A Tour Through Old Provence

by A. S. Forrest

and well-paid sculptors could achieve, galleries, chapter-houses, refectories, gardens, kitchens, stables, wine-cellars, all contributed to the enjoyment of the occupants. The worldly prosperity of the institution continued right down until the Revolution relieved it of its wealth and robbed it of its power. There was no lingering period of decay, but a sudden lightning stroke put an end to the Monastery of the Chartreuse.

Its architecture represents all the styles of four hundred years. Here we see an early Roman-Gothic chapel, on whose walls linger remnants of Italian frescoes, painted when art was breaking away from the archaic tradition of the earlier Christian schools. Classic Renaissance sculpture adorns the fine entrance gateway, a masterpiece of the eighteenth century, the work of de Valfenier. Upon the shield facing the spectator is the inscription: “Domus Sanctæ Mariæ. Vallis Benedictiones.”

All through the strange winding lanes, that once were cloisters and vaulted passages, incongruous squalid makeshift hovels mingle and jostle with the ancient buildings. In the centre of one of the cloisters there stands unfinished, but isolated, a classic rotunda that once sheltered a fountain, one of the latest additions to the monastery when the end came. At the beginning of the eighteenth century buildings foreign to the character of the place grew up in the cloisters that surround this dignified rotunda, but the intervening space has fortunately been spared to give, as it were, a breathing space to one of the best preserved monuments in the ruined abbey.

TARASCON

III
TARASCON

Daudet has left on record the feelings of embarrassment that overcame him whenever he had to pass the little town of Tarascon. From the moment when the great white towers of the Château René burst upon his view until it was left behind he confesses to feeling ill at ease. He had made the name of the sleepy Provençal town almost as famous in the nineteenth century as it had been in the fifteenth, and yet its natives were ungrateful and in no way pleased with the new celebrity that had been thrust upon them.

Tartarin and Tarascon were, however, both pseudonyms; but with the almost comic seriousness that is characteristic of the Provençal, the inhabitants of the little town felt convinced that the author was holding them up to ridicule. The real scene of the cap-shooting parties that Daudet had in view, when he penned the delightful exploits of the famous Tartarin, lies about fifteen miles on the other side of the Rhone. “Tarascon,” with its fine sonorous rolling sound, appealed to the ear of the author, who little thought that his choice of it as a part title for his work would draw down upon his head the execrations of a town. And they put their resentment into deeds too, for the book was banned and never could be bought in the place. Time works wonders: the resentment is now forgotten, and the adventures of the famous hero are pushed under the nose of every passing stranger who puts foot into Tarascon.

Tarascon is a junction on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean system, and its station is a busy hive of bustling noisy humanity whenever a train arrives or departs. Few of the many thousands of passengers who pass through the junction make any stay in the town, although it is well worthy of a visit. The two “monuments,” as they are called, of the town are the Château René and the Church of St. Martha. These alone are more than worth the time taken to examine them, and the town itself is picturesque enough to warrant an inspection by the casual passer-by and a more prolonged stay by the lover of out-of-the-way corners.