When Love Calls

by Stanley John Weyman

I did as he wished. But when I had made the matter as clear as I could, he answered stoutly, "No! It is impossible! Either I do not understand you, or you do not understand me!" And he went on his way in a passion. He could believe in the Irish Mail; but the cultivation of vines under glass was a thing outside his ideas of the world's economy.

From the place at Montauban, an open space pleasantly laid out on the brow of the hill, it is said that the Pyrenees can be seen on a fine day. We had a fine day, but we saw no sign of the mountains--our land at Beulah--though we looked long and lingeringly.

Attracted by a name which seemed familiar to us, and had a ring about it as of feudal and knightly times, we made a diversion from here to Cahors on the Lot, an old city standing in a fertile basin, among bare, brown hills. We were disappointed in the first appearance of the town. The river still runs round three sides of it, but the ramparts have been turned into gardens where they have not been levelled; only one tower of the castle survives; and though there are some picturesque houses, the town is for the most part modern, and devoted to Gambetta who was born in it. The cathedral, surmounted by one heavy tower, backed by three domes in a row, is imposing in its bulky ugliness. Its floor is much lower than the marketplace without: so that on entering through the west door you find a flight of steps before you, and the congregation at your feet immersed in candlelit gloom. These steps at the Sunday morning service were crowded by kneeling hucksters and market-women with their baskets, who had quietly entered as a matter of course from the market, which was in full swing without, and were devoutly telling their beads, or listening to a sermon preached by a bishop--a Count-Bishop, too, whose pastoral ring was still a prominent feature in the scene, so skilfully did he wave and display it. At Cahors we were much pleased with one of the bridges, from which rise three Flemish-looking towers. They form as many gateways, and from every point of view are singularly picturesque. This bridge may have stood there in its present state when Henry of Navarre did at Cahors his most famous deed. A strong garrison was at the time holding the city for the Catholic party, but Henry, smarting under the loss of La Réole, which had been betrayed by its governor, determined to seize Cahors. Accordingly he came to it with fourteen hundred men, and leaving one half of this force outside to cover his night attack, blew in a gate with a petard and entered with the rest, being himself the seventh to pass in. A furious battle in the streets ensued, but when day broke, the Huguenots had mastered a small part of the city only, and reinforcements for the enemy arriving, Henry's followers begged him to retire. "No!" he answered, fighting on with his back to a shop, "I will not retire! My only retreat from this town shall be the retreat of my soul from my body!" He kept his word. Street by street and house by house, he reduced the town, neither side asking or giving quarter. But it was not until the fifth night after his entrance that he completely mastered the place, a feat which is generally allowed to stand highest among his warlike exploits.

At Cahors it was that we first came under the influence of his name; but thereafter it grew and grew, a bigger factor in the past, a more prominent object in our thoughts in the present, the farther south we travelled; until at Pau, his birthplace and capital, the son of Jeanne d'Albret, the Béarnais, the Navarrese, the Protector of the Religion, Henri Quatre, Henry the Great, seemed to fill all past history, and dwarf all other figures. We have in English story no royal personage, no prominent life even, at once so picturesque, so rich in surprises, so lovable, and so blameworthy. Hot-blooded and cool-headed, daring to rashness, astute to meanness, a professor and a profligate, merciful, affectionate, yet letting nothing intervene between him and his aims--who that is man shall judge him? Surely the wine which Henry's father raised to his new-born lips, the cold water which was dashed in his hour-old face, the national song his mother sang at his birth, did really reproduce themselves in his life.

Leaving Cahors in the evening, we slept at a small village called Lelbenque, and were on foot before eight next day, and on our way across the hills to Caylus. The country through which we passed in the fresh morning air, a range of bleak lime-stone heights sparsely covered with oak trees, seemed thinly peopled, and little tilled. Here and there in the wooded depths of a valley, we came upon a sparkling brook and a few comfortable farm-houses nestling among fruit trees, and protected by abrupt limestone walls from the cold winds which swept across the uplands. The distance to Caylus was sixteen miles. There were no inns, and as we had breakfasted rather meagrely on coffee and bread, we were driven to beg something at one of the farm-houses. There were only women at home, and these were with reason astonished to see foreign tramps in that out-of-the-way district. They seemed even a little afraid of us, but we got what we wanted notwithstanding the growling of the dogs; and our offer of payment was declined with suspicious abruptness. I fancy that they suspected us of wanting change.

