The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age

We ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in size and appearance to the room below. We passed to other gigantic apartments, some of them rudely and elaborately decorated by the military that in later years made this a garrison. We were taken to the vast refectory, where once there was a great central table, the proportions of which were plainly marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the feet of feasting churchmen. Then we went to the kitchen, still more impressive in its suggestion of the stouter needs of piety. Its chimney is simply a gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the four walls, goes towering and tapering toward the stars. I judge the cooks built their fires in the center of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows for air and draught. Those old popes and legates were no weaklings, to have a kitchen like that. Their appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a robust and militant sort.

I dare say it would require a week to go through all this palace, so the visitor is shown only samples of it. We ascended to one of the towers and looked down, far down, on the roofs of Avignon – an expanse of brown tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise not greatly different from what the popes saw when this tower and these housetops were new. Beyond are the blue hills which have not changed. Somewhere out there Petrarch's Laura was buried, but the grave has vanished utterly, the church is a mere remnant.

As we stood in the window a cold breath of wind suddenly blew in – almost piercing for the season. "The mistral," our conductor said, and, though he did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile that he felt in it the presence of the poet of the south.

Then he told us that Mistral had appointed him as one of those who were commissioned to preserve in its purity the Provençal tongue. That he was very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that wind blow on him as a sort of benediction. It is said, however, that the mistral wind is not always agreeable in Avignon. It blows away disease, but it is likely to overdo its work. "Windy Avignon, liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at least as old as this palace.

We got a generous example of it when we at last descended to the street. There it swirled and raced and grabbed at us until we had to button everything tightly and hold fast to our hats. We took refuge in the old cathedral of Notre Dame des Dômes, where John XXII, who brought this glory to Avignon, lies in his Gothic tomb. All the popes of Avignon were crowned here; it was the foremost church of Christendom for the better part of a century. We could see but little of the interior, for, with the now clouded sky, the place was too dark. In the small chapel where the tomb stands it was dim and still. It is the holy place of Avignon.

A park adjoins the church and we went into it, but the mistral wind was tearing through the trees and we crossed and descended by a long flight to the narrow streets. Everywhere about us the lower foundations of the papal palace joined the living rock, its towers seeming to climb upward to the sky. It was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible, eternal, itself a rock of ages.

We are always saying how small the world is, and we had it suddenly brought home to us as we stood there under the shadow of those overtopping heights. We had turned to thank our newly made friends and to say good-by. One of them said, "You are from America; perhaps you might happen to know a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we did know very well indeed – one, in fact, whose house we had visited only a few months before. How strange it seemed to hear that name from two women of Florence there in the ancient city, under those everlasting walls.

Chapter X

AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE

Among the things I did on the ship was to read the Automobile Instruction Book. I had never done it before. I had left all technical matters to a man hired and trained for the business. Now I was going to a strange land with a resolve to do all the things myself. So I read the book.

It was as fascinating as a novel, and more impressive. There never was a novel like it for action and psychology. When I came to the chapter "Thirty-seven reasons why the motor may not start," and feverishly read what one had better try in the circumstances, I could see that as a subject for strong emotional treatment a human being is nothing to an automobile.

Then there was the oiling diagram. A physiological chart would be nowhere beside it. It was a perfect maze of hair lines and arrow points, and looked as if it needed to be combed. There were places to be oiled daily, others to be oiled weekly, some to be oiled monthly, some every thousand miles. There were also places to be greased at all these periods, and some when you happened to think of it. You had to put on your glasses and follow one of the fine lines to the lubricating point, then try to keep the point in your head until you could get under the car, or over the car, or into the car, and trace it home. I could see that this was going to be interesting when the time came.

I did not consider that it had come when we landed at Marseilles. I said to the garage man there, in my terse French idiom, "Make it the oil and grease," and walked away. Now, at Avignon, the new regime must begin. In the bright little, light little hotel garage we would set our car in order. I say "we" because Narcissa, aged fifteen, being of a practical turn, said she would help me. I would "make it the oil and grease," and Narcissa would wash and polish. So we began. The Joy, aged ten, was audience.

