A Spring Walk in Provence

by Archibald Marshall

I walked up the broad Rue de la République, with its gay and busy shops, cafés and picture palaces, its trams, plane-trees, soldiers and citizens, and all the life and appearance of a modern street, and came to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. On either side of this main artery lies the old Avignon, and I knew that I only had to turn aside from it to lose that somewhat disconcerting note of modernity, and perhaps to find my ideal auberge. I found it just off the place, very ordinary outside, and indeed in, but with a host and hostess whose sole aim seemed to be the welfare of their guests, and with cooking that would make the fortune of one of those Soho restaurants that the world occasionally discovers and flocks to for a time. Good wine, too, and all at a price that makes one wonder how these things are done. Find it for yourselves, ye travellers who want to save your pockets, and are content with a clean bed, good fare and a kindly welcome; commend me to madame, and ask her to give you a dish of bouillabaisse.

I went up that evening, past the huge looming mass of the Popes' Palace and the cathedral to that delightful garden, with its dark foliage, gleaming sheets of water, statues and balustrades, and looked out over the Rhône and the dim country beyond. It is one of those places in which the past of a very old city seems to concentrate its memories. Whatever one knows of its history comes before one, half real; whatever is left of the city itself that is part of its history takes on its old meaning, and whatever is new is forgotten. In this corner of Avignon, the buildings round the great oblong of the Place du Palais, the ancient streets just off it, the huge rocks that lift it high in the air, the ramparts and towers and forts below, the cottages and quays along the river, the half-ruined bridge—all are of the old storied Avignon, and only the garden itself is new, though its newness takes off none of the effect of its surroundings.

The site of this garden was in papal times a barren windswept waste, with windmills and forts, and a cemetery used when Avignon was isolated by floods. When the Rue de la République was cut right through the city, the débris was carted up here and mixed with soil from the river banks, and this delightful garden laid out. Shortly after the Crimean war Marshal Canrobert planted an oak among the ilexes and cedars and cypresses that mix their dark foliage with the living green of the deciduous trees, and dedicated the garden to the use of the citizens of Avignon.

It is a charming spot at all times. I found myself continually wandering up there, in the intervals of more serious sight-seeing, or in the early morning before sight-seeing began, or in the evening when it was over. Sight-seeing is really the bane of all beautiful places; one wants to see everything and is glad one has done so afterwards, but the way to enjoy a place is to live one's own life in it, for however short a time, and take the sights as they come. Unfortunately they do not come quickly enough when one has only a day or two to spare for a place that is full of them, and the only way is to make a business of sight-seeing, with whatever intervals of peace one can afford.

I did my duty the next day in spite of the rain that fell intermittently. In retrospect there are churches; crooked mediæval streets with little shrines in niches of the walls; broader Renaissance streets with handsome buildings; the immense ring of rampart, too big to make any single impression, but effective enough here and there when one found oneself at the edge of the city; the busy modern boulevards, which after a time fail to take away from the impression of the whole as a very ancient and very picturesque city; and the mighty palace so dominating everything that one is hardly ever able to forget it, however far one's wanderings take one.

I think St. Agricol was the first church I visited. It is of the fourteenth century, on a very much older foundation, simple and pleasing, with a late Renaissance memorial chapel, richly and gracefully decorated, and containing some beautiful statuary. Avignon employed many sculptors of note in the days of its wealth and fame, and their work is to be found here and there, sometimes outside of a church and sometimes inside. One learns to look out for it, and gains many a little thrill of pleasure in spotting something true and right and beautiful, among a good deal that is commonplace. The same may be said of the paintings of which the churches are full, but both buildings and pictures are apt to be dark, and without a great deal of trouble it is difficult to pick out the good from the ordinary. Probably the best are in the Musée, and some of those are so fine that one is content to enjoy thoroughly a few, and let the rest go by.

St. Agricol was rather busy on the morning I visited it. In one of the side chapels a number of small boys were awaiting their turn at the confessional box. They sat on wooden benches, their bare legs dangling, and occupied themselves as is usual with small boys on their best behaviour, not making too much noise and ready to be diverted by anything in the shape of novelty that came their way. When I came unexpectedly upon them they showed great interest in me, but the opportunities for comment that I afforded were immediately displaced by something much more worthy of attention. The great west doors were opened and a coffin was carried in and laid in the chancel. There was a muttered service lasting a very few minutes, and silverheaded aspersoirs were handed from one to the other of the scant body of mourners. Then the untidy-looking men with their cloth caps on their heads lifted up the coffin and almost ran with it down the church, led by a cocked-hatted functionary whose aim seemed to be to get the whole business over as quickly as possible. It was the briskest funeral I have ever seen.

After that, the church rapidly filled up with crowds of children, and the small boys from the side chapel, relieved of their burdens of sin, clattered in to join the rest. A handsome, cheerful-looking priest mounted the pulpit and began to address them and ask them questions. He very soon had them interested, and the church rang with their eager answers and not infrequent laughter, as he cleverly led them from one point to another, and caught and threw back every word that he drew from them. Just as I was going out of the church a mischievous urchin poked his head in at another door and shouted something opprobrious, then ran away as fast as his legs would carry him. The priest was as ready for this interruption as he had been for the calls of his flock. He said something too quickly for me to catch, and the whole churchful of children shouted their applause.

More beautiful than St. Agricol is the church of St. Pierre. Its fine Gothic front, completed early in the sixteenth century, shows a wealth of delicate carving, and it fronts a picturesque place which enables one to get its full effect. The façade is worth examining in detail, with the luxuriant carving, round the portal, of vines and oak leaves and acorns and little figures engaged in all sorts of agricultural pursuits. I did not see the carved sixteenth century doors, which are protected in the same way as those of the cathedral at Aix, but in a niche between them is a lifelike eighteenth century statue of the Virgin and Child—the Mother, tender and matronly, bending forward and holding up her flowing drapery—which is well worth noting. Very attractive is the little plane-shaded Place du Cloître, approached under an archway to the north of the church. The old ecclesiastical buildings have been taken possession of by all and sundry, and are alive with the signs of modern habitation—clothes fluttering, gay pot-flowers in windows of old grey stone, children playing under the trees. But it is a sweet and peaceful spot in the midst of a busy city, and its cloistered charm still hangs to it.