CHAPTER XVII
MAGUELONNE
Maguelonne—the dwelling on the Pool.
The name has an aroma of romance, and a sort of tender melancholy which penetrates to the imagination before one knows whether it is a city or a mountain or some gloomy castle in an old fairy tale.
Once it was a splendid city spreading along the shores of the lagoon; now there remains but a solitary church, one of the characteristic fortress-churches of the Midi, a bare, primitive-looking building, closely protected on three sides by a grove of dark trees, in the centre of a little island formed by the sea and the lagoons which run, like an enamelled chain, all along these mournful coasts.
One can reach the island by boat across the lagoons from the little cardboard town of Palavas where the people of Montpellier go in summer for sea-bathing. In very calm weather it is possible to approach the isle by sea. The church is a most singular piece of early Christian architecture, without a window in the white, thick walls; and above, one sees the curved machicolations, as in a fortress, whence boiling lead and oil could be poured down on the heads of Saracen assailants, those terrible enemies of whom the ancient church builders stood in such dread.
Of the original Mother Church of St. Peter there has survived only the principal nave, "flanked before the destruction of the city with several towers."
It has "curved machicolations going from one buttress to the next," and is considered one of the most complete types of the fortified churches of the Middle Ages, "which are ranged in a line along the coast."
The church of Maguelonne has fine Romanesque windows, and arches of full half-circle, and resembles a fortress almost more than a church.