Wanderings by Southern Waters, Eastern Aquitaine

by Edward Harrison Barker

I venture up the stone staircase, although most of the finely carved balusters are gone, and the arch-stones have so slipped out of place that they seem to cling together by the will of Providence rather than by any physical law. The stairs themselves, although of fine stone that has almost the polish of marble, are cracked as if an earthquake had tormented them, and worn by the tread of innumerable feet into deep hollows. I reach a landing where a long corridor stretches away into semi-darkness. The floor is black with dirt, and so are the doors which once opened into rooms where luxury waited upon some who were born, and upon others (perchance the same) who died. A sound reaches me from the far-end of the corridor that makes me feel like a coward. It is the raving of a madman. How he seems to be contending with all the fiends of hell! Sometimes his voice is so low, and the words crowd one upon another so fast, that the muttering is like the prolonged growl of a wild beast; then the mood changes, and the unseen man seems to be addressing an invisible audience in grand sonorous sentences as though he were a Cicero; and perhaps he may be, but as he speaks in patois his eloquence is lost upon me. What a terrible excitement is in his voice! How it thrills and horrifies! And he is alone, quite alone in this dismal old house with the fiends who harass him. This I learn from a young girl whom I meet at the bottom of the staircase. She tells me that the man is only mad at the time of the new or the full moon (I forget which), and that his raving lasts but two or three days. Then nobody ventures near him; but at other times he is quite rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that has been stretched out.

Most of the old houses are entered by Gothic doorways, and the oak doors are studded with large nail-heads. The locks and bolts are of mediaeval workmanship. Sometimes you see an iron ring hanging to a string that has been passed through a hole in the door. It is just such a string as Little Red Riding-hood (an old French fable, by-the-bye) pulled to lift the latch at the summons of the wicked wolf. And what a variety of ancient knockers have we here! Many are mere bars of iron hanging to a ring; but others are much more artistic, showing heads coifed in the style of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, serpents biting their own tails, and all manner of fanciful ideas wrought into iron. In wandering about the dim old streets, paved with cobble stones, architectural details of singular interest strike one at every turn. Now it is the encorbelment of a turret at the angle of a fifteenth or sixteenth century mansion that has lost all its importance; now a dark archway with fantastic heads grimacing from the wall; now an arcade of Gothic windows, with graceful columns and delicate carvings—a beautiful fragment in the midst of ruin.

What helps much to render these dingy streets, passages, and courts of Figeac so delightfully picturesque is the vegetation which, growing with southern luxuriance in places seemingly least favourable to it, clings to the ancient masonry, or brightens it by the strong contrast of its immediate neighbourhood in some little garden or balustraded terrace. Wherever there are a few feet of ground some rough poles support a luxuriant vine-trellis, and grapes ripen where one might suppose scarcely a gleam of sunshine could fall. The vine clambers over everything, and sometimes reaches to the top of a house two stories high. The old walls of Figeac are likewise tapestried with pellitory and ivy-linaria, with here and there a fern pushing its deep-green frond farther into the shadow, or an orpine sedum lifting its head of purple flowers into the sunshine that changes it to a flame.

There is much in the life of this place that matches perfectly with the surroundings. Enter by a Gothic doorway, and you will come upon a nail-maker's forge, and see a dog turning the wheel that keeps the bellows continually blowing. The wheel is about a foot broad, and stands some three feet high. The dog jumps into it at a sign from his master, and as the wheel turns the sparks from the forge fall about the animal in showers. Each dog is expected to work five or six hours; then, when his task is done, he is allowed to amuse himself as he pleases, while a comrade takes his turn at the wheel. The nail-makers discovered long ago that dog labour was cheaper than boy labour, and not so troublesome. Nevertheless, these wheels belong to an order of things that has nearly passed away.

The crier or tambourineur, as he is generally called, because he carries a drum, which he beats most lustily to awaken the curiosity of the inhabitants, is making the round of the town with an ox, which is introduced to the public as 'le boeuf ici présent.' The crier's business is to announce to all whom it may concern that the animal is to be killed this very evening, and that its flesh will be sold to-morrow at 1 franc 25 centimes the kilo. It will all go at a uniform price, for this is the local custom. Those who want the aloyau, or sirloin, only have to be quick. The ox, notwithstanding that he has a rope tied round his nose and horns, and is led by the butcher, evidently thinks it a great distinction to be tambouriné; his expression indicating that this is the proudest day of his life. Every time the drum begins to rattle he flourishes his tail, and when each little ceremony is over he moves on to a fresh place with a jaunty air, as if he were aware that all this drumming and fuss were especially intended for his entertainment. No condemned wretch ever made his last appearance in public with a better grace.

