and warlike – commanding the respect of seigneurs and counts, even of kings. Christianity, meantime, had prospered. Avignon had contributed to the Crusades and built churches. Also, a cathedral, though little dreaming that in its sacristy would one day lie the body of a pope.

Avignon's day, however, was even then at hand. Sedition was rife in Italy and the popes, driven from Rome, sought refuge in France. Near Avignon was a small papal dominion of which Carpentras was the capital, and the pope, then Clement V, came often to Avignon. This was honor, but when one day the Bishop of Avignon was made Pope John XXII, and established his seat in his own home, the little city became suddenly what Arles had only hoped to be – the capital of the world.

If one were permitted American parlance at this point, he would say that a boom now set in in Avignon.7 Everybody was gay, everybody busy, everybody prosperous. The new pope straightway began to enlarge and embellish his palace, and the community generally followed suit. During the next sixty or seventy years about everything that is to-day of importance was built or rebuilt. New churches were erected, old ones restored. The ancient Roman wall was replaced by the splendid new one. The papal palace was enlarged and strengthened until it became a mighty fortress – one of the grandest structures in Europe. The popes went back to Rome, then, but their legates remained and from their strong citadel administered the affairs of that district for four turbulent centuries. In 1791, Avignon united her fortunes to those of France, and through revolution and bloodshed has come again to freedom and prosperity and peace. I do not know what the population of Avignon was in the day of her greater glory. To-day it is about fifty thousand, and, as it is full to the edges, it was probably not more populous then.

We did not hurry in Avignon. We only loitered about the streets a little the first afternoon, practicing our French on the sellers of postal cards. It was a good place for such practice. If there was a soul in Avignon besides ourselves with a knowledge of English he failed to make himself known. Not even in our hotel was there a manager, porter, or waiter who could muster an English word.

Narcissa and I explored more than the others and discovered the City Hall and a theater and a little open square with a big monument. We also got a distant glimpse of some great towering walls which we knew to be the Palace of the Popes.

Now and again we were assailed by beggars – soiled and persistent small boys who annoyed us a good deal until we concocted an impromptu cure. It was a poem, in French – and effective:

Allez! Allez!

Je n'ai pas de monnaie!

Allez! Allez!

Je n'ai pas de l'argent!

A Frenchman might not have had the courage to mortify his language like that, but we had, and when we marched to that defiant refrain the attacking party fell back.

We left the thoroughfare and wandered down into narrow side streets, cobble-paved and winding, between high, age-stained walls – streets and walls that have surely not been renewed since the great period when the coming of the popes rebuilt Avignon. So many of the houses are apparently of one age and antiquity they might all have sprung up on the same day. What a bustle and building there must have been in those first years after the popes came! Nothing could be too new and fine for the chosen city. Now they are old again, but not always shabby. Many of them, indeed, are of impressive grandeur, with carved casings and ponderous doors. No sign of life about these – no glimpse of luxury, faded or fresh – within. Whatever the life they hold – whatever its past glories or present decline, it is shut away. Only the shabbier homes were open – women at their evening duties, children playing about the stoop. They had nothing to conceal. Tradition, lineage, pride, poverty – they had inherited their share of these things, but they did not seem to be worrying about it. Their affairs were open to inspection; and their habits of dress and occupation caused us to linger, until the narrow streets grew dim and more full of evening echoes, while light began to twinkle in the little basement shops where the ancestors of these people had bought and sold for such a long, long time.

Chapter IX

IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH

We were not very thorough sight-seers. We did not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. We seldom even had a program. We just wandered out in some general direction, and made a discovery or two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed judgment on its artistic and historical importance, just as if we knew something of those things; then when we got to a quiet place we took out the book and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, with the book's assistance, reversed our judgments and went back and got an altogether new set of impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. It was a loose system, to be recommended only for its variety. At the church of St. Agricole, for instance, which we happened upon when we started out one morning, we had a most interesting half hour discussing the age and beauty of its crumbling exterior and wandering about in its dimness, speculating concerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient tombs. When, later, we sat on the steps outside and looked it up and found it had been established away back in 680, and twice since restored; that the fifteenth-century holy-water basin was an especially fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculpture and frescoes were regarded as "remarkable examples," we were deeply impressed and went back to verify these things. Then we could see that it was all just as the book said.

But the procedure was somewhat different at the Palace of the Popes. We knew where we were going then, for we saw its towers looming against the sky, and no one could mistake that pile in Avignon. Furthermore, we paid a small fee at its massive arched entrance, and there was a guardian, or guide, to show us through. It is true he spoke only French – Provençal French – but two gracious Italian ladies happened to be going through at the same time and, like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety of tongues, including American. The touch of travel makes the whole world kin, and they threw out a line when they saw us floundering, and towed us through. It was a gentle courtesy which we accepted with thankful hearts.

We were in the central court first, the dull, sinister walls towering on every side. The guide said that executions had taken place there, and once, in later times – the period of the Revolution – a massacre in which seventy perished. He also mentioned a bishop of the earlier period who, having fallen into disfavor, was skinned alive and burned just outside the palace entrance. Think of doing that to a bishop!

Our conductor showed us something which we were among the first to see. Excavation was going on, and near the entrance some workmen were uncovering a large square basin – a swimming pool, he said – probably of Roman times. Whatever had stood there had doubtless fallen into obliterated ruin by the time the papal palace was begun.

A survey of the court interior showed that a vast scheme of restoration was going on. The old fortress had suffered from siege more than once, and time had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the French have in their monuments, and with a munificence which would seem to be limitless, they were reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and would spend at least two million dollars, we were told, to make the labor complete. Battered corners of towers had been carefully rebuilt, tumbled parapets replaced. We stood facing an exquisite mullioned window whose carved stone outlines were entirely new, yet delicately and finely cut, certainly at a cost of many thousand francs. The French do not seem to consider expense in a work of that sort. Concrete imitations will not do. Whatever is replaced must be as it was in the beginning.

Inside we found ourselves in the stately audience room, measuring some fifty by one hundred and eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by massive Gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. Each missing piece or portion has been replaced. It was scarcely more perfect when the first papal audience was held there and when Queen Jeanne of Naples came to plead for absolution, nearly six centuries ago. It was of overpowering size and interest, and in one of the upper corners was a picture I shall not soon forget. It was not a painting or tapestry, but it might have been either of these things and less beautiful. It was a living human being, a stone carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in his faded blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. But he had the face and beard and, somehow, the figure of a saint. He turned to regard us with a mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and dress completing the harmony with the gray wall behind him, the embodied spirit of restoration.