It certainly is true that the devil had things largely his own way about that time here in France; but it does not necessarily follow that in this particular matter the devil directly had a hand. To my mind a simpler and more natural explanation presents itself: That the iconoclastic Bishop was a weak brother who had suffered himself to be forced into a calling for which he had no vocation, and into an apparent championship of a faith with which his inmost convictions were at war; that for years and years the struggle between the inward man and the outward Bishop had gone on unceasingly and hopelessly, until—as well enough might happen to one strong enough to resent yet not strong enough to overcome restraint—the galling irksomeness of such a double life had brought madness near; and that madness did actually come when the chains of a life and of a faith alike intolerable suddenly were fused in the fierce heat of the Revolution and fell away.
IX
Below Viviers the Rhône breaks out from its broad upper valley into its broader lower valley through the Defile of Donzère. Here the foothills of the Alps and the foothills of the Cévennes come together, and behind this natural dam there must have been anciently a great lake which extended to the northward of where now is Valence. The Defile is a veritable cañon that would be quite in place in the Sierra Madre. On each side of the sharply-narrowed river the walls of rock rise sheer to a height of two hundred feet. The rush of the water is tumultuous. In mid-stream, surrounded by eddies and whirling waves, is the Roche-des-Anglais—against which the boat of a luckless party of English travellers struck and was shattered a hundred years ago. Indeed, so dangerous was this passage held to be of old—when faith was stronger and boats were weaker than in our day of skepticism and compound-engines—that it was customary to tie-up at the head of the Defile and pray for grace to come through it safely; and sincerely faithful travellers tied-up again when the passage was ended to offer a service of grateful praise. But nowadays they clap five men on the tiller and put on more steam—and the practical result is the same.
The cliffs bordering the cañon, being of a crumbling nature, are known as the Maraniousques; but usually are called by the Rhône boatmen the Monkey Rocks—because of the monkeys who dwelt in them in legendary times and stoned from their heights the passing travellers. It was a long while ago that the monkeys were in possession—in the time immediately succeeding the Deluge. During the subsidence of the waters it seems that the Ark made fast there for the night, just before laying a course for Ararat; and the monkey and his wife—desperately bored by their long cooping-up among so many uncongenial animals—took advantage of their opportunity to pry a couple of tiles off the roof and get away. The tradition hints that Noah had been drinking; at any rate, their absence was not noticed, and the Ark went on without them the next day. By the time that the Deluge fairly was ended, and the Rhône reopened to normal navigation, a large monkey family was established on the Maraniousques; and the monkeys thenceforward illogically revenged themselves upon Noah's descendants by stoning everybody who came along.
Later, the ill-tempered monkeys were succeeded by more ill-tempered men. In the fighting times the Defile of Donzère was a famous place in which to bring armies to a stand. Fortifications upon the cliffs entirely commanded the river; and at the lower end of the Defile the castle and the walled town of Donzère, capping a defiant little hill-top, commanded both the river and the plain. Even the most fire-eating of captains were apt to stop and think a little before venturing into the Defile in those days.
All of those perils are ended now. The dangers of the river are so shorn by steam that the shooting of the cañon rapids yields only a pleasurable excitement, that is increased by the extraordinary wild beauty of that savage bit of nature in the midst of a long-tamed land; and the ramparts and the castle of Donzère, having become invitingly picturesque ruins, are as placable remnants of belligerency as are to be found anywhere in the world. Indeed, as we saw them—with the afternoon sunlight slanting down in a way to bring out delectably the warm greys and yellows of the stone-work and to produce the most entrancing effects of light-and-shade—it was not easy to believe that people had been killing each other all over them not so very long ago.
Having escaped from the Defile of Donzère, the river wanders away restfully into a wilderness of islands—a maze so unexplored and so unexplorable that otters still make their home in it, and through the thick foliage poke out their snub noses at passing boatmen now and then. Thence onward for a long way islands are plentiful—past Pierrelatte, and Bourg-Saint-Andéol, (a very ancient and highly Roman flavoured town), and the confluence of the Rhône and the Ardèche—to the still larger archipelago across which the Bridge Building Brothers, with God himself helping them, built the Pont-Saint-Esprit.
Modern engineers—possibly exalting their own craft at the expense of that of the architects—declare that this bridge was the greatest piece of structural work of the Middle Ages; certainly it was the greatest work of the Frères Pontifes: that most practical of brotherhoods which, curiously anticipating one phase of modern doctrine, paid less attention to faith than to works and gave itself simply to ministering to the material welfare of mankind. In the making of it they spent near half a century. From the year 1265 steadily onward until the year 1307 the Brothers labored: and then the bridge was finished—a half-mile miracle in stone. In view of the extraordinary difficulties which the engineer in charge of the work overcame—founding piers in bad holding-ground and in the thick of that tremendous current, with the work broken off short by the frequent floods and during the long season of high water in the spring—it is not surprising that the miracle theory was adopted to explain his eventual victory. Nor is it surprising that the popular conviction presently began to sustain itself by crystalizing into a definite legend—based upon the recorded fact that the Brothers worked under the vocation of the Holy Spirit—to the effect that the Spirit of God, taking human form, was the designer of the fabric and the actual director under whose guidance the work went on. And so the genesis of the bridge was accounted for satisfactorily; and so it came by its holy name.