[Illustration: At Villeneuve.]
The castle of Villeneuve was built by Philip the Bold in the thirteenth century, and is interesting in many ways. It contains a little chapel of an earlier date with a small apse and little round-headed windows. The whole of the body is under a very low-pitched roof supported on an almost Classic cornice. The fortifications of the castle are an example of a stage of defence carried beyond what was attained at Aigues Mortes. There, as we saw, the upper portion of the walls was covered with a balcony of wood on to which the besieged stepped through the doorways left in the battlements.
[Illustration: A well at Villeneuve.]
When, in sieges, the catapults were made to fling barrels of flaming tar over these balconies, and set them on fire, recourse was had to structures of stone, and the wooden hourdes, or balconies, disappeared. Then came the machicolated galleries. But even these were deemed insufficient, and échauguettes were erected, sentry-boxes between the towers standing forward beyond the curtains, and with double slits in the floor, through which two streams of flaming combustible or of stones could be sent down on the besiegers. The palace of the Popes at Avignon exhibits these on piers standing forth from the wall. They are also to be seen at Villeneuve.
The fine Gothic church of the Chartreuse is ruinous; in that stood the tomb of Innocent VI. A grand tower, erected by Philip the Fair, formed the Tête du Pont of the bridge of S. Benezet. It was erected after the bridge had been constructed, as a protection against the troops of the Papacy. Thereupon the popes raised a tower of defence at their end of the bridge. There were originally seventeen arches in the bridge, resting on eighteen piers.
CHAPTER XX.
VALENCE.
A dull town—Cathedral—Jacques Cujas—His daughter—Pius VI.—His death—Maison des Têtes—Le Pendentif—The castle of Crussol—The dukes of Uzès—A dramatic company of the thirteenth century.
What a sleepy place Valence is! There was supposed to be a fair there when I was at Valence, but even that could not wake it up. But the fair was in a condition of the utmost somnolence itself. Why—I did not suspect till I reached Vienne, when I found that this latter place had drawn to it all that was enterprising, startling, attractive, and left only the very dregs of fairings to poor Valence.
It has a great boulevard, very wide, very inviting, but the spotted boys, and fat girls, and bearded women, would have nothing to say to it—they herded to Vienne. It has a vast terrace, planted with trees, where any amount of stalls might stand, but there were erected there only some very inconsiderable ranges of boot and shoe tables, and of old cutlery, and slop clothes.