In the bitter religious wars of the time which rent and racked the whole adjacent country, Grasse took but little part. It was appropriately shocked at the spectacle of Christians fighting and then went on with its soap-making. The people of Grasse, however, had their local religious quarrels which seem to have been concerned not with matters of doctrine, but rather with questions of fees and emoluments and especially with burial fees. In these disputes over money “the clergy,” as Mr. Kaye remarks, “seemed strangely to have forgotten their high calling,” for they actually fought for the possession of coffins containing the dead, and there must have been regrettable scenes in the graveyard when the clerics and their subordinates were engaged in what was practically a tug-of-war over a coffin.
The more direct afflictions of Grasse arose from the passage through the town of foreign troops. Over and over again the Cours or the Place Neuve was occupied by bodies of armed men, who, although they had no especial reason for hostile action against Grasse, yet behaved in a very trying and unseemly manner. They would march up to the town and, without adequate explanation, would demand a war bonus of as much as 36,000 livres or more. They would billet themselves in the town, would smash windows, break tiles and carry off doors. For what purpose an army on the march should need doors is not made clear; but that the intruders should cause a rise in the cost of living is intelligible. A writer who was in the town on the occasion of one of these visits says, with disgust, that wine cost 40 centimes a pint, brown bread 25 centimes a pound, and eggs actually 15 centimes each. He adds a remark which shows how, even in little things, history may be anticipated, for he says: “All our fruit trees have been burned save a few olive trees which have been saved from the violence of the Germans.”
The old town of Grasse is very picturesque and abounding in interest. Being placed upon a slope, it comes to pass that its ways are steep. The houses are tall and the lanes are narrow, so the place is full of shadows. The streets ramble and wind about in that leisurely manner which is characteristic of Grasse, until they become a veritable tangle. The stranger wandering through Grasse is apt, after traversing many streets, to find himself in the exact spot whence he started. It is not wise to ask one’s way in Grasse, but merely to drift about, from lane to lane, until the object sought is stumbled on. It will be met with in time. There are various old houses to be seen which appertain to many periods. Some of them are disguised by modern plaster and paint, some have been “restored” to the point of extinction, while not a few are represented only by fragments. They illustrate the effect of putting new wine into old bottles: “the bottles break and the wine runneth out and the bottles perish.”
Of the old ramparts which surrounded the town in the fourteenth century but a trace or two remain, although the line they pursued can still be followed. The Boulevard du Jeu de Ballon represents the western side of the enceinte, and the Passage Mirabeau its southern part. Where the two met was the Porte du Cours. The eastern flank is indicated by the Place Neuve and La Roque and the rounded northern end by the Rue des Cordeliers and the Avenue Maximin Isnard. Of the seven original gates two only survive—the Porte Neuve (rebuilt in 1793) and the Porte de la Roque.
The chief feature of Grasse is the Cours, a charming promenade just outside the confines of the old town. It is here that the band plays and here that the idler can enjoy the superb view which opens out to the sea and admire—if he will—the statue to Fragonard which adorns the spot. Leading down from the Cours into the old town is the Rue du Cours, a narrow lane of little shops. The first house in this street—a corner house, No. 2—was the town mansion of the Marquis de Cabris and his startling wife Louise. Some account of this mercurial lady is given in the chapter which follows. The de Cabris came from the delightful village of Cabris, five miles from Grasse. There stands what remains of their castle, which was reduced to a heap of ruins at the time of the Revolution.
The house in the Rue du Cours is a plain building of four stories, rising from a base of stone. It is of considerable size and the back of it forms a large block in the Passage Mirabeau. Its portal is prim and severe and in a strict classical style. So dull is this entry that it is hard to picture the frivolous and beautiful Louise standing on the door step, buttoning up her gloves and meditating some fresh devilment. It is a house that no one could associate with the thrilling scandal which buzzed about it when the mocking laughter of the little marquise could be heard ringing from the solemn windows. The house is now occupied by offices and flats of the gravest respectability. As if some odour of old days still clung to it, the walls, I noticed, were blazing with red and yellow posters vaunting the attractions of a play dealing with the allurement of women.
GRASSE: THE CATHEDRAL.
Almost opposite to the de Cabris mansion, and at the extreme end of the Boulevard du Jeu de Ballon, is the ancient house of the de Pontevès family. It is a huge, square building, severely plain and free from any pretence at decoration. It has on one side a little walled garden which abuts on the Cours. The house has had a gloomy history. It was at one time the headquarters of the executive council of Var. During the time of the Terror (1793-4) it became the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal. It has sheltered Fréron—he who had the audacity to seek the hand of Pauline Bonaparte—as well as Robespierre, who was himself guillotined in 1794. In its salon the wretched victims denounced by the Revolution were tried, cursed at, and condemned, and through its gate they were marched to their death by the guillotine. The guillotine stood in the Cours on the spot now occupied by the statue to Fragonard. The prisoners who looked out of the west windows of the house would see this fearful instrument only a few yards distant and would see also the howling, savage mob that surged around it. Yet between the condemned and their place of death was the comfort of the little quiet garden shut in with its high wall. Thirty people in all were guillotined at Grasse during the Terror, and among them a poor nun over seventy years of age, whose name, by a strange coincidence, was de Pontevès.