Seven Popes reigned here, but of the life at the Palace during that time there is singularly little record. Instinctively one tries to recapture misty reminiscences of schoolroom lore, for now the dry facts begin to glow with the splendour and the pathos of real life, as one realises that just on this very spot, in sight of these sunny hills and this rushing river, those ancient things took place.
"Oh! Barbara, how magnificently learned I should be if only I possessed all the information that I have forgotten!"
"What have you forgotten?" Barbara inquires soothingly.
Heavens! What with forgetting and never having known, one felt as arid and futile as an extinct volcano. Had one but enjoyed the privileges accorded to the characters of ancient drama, one would have stretched forth hands in invocation to the mysterious eventful city.
"O city, O immortal city of the Rhone, lift but for one moment the veil that hides from us those tremendous secrets which fill the air with dreams and presences even to this hour!"
Perhaps the appeal was not altogether in vain, for a few isolated facts began to drift, ghost-like, into view. They were images imprinted in childish days while Avignon was nothing but a name, and so the ill-guided imagination had placed the city on the plain; a bare, arid group of houses surrounding a vague, vast structure, against which clouds of dust were continually being driven.
It was curious and interesting to compare this long-cherished picture with the reality. In connection with it was another painted in richer tones. The subject was the journey of Philip of Valois through his kingdom with the kings of Navarre and Bohemia in his train. After passing through Burgundy—broad and spacious Burgundy, with its straggling, brown villages—he arrives here at Avignon, where other kings have hurried to meet him, and is magnificently received by the Pope. Which of the seven Popes was it? Alas! memory failed, but King Philip was lodged over there across the river at Villeneuve-les-Avignon.
"Beyond the island where the huge castle is on the hill?" Barbara inquired. "What a shabby sort of place to put a king."
My idea, too, of Villeneuve, till I saw it, had been a brilliant little pleasure-city, full of splendid cardinals' palaces.
"Let's go and see the town," said Barbara; "perhaps the palaces are still there."