Narcissa enjoyed her job. There was a hose in it, and a sponge and nice rubbing rags and polish, and she went at it in her strenuous way, and hosed me up one side and down the other at times when I was tracing some blind lead and she wasn't noticing carefully.

I said I would make a thorough job of it. I would oil and grease all the daily, weekly, and monthly, and even the once-in-a-while places. We would start fair from Avignon.

I am a resolute person. I followed those tangled lines and labyrinthian ways into the vital places of our faithful vehicle. Some led to caps, big and little, which I filled with grease. Most of them were full already, but I gave them another dab for luck. Some of the lines led to tiny caps and holes into which I squirted oil. Some led to a dim uncertainty, into which I squirted or dabbed something in a general way. Some led to mere blanks, and I greased those. It sounds rather easy, but that is due to my fluent style. It was not easy; it was a hot, messy, scratchy, grunting job. Those lines were mostly blind leads, and full of smudgy, even painful surprises. Some people would have been profane, but I am not like that – not with Narcissa observing me. One hour, two, went by, and I was still consulting the chart and dabbing with the oil can and grease stick. The chart began to show wear; it would not need greasing again for years.

Meantime Narcissa had finished her washing and polishing, and was putting dainty touches on the glass and metal features to kill time. I said at last that possibly I had missed some places, but I didn't think they could be important ones. Narcissa looked at me, then, and said that maybe I had missed places on the car but that I hadn't missed any on myself. She said I was a sight and probably never could be washed clean again. It is true that my hands were quite solidly black, and, while I did not recall wiping them on my face, I must have done so. When Narcissa asked how soon I was going to grease the car again, I said possibly in about a thousand years. But that was petulance; I knew it would be sooner. Underneath all I really had a triumphant feeling, and Narcissa was justly proud of her work, too. We agreed that our car had never looked handsomer and shinier since our first day of ownership. I said I was certain it had never been so thoroughly greased. We would leave Avignon in style.

We decided to cross the Rhone at Avignon. We wanted at least a passing glance at Villeneuve, and a general view of Avignon itself, which was said to be finest from across the river. We would then continue up the west bank – there being a special reason for this – a reason with a village in it – one Beauchastel – not set down on any of our maps, but intimately concerned with our travel program, as will appear later.

We did not leave Avignon by the St. Bénézet bridge. We should have liked that, for it is one of those bridges built by a miracle, away back in the twelfth century when they used miracles a good deal for such work. Sometimes Satan was induced to build them overnight, but I believe that was still earlier. Satan seems to have retired from active bridge-building by the twelfth century. It was a busy period for him at home.

So the Bénézet bridge was built by a boy of that name – a little shepherd of twelve, who received a command in a dream to go to Avignon and build a bridge across the Rhone. He said:

"I cannot leave my sheep, and I have but three farthings in the world."

"Your flocks will not stray," said the voice, "and an angel will lead thee."

Bénézet awoke and found beside him a pilgrim whom he somehow knew to be an angel. So they journeyed together and after many adventures reached Avignon. Here the pilgrim disappeared and Bénézet went alone to where a bishop was preaching to the people. There, in the presence of the assembly, Bénézet stated clearly that Heaven had sent him to build a bridge across the Rhone. Angry at the interruption, the bishop ordered the ragged boy to be taken in charge by the guard and punished for insolence and untruth. That was an ominous order. Men had been skinned alive on those instructions. But Bénézet repeated his words to the officer, a rough man, who said:

"Can a beggar boy like you do what neither the saints nor Emperor Charlemagne has been able to accomplish? Pick up this stone as a beginning, and carry it to the river. If you can do that I may believe in you."

