III
If the day be cold or windy, drive through the forest of Hallatte to Creil, and thence take the train to Compiègne, for there blows a stiffish breeze across the plateau of the Oise. But if mild air and sun attend you, hire a light victoria, choose a good driver (you can get one to do the thing for five and twenty francs or so), and set out by Senlis and Verberie for Compiègne. ’Tis a matter of five and forty kilomètres; and to make the drive a success, you must stretch it a little further still, and go through the forest of Chantilly, round by St. Léonard, to Senlis.
Senlis is a charming little town, perched on a hill in true mediæval fashion, and grouped in a cluster round its fine cathedral and the ruins of the castle of St Louis (a real mediæval castle, this one, at least so much as is left of it). Halfway up the hill the antique bulwarks, turned into a raised and shady walk, wear their elms and limes and beeches like flowers amid a mural crown. From this green garland the streets rise ever steeper, darker, more irregular; yet not so narrow but that here and there we spy some white half-modern house, with pots of pinks in the windows, and a garden full of flowers, which looks the natural home for some provincial heroine in a novel of Balzac’s. I should like to end my days, I think, in just such a little town, to sit in my garden and receive my fair visitors under the green roof of the lime-tree walk. The notary, the sous-préfet (is there a sous-préfet?), the curé perhaps, and some of the country neighbours would come once a week to play écarté, tric-trac, and boston with each other, and chat with us in a polished little parlour, with squares of carpet in front of all the chairs. Once a week, on the afternoon consecrated by local fashion,
we should walk on the ramparts and meet our neighbours, talk of the crops and pull the Government to pieces (it stands a great deal of pulling!). We should shake our heads over the Conseil Municipal, but forgive the individual councillors, who are invariably amiable in private life. The terrible M. Dupont would give me a cutting of Malmaison pink for my garden, and that breach would be healed.... Stop carriage! let us begin at once, that peaceful imaginary comedy of old age. But, ah, the little white house is already out of sight. We are in front of the shattered round towers of the thirteenth-century palace, all fringed with brown wallflowers against an azure sky. We climb higher still, for see—here is the high, sunny, little square where the tall cathedral stands.
Senlis cathedral is a fine ogival building, its great porches arched around with sculptured saints and prophets. There are two towers, one of them topped by a surprising steeple, a hundred feet in height, which is a landmark for all the country round. The deep porches rich in shadow, the slender lofty towers, compose an exterior altogether simple, noble, and religious. To my thinking, Senlis, like all Gothic churches, is best seen from without. Within, that bare unending height of pillar, that cold frigid solemnity, that perfume of dreary Sabbath, is less touching than the grand yet homely massiveness of Romanesque, or even than the serene placidity of the classic revival. Who, unabashed, could say his prayers in these chill Gothic houses of the Lord, built apparently for the worship of giraffes or pelicans? Oh for the little, low-roofed chapels of St. Mark’s, the unpretending grandeur of San Zenone or Sant’ Ambrogio, or even the simple, pious beauty of such a Norman village church as St. Georges de Boscherville, near Rouen! Think of the quaint, sombre poetry of Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont-Ferrand, of Saint Julien at Brioude, or Saint Trophime at Arles; or even remember the elegant and holy grace of the Parisian St. Etienne du Mont—these be churches in which to say one’s prayers. Whereas your Northern Gothic is a marvellous poem from without; but how frigid is the chill interior of those august and noble monuments! Duty divorced from charity is not more cold; and I can easier imagine a filial and happy spirit of worship in the humblest square-towered parish church.
As it happened, we did not see the interior of Senlis at its best. The spring cleaning was in full force; the straw chairs were heaped in an immense barricade by the font. In the middle of the cathedral—and really in the middle, dangling in mid-air like Socrates in his basket—an energetic char-man was brushing the cobwebs from the sculptured capitals with a huge besom made of the dried but leafy boughs of trees. He had been hauled up there in a sort of crate by some ingenious system of ropes and pulleys. The one solitary figure in that vast cleanly interior was not unpicturesque; it was like a caricature of any picture of Mr. Orchardson’s.