“Those two figures,” said he, “represent the great Caius Marius and the Prophetess Martha, the sister of Lazarus, and the patroness of our Provence. They were, as you may say, a pair of friends.”
“Dear me!” said I. “I thought there was a hundred years or so between them.”
“Maybe,” said the good man; “that well may be, madame; but, none the less, they remained an excellent pair of friends.”
The facts of these good people were, as you see, a little incoherent. Yet, indistinct and fallacious though it be, their vision of a distant glorious past gives their spirit a horizon, their minds a culture, which I have never met in the provinces of the North, where ancient history begins with the French Revolution. Every ploughman, every shepherd, in the kingdom of Arles is aware that their country was to Rome, two thousand years ago, much what Nice and Cannes are to the Parisians of to-day. Their inheritance of so ancient a civilization, their contemplation of the vast and beautiful monuments of Latin triumph, have given them a certain dignity and sense of importance which may degenerate here and there into the noisy boastfulness of a Tartarin, but which far more frequently remain within the limits of an honest proper pride. Those whom I met, the peasants and shepherds at St. Remy and Les Baux, had each a theory of his own concerning the great campaign of Marius, and pointed me out—at varying quarters of the horizon—the line of the retreat of the barbarians. If I sometimes was made to feel that, from the height of their ancient glories, they looked down on me as on one of that defeated horde, yet their attitude was always that of the kindest, the most courteous superiority. They are citizens of Arles or Avignon, as one was a citizen of Rome when the greatest honour was to boast Civis Romanus sum.
VII
One day we drove across the plain to Tarascon, a cheerful little town beside a yellow river, overshadowed by a great yellow castle, the Château du Roi René, the painter-king. On the other bank of the river rises the Castle of Beaucaire, and the two old fortresses, whose enmity was once so cruel, glare at each other as harmlessly in our days as two china dogs across a village mantelpiece. Tarascon possesses a fine old church, whose porch would seem still finer were it not so near a neighbour of St. Trophime at Arles. We descended into the crypt to pay our reverence to the wonder-working tomb of St. Martha, sister of Lazarus, who, as every one (south of the Loire) is well aware, was cast ashore upon the coasts of Provence in company with the two holy Maries. She founded the city of Marseilles, and is buried under the church at Tarascon. As we picked our way underground we perceived in a dark recess of the staircase a second tomb, unvisited of pilgrims, but far more interesting to our eyes. A marble youth lies along the sarcophagus, dead. It is Jean de Calabre, the son and heir of King René, an old friend of ours, for we have followed him in many a Neapolitan campaign. But after all he did not gain his crown of Naples, the brilliant young pretender. He lies here, forgotten, in the mouldy vault of St. Martha.
When we emerged to the outer air from this underground sanctuary of saint and hero, we remembered modern times, and asked our guide for the latest news of M. Tartarin. She protested her ignorance, but with a certain subdued irritation (or so we thought), as of one weary of a scie that has lost its edge. We were more fortunate, however, when we asked for the Tarasque. She ran with us along a narrow street in great impatience until we reached a large stable. The door swung open, and we beheld a sort of huge long-tailed cardboard whale, green, with scarlet scales stuck all over with yellow spikes, like the almonds in a plum pudding. The creature has a half-human head with goggle eyes, a vulgar good-natured smile, and a drooping black moustache, with a long horsehair mane depending from its neck. It suggests a cavalry “sous-off” who has in some way got mixed up with his charger.
The eponymic monster of Tarascon is no longer led along the streets in glory once a year, accompanied by men and maidens, in commemoration of the day when St. Martha tamed the dragon by a prayer, and led him along in fraternal peace, tied in a leash of her slender neck ribbon. The recent law against processions has stopped all that. ’Tis a pity, for the monster is a pleasant, vivid, childish-looking monster, no more terrible than a devil by Fra Angelico. He made us remember the horrible Tarasque which is to be seen in Avignon Museum. This noble monster was excavated under the foundations of an Early-Christian chapel in the Church of Mondragon. He is a panther-like person; his fore-claws are dug deep into two half-scalped human heads. A portion of a human arm remains between his gruesome jaws. Flaxman himself never imagined a more hideous devil. “Progress is not an illusion, after all!” we sighed, as we looked at the amiable if vulgar Tarasque of Tarascon.
VIII
When people come to stay at St. Remy, it is nearly always in order to make the excursion to Les Baux; a more desolate one cannot well be imagined, nor one that places in stronger relief the contrast between the sane and beautiful relics of antiquity and the misery, the squalor of mediæval ruins. Who was the misguided man who first made it fashionable to admire barren mountains and ruins, and other such dismal monstrosities? I should like to quarter him to all eternity in a palace at Les Baux.