It was a sizable stone, being thirteen feet long by seven broad – thickness not given, though probably three feet, for it was a fragment of a Roman wall. It did not trouble Bénézet, however. He said his prayers, and lightly lifted it to his shoulder and carried it across the town! Some say he whistled softly as he passed along.

I wish I had lived then. I would almost be willing to trade centuries to see Bénézet surprise those people, carrying in that easy way a stone that reached up to the second-story windows. Bénézet carried the stone to the bank of the river and set it down where the first arch of the bridge would stand.

There was no trouble after that. Everybody wanted to stand well with Bénézet. Labor and contributions came unasked. In eleven years the great work was finished, but Bénézet did not live to see it. He died four years before the final stones were laid, was buried in a chapel on the bridge itself and canonized as a saint. There is another story about him, but I like this one best.

Bénézet's bridge was a gay place during the days of the popes at Avignon. Music and dancing were continuously going on there. It is ready for another miracle now. Only four arches of its original eighteen are standing. Storm and flood did not destroy it, but war. Besiegers and besieged broke down the arches, and at last, more than two hundred years ago, repairs were given up. It is a fine, firm-looking fragment that remains. One wishes, for the sake of the little shepherd boy, that it might be restored once more and kept solid through time.

Passing along under the ramparts of Avignon, we crossed the newer, cheaper bridge, and took the first turn to the right. It was a leafy way, and here and there between the trees we had splendid glimpses of the bastioned walls and castle-crowned heights of Avignon. Certainly there is no more impressive mediæval picture in all Europe.

But on one account we were not entirely satisfied. It was not the view that disturbed us; it was ourselves – our car. We were smoking – smoking badly, disgracefully; one could not deny it. In New York City we would have been taken in charge at once. At first I said it was only a little of the fresh oil burning off the engine, and that it would stop presently. But that excuse wore out. It would have taken quarts to make a smudge like that. When the wind was with us we traveled in a cloud, like prophets and deities of old, and the passengers grumbled. The Joy suggested that we would probably blow up soon.

Then we began to make another discovery; when now and then the smoke cleared away a little, we found we were not in Villeneuve at all. We had not entirely crossed the river, but only halfway; we were on an island. I began to feel that our handsome start had not turned out well.

We backed around and drove slowly to the bridge again, our distinction getting more massive and solid every minute. Disaster seemed imminent. The passengers were inclined to get out and walk. I said, at last, that we would go back to a garage I had noticed outside the walls. I put it on the grounds that we needed gasoline.

It was not far, and the doors stood open. The men inside saw us coming with our gorgeous white tail filling the landscape behind us, and got out of the way. Then they gathered cautiously to examine us.

"Too much oil," they said.

In my enthusiasm I had overdone the thing. I had poured quarts into the crank case when there was probably enough there already. I had not been altogether to blame. Two little telltale cocks that were designed to drip when there was sufficient oil had failed to drip because they were stopped with dust. Being new and green, I had not thought of that possibility. A workman poked a wire into those little cocks and drew off the fuel we had been burning in that lavish way. So I had learned something, but it seemed a lot of smoke for such a small spark of experience. Still, it was a relief to know that it was nothing worse, and while the oil was dripping to its proper level we went back into the gates of Avignon, where, lunching in a pretty garden under some trees, we made light of our troubles, as is our way.

Chapter XI

WAYSIDE ADVENTURES

So we took a new start and made certain that we entirely crossed the river this time. We were in Villeneuve-les-Avignon – that is, the "new town" – but it did not get that name recently, if one may judge from its looks. Villeneuve, in fact, is fourteen hundred years old, and shows its age. It was in its glory six centuries ago, when King Philippe le Bel built his tower at the end of Bénézet's bridge, and Jean le Bon built one of the sternest-looking fortresses in France – Fort St. André. Time has made the improvements since then. It has stained the walls and dulled the sharp masonry of these monuments; it has crushed and crumbled the feebler structures and filled the streets with emptiness and silence. Villeneuve was a thronging, fighting, praying place once, but the throng has been reduced and the fighting and praying have become matters of individual enterprise.

