"'Brother, do not deceive me: whence comes that treasure? Has the Pope taken it from his treasure?'
"And he answered no, and that the commons of Avignon had paid it, each his portion.
"'Then, provost,' said Bertrand, 'I promise you that we will not take a farthing of it as we live, and wish that this money got together be restored to them that paid it, and tell the Pope that he have it restored to them; for if I knew that any other were done, it would lie heavy on me; and had I crossed the sea, yet would I return thence.'
"Thus was Bertrand paid with the Pope's money, and his folk absolved again, and the said first absolution again confirmed."
*
In former days Avignon was considered the commencement of a Transalpine journey: it was the entrance to Italy. The geographies say:
"The Rhone belongs to the King, but the City of Avignon is watered by a branch of the river, the Sorgue, which belongs to the Pope."
Is the Pope very certain of long preserving the ownership of the Tiber? At Avignon they used to visit the Celestine[477] monastery. Good King René[478], who reduced the taxes when the tramontane wind blew, had painted a skeleton in one of the halls of the Celestine monastery: it was that of a woman of great beauty whom he had loved[479].
*
I looked for the Palace of the Popes and was shown the ice-house: the Revolution has done away with celebrated places; the memories of the past are obliged to shoot up through it and to reblossom over dead bones[480]. Alas, the groans of the victims die soon after them! They scarcely reach some echo that causes them to survive a little while after the voice from which they issued is extinguished for ever. But, while the cry of sorrow was expiring on the banks of the Rhone, one heard in the distance the sound of Petrarch's lute: a solitary canzone, escaping from the tomb, continued to charm Vaucluse[481] with an immortal melancholy and the love sorrows of olden time.