IV.
CATHEDRALS OF THE VALLEYS.
Orange.
Lying on the Rhone, and almost surrounded by the papal Venaissin, is a tiny principality of less than forty thousand acres. This small state has given title to more than one distinguished European who never entered its borders, and who was alien to it not only in birth, but in language and family. So great was the fame of its rulers that this small, isolated strip of land suffered for their principles, and probably owes to them much of its devastation in the terrible Wars of Religion. From the well-known convictions of the Princes of Orange, the country was always counted a refuge for heretics of all shades, and in 1338 they were in sufficient force to demolish the tower of the Cathedral. Later in history, Charles IX declared William of Nassau “an outlaw” and his principality “confiscate”; and in 1571, there was a three days' massacre of Protestants. In spite of this horrid orgy the Reformers rose again in might and soon prevented all celebration of Catholic rites. Refugees fleeing from the Dragonnades of Dauphiné and of the Cévennes poured into the principality; and when the Princes of Orange were strong enough to protect their state, its Catholics lived restricted lives; but when the Protestant power waned, Kings and Captains of France raided the land in the name of the Church. And at the death of William of Orange, King of England, Louis XIV seized the capital of the state, razed its great palace and its walls, and after the Treaty of Utrecht had awarded the principality to the French crown, treated the defenceless Huguenots with the same impartial cruelty he had meted to their fellow-believers in other parts of the kingdom. Orange's changes in religious fate are not unlike those of Nîmes, with this essential difference, that here Catholicism has conquered triumphantly. Where ten worship in the little Protestant temple, a thousand throng to the Mass.
Both in history and its monumental Roman ruins, the capital of this province, Orange, is one of the richest cities of the Southland, but its Cathedral is very poor and mean. The plan is one of the simplest of the Provençal conceptions, a “hall basilica,” archæologically interesting, but in its present state of patch and repair, architecturally commonplace and unbeautiful. In spite of Protestant attacks and Catholic restorations, the XI century type has been maintained, a rectangle whose plain double arches support a tunnel vault and divide the interior into four bays. The piers are heavy and severe; and between them are alcoves, used as chapels. The choir, narrower than the nave, is preceded by the usual dome, and beyond it is a little unused apse, concealed from the rest of the interior by a wall. Unimportant windows built with distinctly utilitarian purpose successfully light this small, simple room, and no kindly shadow hides its bareness or diminishes the unhappy effect of the paintings which disfigure the walls. The Cathedral's exterior is so surrounded by irregular old houses that the traveller had discovered it with some difficulty. It has little that is worthy of description, and after having entered by a conspicuously poor Renaissance portal only to go out under an uninteresting modern one, he found himself lost in wonder that the Cathedral-builders of Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth should have utterly failed in a town which offered them such inspiring suggestions as the great Arch of Triumph and the still greater Imperial Theatre, besides all the other remains of Roman antiquity which, long after the building of Notre-Dame, the practical Maurice of Orange demolished for the making of his mediæval castle.
Cavaillon.
It was growing dusk, of a spring evening, when the traveller arrived at Cavaillon and wandered about the narrow streets and came upon the Cathedral. Glimpses of an interesting dome and a turret-tower had appeared once or twice above the house-tops, leading him on with freshened interest, and there was still light enough for many first impressions when he arrived before the low cloister-door. But here was no place for peaceful meditation. An old woman, coiffed and bent, brushed past him as she entered, a chair in each hand; and as he effaced himself against the church wall, a younger woman went by, also chair-laden. Two or three others came, talking eagerly, little girls in all stages of excitement ran in and out, and little boys came and went, divided between assumed carelessness and a feeling of unusual responsibility. Then a priest appeared on the threshold, not in meditation, but on business. Another, old and heavy, and panting, hurried in; and through the cloister-door, Monsieur le Curé, breviary in hand, prayed watchfully. A little fellow, running, fell down, and the priest sprang to lift him; the child was too small not to wish to cry, but too much in haste to stop for tears. The priest watched him with a kindly shrug and a smile as he ran on;—there was no time for laughing or crying, there was time for nothing but the mysterious matter in hand.