I wish now we had lingered at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. I have rarely seen a place that seemed so to invite one to forget the activities of life and go groping about among the fragments of history. But we were under the influence of our bad start, and impelled to move on. Also, Villeneuve was overshadowed by the magnificence of the Palace of the Popes, which, from its eternal seat on le Rocher des Doms, still claimed us. We briefly visited St. André, the tower of Philippe le Bel, and loitered a little in a Chartreuse monastery – a perfect wilderness of ruin; then slipped away, following the hard, smooth road through a garden and wonderland, the valley of the Rhone.

I believe there are no better vineyards in France than those between Avignon and Bagnols. The quality of the grapes is another matter; they are probably sour. All the way along those luscious topaz and amethyst clusters had been disturbing, but my conscience had held firm and I had passed them by. Sometimes I said: "There are tons of those grapes; a few bunches would never be missed." But Narcissa and the others said it would be stealing; besides, there were houses in plain view.

But there is a limit to all things. In a level, sheltered place below Bagnols we passed a vineyard shut in by trees, with no house in sight. And what a vineyard! Ripening in the afternoon sun, clustered such gold and purple bunches as were once warmed by the light of Eden. I looked casually in different directions and slowed down. Not a sign of life anywhere. I brought the car to a stop. I said, "This thing has gone far enough."

Conscience dozed. The protests of the others fell on heedless ears. I firmly crossed the irrigating ditch which runs along all those French roads, stepped among the laden vines, picked one of those lucent, yellow bunches and was about to pick another when I noticed something with a human look stir to life a little way down the row.

Conscience awoke with something like a spasm. I saw at once that taking those grapes was wrong; I almost dropped the bunch I had. Narcissa says I ran, but that is a mistake. There was not room. I made about two steps and plunged into the irrigating canal, which I disremembered for the moment, my eyes being fixed on the car. Narcissa says she made a grab at my grapes as they sailed by. I seemed to be a good while getting out of the irrigating ditch, but Narcissa thinks I was reasonably prompt. I had left the engine running, and some seconds later, when we were putting temptation behind us on third speed, I noticed that the passengers seemed to be laughing. When I inquired as to what amused them they finally gasped out that the thing which had moved among the grapevines was a goat, as if that made any difference to a person with a sensitive conscience.

It is not likely that any reader of these chapters will stop overnight at Bagnols. We should hardly have rested there, but evening was coming on and the sky had a stormy look. Later we were glad, for we found ourselves in an inn where d'Artagnan, or his kind, lodged, in the days when knights went riding. Travelers did not arrive in automobiles when that hostelry was built, and not frequently in carriages. They came on horseback and clattered up to the open door and ordered tankards of good red wine, and drank while their horses stretched their necks to survey the interior scenery. The old worn cobbles are still at the door, and not much has changed within. A niche holds a row of candles, and the traveler takes one of them and lights himself to bed. His room is an expanse and his bed stands in a curtained alcove – the bedstead an antique, the bed billowy, clean, and comfortable, as all beds are in France. Nothing has been changed there for a long time. The latest conveniences are of a date not more recent than the reign of Marie Antoinette, for they are exactly the kind she used, still to be seen at Versailles. And the dinner was good, with red and white flagons strewn all down the table – such a dinner as d'Artagnan and his wild comrades had, no doubt, and if prices have not changed they paid five francs fifty, or one dollar and ten cents each, for dinner, lodging, and petit déjeuner (coffee, rolls, and jam) – garage free.

Bagnols is unimportant to the tourist, but it is old and quaint, and it has what may be found in many unimportant places in France, at least one beautiful work of art – a soldier's monument, in this instance; not a stiff effigy of an infantryman with a musket, cut by some gifted tombstone sculptor, but a female figure of Victory, full of vibrant life and inspiration – a true work of art. France is full of such things as that – one finds them in most unexpected places.

