Our instructors consisted, to begin with, of our master, the worthy Monsieur Donnat, who, when at home, took the lower classes, but half the time he was away gleaning pupils. Then there were two or three poor devils, old seminarists, who, having thrown cap and gown to the winds, were well content to earn a few crowns, besides being well housed, fed and washed; we boasted also a priestling, Monsieur Talon by name, who said Mass for us; and, finally, a little hunchback, Monsieur Lavagne, the professor of music. For our cook we had a negro, and to wait at table and do the washing a woman of Tarascon, some thirty years old. To complete this happy family there were the worthy parents of Monsieur Donnat—the father, poor old chap, coifed in a red cap, and assisted by the donkey, was employed to fetch the provisions; and the old white-capped dame acted as barber to us, when necessary.
In those days Saint-Michel was of much less importance than it has since become. There existed merely the cloisters of the old Augustine monks with the little green in the middle, while to the south in a small group rose the refectory, chapter-house, kitchen, stables, and lastly, the dilapidated Church of Saint-Michel. The walls of the latter were covered with frescoes representing a flaming fiery hell of damned souls, and demons armed with pitch-forks, taking active part in the deadly combat between the devil and the great archangel.
Outside this cluster of buildings stood a small buttressed chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Succour, with a porch at the side. Great tufts of ivy covered the walls, and inside it was decorated with rich gildings enclosing pictures, attributed to Mignard, representing the Life of the Virgin. Queen Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV., had so adorned the chapel, in accordance with a vow made to the Virgin should she become the mother of a son.
During the Revolution, this chapel, a real gem hidden among the mountains, had been saved by the good country people, who piled up faggots in front of the porch, so hiding the entrance. Here it was that every morning, at five o’clock in summer and six in winter, we were taken to hear Mass, and here it was that with faith, a real angelic faith, I prayed—we all prayed. Here also, on Sundays, we sang Mass and vespers, each one prayer-book in hand; and here, on the great feast-days, the country people came to admire the voice of the little Frédéric; for I had, at that age, a pretty clear voice like a girl’s. At the Elevation, when we sang motets, it was I who had the solos, and I well remember one in which I specially distinguished myself commencing with these words:
O mystery incomprehensible,
Great God Thou art not loved.
In front of the little chapel grew some nettle-trees, the sweet blossoms of which, hanging in tempting clusters, often lured us to climb the branches, to the destruction of our garments. There was also a well, bored and cut in the rock, which, by a subterranean outlet, poured its waters down into a basin, and, descending further, watered the kitchen garden. Below the garden, at the entrance of the valley, grew a clump of white poplars, brightening up the rather barren landscape.
For Saint-Michel was a wild solitary spot, the old monastery being built on a plateau in a narrow passage between the mountains, far from the haunts of men, as the inscription over the entrance truly testified:
“I fled from the cities, where injustice and
vanity reign unchecked, and sought for solitude.
This is the place I have chosen for my habitation.
Here shall I find rest.”
The spurs of the mountains around were covered with thyme, rosemary, asphodel, box and lavender. In some protected corners grew vines, which produced, strange to say, a vintage of some renown—the famous wine of Frigolet. A few olive-trees were planted on the spur of the hills, and here and there in the broken stony ground, rows of almond-trees, tortuous, rugged and stunted. In the clefts of the rocks might be seen occasional wild fig-trees. This was all the vegetation these rocky hills could show, the rest was only waste land and crushed boulders. But how good it smelt, this odour of the mountains, how intoxicating as we drank it in at sunrise!
The generality of schoolboys are penned up in big cold courtyards between four walls, but we had the mountains for our playground. On Thursdays, and every day at recreation hours, no sooner were we let out than we were off like partridges, over valley and mountain, until the convent bell rang out the recall. No danger of our suffering from dulness. In the glorious summer sunshine the ortolan sang afar his “Tsi tsi béau”; and we rolled in the sweet thyme or roamed in search of forgotten almonds and green grapes left on the vines. We gathered mushrooms, set traps for the birds, searched the ravines for those fossils called in all that countryside “Saint Stephen’s stones,” hunted in the grottos for the Golden Goat, and climbed and tumbled about till our parents found it hardly possible to keep us decently clothed or shod.