One could but laugh, and yet that absurd effigy was the representative of the beginnings of our history as a race!
The Christian version of the story is of yesterday: the arrival of the saints on the shores of pagan Gaul and the conversion of Tarascon to the new faith by St. Martha. Some trace the legend to Phœnician sources, as has been already mentioned; more frequently the animal is regarded as a Celtic deity or demon, and there are stories of Hercules and a giant named Taras or Tauriskos: the classic form of the tradition. In any case it belongs to the Twilight of the Gods, and if one could really trace the family tree of that mongrel monster to its roots one would possibly acquire a good deal of knowledge that would startle archæologists.
It was not till late in the fifteenth century, however, that the fête of the tarasque was instituted by King René, that most artistic of monarchs, who loved to see his people gay and happy; so it was somewhat later than the real troubadour days that our cat-hippopotamus began to enjoy a sort of established position; which shows that no one need despair of appreciation if only he will wait long enough.
We visited more than once the shrine of the gentle conqueror of the tarasque: standing—it was startling to remember—on the very spot where Clovis, King of the Franks, once stood, when newly converted to Christianity by his saintly wife Clothilde. The shrine is in a quiet, half-subterranean chapel in the church of her name. The tomb is under a low vault and the marble figure of the saint rests on the big stone slab with joined hands and a look of deep peace on her beautiful face. Certainly it is the face of a woman who might win over ravaging monsters to sweetness and light. Above the tomb is the inscription:
Solicita non turbima.
Broad steps flecked with colour from the stained-glass window opposite lead down to the dim little crypt where she sleeps, and one hanging lamp burns in the twilight and the silence which seems too deep and too far below the surface of the life of the moment to be disturbed by the irrelevant steps and voices of visitors, or by the troops of little girls who come under the care of a nun to visit the shrine.
The regions down by the Castle of King René are delightful to loiter in on a warm day. Of vast size and solidity, this fourteenth-century fortress is full of the atmosphere of romance. The southern wall plunges sheer into the Rhone; at right angles to this river front stretches the mass of the building; tower and barbican and battlement in splendid array, the dry moat and the road running alongside.
What observant traveller passing at the foot of some ancient tower has not noticed the magical aspect of its line of luminous contact with the fields of the air?