The valley of the Rhone grew more picturesque as we ascended. Now and again, at our left, rocky bluffs rose abruptly, some of them crowned with ruined towers and equally ruined villages, remnants of feudalism, of the lord and his vassals who had fought and flourished there in that time when France was making the romantic material which writers ever since have been so busily remaking and adorning that those old originals would stare and gasp if they could examine some of it now. How fine and grand it seems to picture the lord and his men, all bright and shining, riding out under the portcullis on glossy prancing and armored horses to meet some aggressive and equally shining detachment of feudalism from the next hilltop. In the valley they meet, with ringing cries and the clash of steel. Foeman matches foeman – it is a series of splendid duels, combats to be recounted by the fireside for generations. Then, at the end, the knightly surrender of the conquered, the bended knee and acknowledgment of fealty, gracious speeches from the victor as to the bravery and prowess of the defeated, after which, the welcome of fair ladies and high wassail for all concerned. Everybody happy, everybody satisfied: wounds apparently do not count or interfere with festivities. The dead disappear in some magic way. I do not recall that they are ever buried.

Just above Rochemaure was one of the most imposing of these ruins. The castle that crowned the hilltop had been a fine structure in its day. The surrounding outer wall which inclosed its village extended downward to the foot of the hill to the road – and still inclosed a village, though the more ancient houses seemed tenantless. It was built for offense and defense, that was certain, and doubtless had been used for both. We did not stop to dig up that romance. Not far away, by the roadside, stood what was apparently a Roman column. It had been already old and battered – a mere fragment of a ruin – when the hilltop castle and its village were brave and new.

It was above Rochemaure – I did not identify the exact point – that an opportunity came which very likely I shall never have again. On a bluff high above an ancient village, so old and curious that it did not belong to reality at all, there was a great château, not a ruin – at least, not a tumbled ruin, though time-beaten and gray – but a good complete château, and across its mossy lintel a stained and battered wooden sign with the legend, "A Louer" – that is, "To Let."

I stopped the car. This, I said, was our opportunity. Nothing could be better than that ancient and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the Rhone. The "To Let" sign had been there certainly a hundred years, so the price would be reasonable. We could get it for a song; we would inherit its traditions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts, its – I paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even eagerness, on the part of the family. Strange as it may seem, there wasn't a particle of either. I went over those things again, and added new and fascinating attractions. I said we would adopt the coat of arms of that old family, hyphenate its name with ours, and so in that cheap and easy fashion achieve a nobility which the original owner had probably shed blood to attain.

It was no use. The family looked up the hill with an interest that was almost clammy. Narcissa asked, "How would you get the car up there?" The Joy said, "It would be a good place for bad dreams." The head of the expedition remarked, as if dismissing the most trivial item of the journey, that we'd better be going on or we should be late getting into Valence. So, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, I had to give it up in that brief, incidental way.

Chapter XII

THE LOST NAPOLEON

Now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to the westward bank of the Rhone, where there was supposed to be a certain tiny village, one Beauchastel – a village set down on none of our maps, yet which was to serve as an important identifying mark. The reason had its beginning exactly twenty-two years before; that is to say, in September, 1891. Mark Twain was in Europe that year, seeking health and literary material, and toward the end of the summer – he was then at Ouchy, Switzerland – he decided to make a floating trip down the river Rhone. He found he could start from Lake Bourget in France, and, by paddling through a canal, reach the strong Rhone current, which would carry him seaward. Joseph Very, his favorite guide (mentioned in A Tramp Abroad), went over to Lake Bourget and bought a safe, flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former owner as pilot, and with these accessories Mark Twain made one of the most peaceful and delightful excursions of his life. Indeed, he enjoyed it so much and so lazily that after the first few days he gave up making extended notes and surrendered himself entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting idly through the dreamland of southern France. On the whole, it was an eventless excursion, with one exception – a startling exception, as he believed.