“THESE FLYING-BUTTRESSES GIVE TO THE EXTERIOR
ITS MOST CURIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL EFFECT.”—NARBONNE. [To List]
Apart from its buttresses, Saint-Just has little decorative style. Its crenellations and turrets are military and forceful, not ornate. For the church had its defensive as truly as its religious purpose, and formerly was united on the North with the fortifications of the Palace, and contributed to the protection of its prelates as well as to their arch-episcopal prestige.
In spite of the fostering care of the French government, the Palace, the Cloister, and the Cathedral seem in the hands of strangers. The traveller who had longed to see them in their finished magnificence realised the futility of this wish, but he turned away with another as vain, that he might have known them even in incompletion, when they were in the hands of the Church, when the Archbishop still ruled in his Palace, when the Canons prayed in the Cloister, and the Cathedral was still a-building.
Perpignan.
Perpignan, like Elne, is in Rousillon. The period of her most brilliant prosperity was that of the Majorcan dominion in the XII century. Later she reverted to Aragon, and was still so fine a city that for two hundred years France coveted and sought her, until she finally yielded to the greedy astuteness of Richelieu and became formally annexed to the kingdom of Louis XIII. Perpignan is a gay little town, much affected by the genius and indolence of the Spanish race. Morning is work-time, noon-tide is siesta, but afternoon and evening were made for pleasure; and every bright day, when the sun begins to cast shadows, people fill the narrow, shady streets and walk along the promenade by the shallow river, under the beautiful plane-trees. The pavements in front of the cafés are filled with little round tables, and here and there small groups of men idle cheerfully over tiny glasses of liqueur and cups of cool, black coffee; perhaps they talk a little business, certainly they gossip a great deal. Noisy little teams filled with merry people run down from the Promenade to the sea-shore; and after an hour's dip, almost in the shadow of the tall Pyrénées, the same merry people return, laughing, to a cooler Perpignan. In the evening, they seek the bright cafés and the waiters run busily to and fro among the crowded little tables; the narrow streets, imperfectly lighted, are full of moving shadows, and through the open church-doors, candles waver in the fitful draught, and quiet worshippers pass from altar to altar in penance or in supplication.
All the old buildings of the city are of Spanish origin. The prison is the brick, battlemented castle of a Majorcan Sancho, the Citadel is as old, and the Aragonese Bourse is divided between the town-hall and the city's most popular café.
The Cathedral of Saint-Jean, which faces a desolate, little square, was also begun in Majorcan days and under that Sancho who ruled in 1324. At first it was merely a church; for Elne had always been the seat of the Bishopric of Rousillon, and although the town had suffered from many wars and had long been declining, it was not shorn of its episcopal glory until there was sufficient political reason for the act. This arose in 1692, and was based on the old-time French and Spanish claims to the same county to which these two cities belonged.
“ALL OF THE OLD BUILDINGS OF THE CITY ARE OF SPANISH ORIGIN.”—PERPIGNAN. [To List]