[Illustration: Lantern of Augustus.]
Fréjus is a cathedral city, though numbering only 3,500 inhabitants, but it is an ancient see, dating from about 374, when it was an important maritime place. Its fortunes had gone down in the Middle Ages, and the citizens and prelates were never in a position to build much of a cathedral. The present church is of the eleventh century, both small and plain. It contains little of interest save a fine painting on gold ground of S. Margaret and other saints, brought from the ancient Monastery of Lerins. The organ gallery is supported on granite pillars, Classic, found among the ruins of the amphitheatre. The baptistery is surrounded by eight porphyry columns with Corinthian capitals taken from a pagan temple.
The carved doors of the cathedral deserve to be seen, they are of rich Rénaissance work. In the north aisle of the cathedral to the west is the tomb of two bishops of the seventeenth century, Bartholomew and Peter de Camelin, kneeling; and at the east end are two alabaster monuments of bishops three centuries earlier. The cloisters are of the usual Provençal type, the arcade resting on double columns, but walls have been erected blocking up the spaces, and the interior yard is turned into the bishop's fowl-house.
But—is not that sufficient? I am not writing a guide book; and I enter into these details here solely because the guide books pass over the cathedral very slightingly, and concern themselves chiefly with the Roman antiquities. Of these latter, besides what I have mentioned, there is the Porte Dorée, one arcade only of what was formerly a noble portico facing the harbour; also a fine amphitheatre, now traversed by a highway, not however as perfect as those of Nimes and Arles. Fragments also remain of the ancient theatre, but they are unimportant.
Hard by the Hôtel de Ville is a beautiful red porphyry figure of a boy and a dolphin which one would have taken to have been Rénaissance work, but that the Rénaissance artists would hardly have taken the pains to sculpture such intractable material as porphyry for a petty town of the size of Fréjus. The group recalls that very odd story told by Pliny in one of his letters, which, as it may not be familiar to many of my readers, I will venture here to repeat. He says that the story "was related to him at table by a person of unsuspected veracity." At Hippo, in Africa, when the boys were playing in the lake that communicates with the sea, and the lads were contending together which could swim furthest, one boy found a dolphin play about him as he swam, and he ventured to climb on the back of the fish. The dolphin was not alarmed, but conveyed the little fellow on his back to the shore. The fame of this remarkable event spread through the town, and crowds came down to the water's edge to see the boy and ask him questions. Next day he went into the water again, and once more the dolphin appeared, played round him, and again took him on his back. This happened several times, and the circumstance was bruited throughout the neighbourhood, so that great numbers of people came in from the countryside to see the fish play in the water with the children, and carry them on its back. At last the authorities of the town, annoyed at the concourse of the curious, destroyed the playful dolphin, a bit of barbarity that excites Pliny's wrath.
To the south-west of Fréjus lies the Chaine des Maures, the outline of which is by no means so bold as that of the porphyry Esterel, but the mountains rise in sweeping lines from a broad and fertile plain covered and silvered with olives, growing out of rich red soil, like the old red sandstone of Devonshire. The red sandstone rocks through which the line passes are ploughed with rains. On the right appears the wonderfully picturesque little town of La Pauline, with an extensive ruined castle, and the walls and towers of the town in tolerable condition. Above it rises a stately peak capped with the white limestone that forms the mountains about Toulon and Marseilles, and having all the appearance of a flake of snow.
When we reach the basin between Aubaine and Camp-Major we are surrounded by these barren white ranges, so white that they look as if a miller had shaken his flour-bag over them.
But I have not quite done with Fréjus yet. I fear the reader will think I have given him a dull chapter of antiquarian and historical detail, so I will here add an anecdote, to spice it, concerning a worthy of Fréjus, Désaugiers, one of the liveliest of French poets. He was born at Fréjus in 1772. One day he was invited to preside at the annual banquet of the pork-butchers. At dessert everyone present was expected to pronounce an epigram or sing a song; and when the turn came to Désaugiers, he rose, cleared his throat, looked around with a twinkle in his eye, and thundered forth "Des Cochons, des Cochons."
The pork-butchers bridled up, grew red about the cheeks and temples, believing that an insult was intended, when Désaugiers proceeded with his song:—
"Décochons les traits de la satire."