About mid-day we passed over the last ridge of the uplands, and saw below us a narrow fertile valley squeezed in between mountain-walls. Halfway through this gorge and in the middle of it, a hill or rock rose abruptly almost to the height of a thousand feet. On this, lording it over the road, stood Caylus, its houses and gardens descending terrace by terrace from the castle-nucleus on the crest almost to the road. Very old was the church, about the porch of which are carved green animals in the act of nibbling one another's tails under the superintendence of St. Michael. We took it for St. Michael. Old, too, seemed the great stone house opposite, known as the Maison du Loup, and bearing uncouth masks and figures of wolves in high relief on its front. Older still we judged the market-place to be, which built of wood rests on stone pillars; and the heavy Arcade or "Row" which stands in the same tiny square with it, and the beetle-browed wynds that lead to it--all old, gray, heavy, time-stained, but still solid. In the market hall we noticed three ancient corn-measures; hollows scooped out in stones that formed part of the fabric of the hall, with to each a horizontal outlet or spout at the side, through which the grain when measured might escape into bag or basket. Even while we were examining these we remarked women sitting outside the doors about us, removing the grain from stalks of maize, and plaiting various articles with the straw.

The weather-beaten castle belongs to Madame St. Cyr, but was occupied when we visited it by Mr. Wilton, an Englishman, who was not at home. His housekeeper, however, kindly allowed us to go over the building, and we found the view from the leads of the keep--used, I suspect, as a smoking-room--very charming. Caylus, to sum up, is difficult of access and is not even named in "Murray," but I can highly recommend it as a quaint example of a mediæval town, such as cannot now be found in England without much searching.

From it we passed by means of a top-heavy, jingling country coach to St. Anthonin, and so by rail to Albi on the Tarn, Albi of the Albigenses, the unhappy sect whose fate confutes the saying that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. About Albi, from which place they took their name, they grew and flourished in the latter half of the twelfth century. But seventy years later, notwithstanding the attempt which their feudal lord, Raymond of Toulouse, made to protect them, they were virtually extinct. Save that they dissented from the Romish Church, their very doctrines are now unknown or to be found only in the writings of their enemies, and their story and fortunes are too often confounded with those of the Waldenses. Simon de Montfort, the father of our Simon de Montfort, took a conspicuous part in the cruel deeds which attended their suppression. At the fall of Beziers, heretic and churchman were put to the sword together. "Slay all--God will know His own," said the gentle Abbot Arnold. And in a sense wisely: for it is only the man of half measures who fails as a persecutor. To be perfectly ruthless, perfectly thorough in the work, is to be successful also. At any rate at Albi, which, like Cahors, stands among hills, there are no traces of the Albigenses left; not even such a story as rings about the name of Beziers with fire. Rather the great cathedral proclaims Rome's victory. Built externally of bricks, it is a huge blind oblong with an apsidal end. A swelling base and rounded buttresses add to its heavy appearance. Yet it is very lofty. The monstrous red tower hung about with giddy balconies rises nearly to the height of three hundred feet, while the church itself, the lower part of which has no openings or windows, seems half that height. In a word, the whole is as much a fortress as a cathedral. Lofty flights of steps lead to a raised porch, formed by three arches decorated with carvings lately and successfully restored. Entering the church through this we find the interior a striking sight. In shape it is a vast hall surrounded by chapels in two stories, and with a choir screened off at one end. The interior still remains in the state to which our Puritans objected, the state probably characterized more churches than we now imagine. It is covered from ceiling to floor with frescoes and paintings and scrollwork, some gaudy, some subdued, some good, some bad. The very statues are painted and gilded, and although here and there the effect is garish and unpleasing, I do not agree that the appearance of the whole, as the vast mass of color presents itself to the eyes, broken by the exquisite carvings of the stone screen or a bevy of tinted marbles, is absolutely unharmonious. I found it more pleasing than I expected. And then what would have been the effect of these plain walls in their naked monotony?

The paintings are mainly of the date of Francis I., say about 1520. Two frescoes of Hell and the Passions, done by Italian artists, cover the west end--cover acres of it as it seems; and in a chapel, among other anachronisms is a notable picture of Christ, in which He is figured in a hat and feather and the dress of a courtier of the time in the midst of Roman soldiers who are kicking Him along. A great store of information as to the dresses and customs of the early part of the sixteenth century is laid up here, to be ransacked by any one who will take the trouble to closely inspect this huge interior. The groups painted upon the walls, groups of people fighting, tourneying, feasting, dancing, dying--ay, and doing many things scarcely adapted to church decoration--are to be counted by thousands; as are the gold stars that stud the bright blue ceiling. There is something suggestive in the portrayal of these things in this place; they seem to tell of a faith which, with all its scandals, abuses, and laxity, was bound up intimately with the life of the people, with their joys as well as their griefs; and so smacked of One who did not consider the price of sparrows as beneath knowledge.

At any rate we were pleased with these things. The interior of Albi Cathedral may not be in the best taste. It may be meretricious, it may be gilt rather than of gold. But it is curious; it is almost unique; it is a museum in itself; and to an Englishman accustomed to the cold if correct lines of a Gothic church, its warmth and color afford a not unwelcome change.