It was in this fortress-palace that the Anti-Pope Benedict XIII. (Pierre de Luna) withstood the attacks of Charles V., whose religious sentiments, outraged by the schism in the Church, prompted him to send one of his generals to drive the pretender from his stronghold. The siege continued for months, and ruined many houses in Avignon and killed many of the people. At last, when the place was stormed the Pope took refuge in the tower and finally escaped out of a secret door.
MILL IN VALE OF THE SORGUE AT VAUCLUSE.
By E. M. Synge.
We lingered for some minutes at the great window in the Hall of the Frescoes studying the landscape, and trying to find out the direction of Petrarch's romantic Vale of the Sorgue and the site of the Castle of Romanin and Les Baux in the Alpilles. Near to the window to our left, as a stern foreground to that radiant picture of Provence, stands Rienzi's tower, bare and bald indeed. And there the last of the Tribunes passed days of one knows not what anguish in his dark little prison, while the sunlight beat and beat without upon its ruthless walls. There is a touching story, showing the honour in which the troubadour's profession was held in those days: that the people of Avignon interceded for the condemned patriot, pleading for his life on the ground that he too was a singer of songs. One is relieved to remember that at least he did not end his days in this miserable dungeon, but met his death in the streets of Rome, at the foot of the Capitol itself.
Alexandre Dumas says of this palace: "We find some sparks of art shining like gold ornaments in dark armour! These are paintings which belong to the hard style which marks the transition from Cimabue to Raphael. They are thought to be by Giotto or Giottino, and certainly if they are not by these masters they belong to their age and school. These paintings ornament a tower which was probably the ordinary abode of the Pope, and a chapel which was used as a tribunal of the Inquisition."
The young woman who showed us over the Palace with sustained hauteur, told us that it was the custom to execute papal prisoners by throwing them from the top of Rienzi's tower. This was the only subject that seemed to interest our guide, a young lady of very modern type, and aggressively "equal." In case we should have any doubt on the matter she adopted an abrupt gait and an extremely noisy and resolved manner of inserting the keys in the locks of the various doors through which she admitted the sightseers. Barbara and I would fain have hung back among the strange little passages hidden in the thickness of the inner walls, ominous little mole-corridors suggestive of plot and passion such as a Court of mediæval Popes could well be imagined to harbour. But our guide fretted impatiently at the exit, eager to hurry us out, and she would scarcely vouchsafe an answer to the meekest of questions. In fact, by the time she had given us a very much foreshortened view of the Palace (I am convinced that she did us out of more than half of the appointed round), most of us felt more or less trampled upon—her equality was such!
It is perhaps a paradox, but it is none the less true that one does not fully realise the character of a scene till one has left it.
Under the shadow of that terrible building we were held by a spell, wandering bewildered from dusky corridor to darker chamber, scarcely able to take count of our own impressions. They were so strong and they came so fast.
But once out again in the sunshine, we found that the images grouped themselves into gloomy pictures, and all the crime and all the splendid misery of that wonderful stage of mediæval drama seemed to crowd before the mind's eye, re-peopling the melancholy place with brilliant figures, filling it with voices and all the indescribable sound and murmur of a stirring centre of human life.