Another day I see this crier going round the town accompanied by a boy every available part of whose person is decked with ribbons, and all kinds of things ordinarily sold by drapers and haberdashers. Over each shoulder is slung a pair of women's boots. The boy is a walking advertisement of an exceptional sale, which a tradesman announces with the help of the crier and his drum.

A band of women and girls come up from the riverside, walking in Indian file, and each with a glittering copper water-pot on her head. What beautiful water-pots these are! They have the antique curve that has not changed in the course of ages. They swell out at the bottom and the top, and fall gracefully in towards the middle. As the women quit the sunshine and enter the deep shadow of the street the shine of their water-pots is darkened suddenly, like the sparks of burnt paper which follow one upon another and go out.

The sound of solemn music draws me into a church. A requiem Mass is being chanted. In the middle of the nave, nearer the main door than the altar, is a deal coffin with gable-shaped lid, barely covered by a pall. A choir-boy comes out of the sacristy, carrying a pan of live embers, which he places at the head of the coffin. Then he sprinkles incense upon the fire, and immediately the smoke rises like a snow-white cloud towards the vaulting; but, meeting the sunbeams on its way, it moves up their sloping golden path, and seems to pass through the clerestory window into the boundless blue.

Now the procession moves towards the cemetery. It is a boy's funeral, and four youths of about the same age as the one who lies in darkness hold the four corners of each pall, two of which are carried in front of the coffin. After the hearse come members of the confraternity of Blue Penitents, one of whom carries a great wooden cross upon his shoulder. Others carry staves with small crosses at the top, or emblems of the trades that they follow. The dead boy's father is a Penitent, and this is why the confraternity has come out to-day. They now wear their cagoules raised; but on Good Friday, when they go in procession to a high spot called the Calvary, the leader walking barefoot and carrying the cross on his shoulder in imitation of Christ, they wear these dreadful-looking flaps over their faces. Their appearance then is terrible enough; but what must that of the Red Penitents, who accompanied condemned wretches to execution, have been? In a few years there will be no Blue Penitents at Figeac. As the old members of the confraternity die, there are no postulants to fill their places. Already they feel, when they put on their 'sacks', that they are masquerading, and that the eye of ridicule is upon them. This state of mind is fatal to the conservation of all old customs. The political spirit of the times is, moreover, opposed to these religious processions in France. That of the fête-Dieu at Figeac would have been suppressed some years ago by the Municipal Council had it not been for the outcry of the tradespeople. All the new dresses, new hats, and new boots that are bought for this occasion cause money to be spent that might otherwise be saved, and those who are interested in the sale of such things wish the procession through the streets to be kept up, although in heart they may be among the scoffers at religion.

The religious confraternities in Aquitaine date from the appearance of the routiers at the close of the twelfth century. These routiers were then chiefly Brabançons, Aragonese, and Germans. According to an ecclesiastical author and local historian, the Abbé Debon, the lawless bands spread such terror through the country that they stopped the pilgrims from going to Figeac, Conques, and other places that had obtained a reputation for holiness. A canon of Le Puy in Auvergne, much distressed by the desertion of the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Puy, which rivals that of Roc-Amadour in antiquity, formed the design of instituting a confraternity to wage war against the routiers and destroy them. A 'pious fraud' was adopted. A young man, having been dressed so as to impersonate Notre Dame du Puy, appeared to a carpenter who was in the habit of praying every night in the cathedral, and gave him the mission of revealing that it was the will of the Holy Virgin that a confraternity should be formed to put down the brigands and establish peace in the country. Hundreds of men enrolled themselves at once. The confrères, from the fact that they wore hoods of white linen, obtained the name of Chaperons Blancs. Upon their breasts hung a piece of lead with this inscription: 'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.' The confraternity spread into Aquitaine, and the routiers were defeated in pitched battles with great slaughter; but the chaperons in course of time became lawless fanatics, and were almost as great a nuisance to society as those whom they had undertaken to exterminate. They were nevertheless the ancestors in a sense of the confraternities of penitents who, at a later period, became so general in Europe.