Читать книгу The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age - Paine Albert Bigelow - Страница 10

We were not very thorough sight-seers. We did not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. We seldom even had a program. We just wandered out in some general direction, and made a discovery or two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed judgment on its artistic and historical importance, just as if we knew something of those things; then when we got to a quiet place we took out the book and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, with the book's assistance, reversed our judgments and went back and got an altogether new set of impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. It was a loose system, to be recommended only for its variety. At the church of St. Agricole, for instance, which we happened upon when we started out one morning, we had a most interesting half hour discussing the age and beauty of its crumbling exterior and wandering about in its dimness, speculating concerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient tombs. When, later, we sat on the steps outside and looked it up and found it had been established away back in 680, and twice since restored; that the fifteenth-century holy-water basin was an especially fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculpture and frescoes were regarded as "remarkable examples," we were deeply impressed and went back to verify these things. Then we could see that it was all just as the book said.

But the procedure was somewhat different at the Palace of the Popes. We knew where we were going then, for we saw its towers looming against the sky, and no one could mistake that pile in Avignon. Furthermore, we paid a small fee at its massive arched entrance, and there was a guardian, or guide, to show us through. It is true he spoke only French – Provençal French – but two gracious Italian ladies happened to be going through at the same time and, like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety of tongues, including American. The touch of travel makes the whole world kin, and they threw out a line when they saw us floundering, and towed us through. It was a gentle courtesy which we accepted with thankful hearts.

We were in the central court first, the dull, sinister walls towering on every side. The guide said that executions had taken place there, and once, in later times – the period of the Revolution – a massacre in which seventy perished. He also mentioned a bishop of the earlier period who, having fallen into disfavor, was skinned alive and burned just outside the palace entrance. Think of doing that to a bishop!

Our conductor showed us something which we were among the first to see. Excavation was going on, and near the entrance some workmen were uncovering a large square basin – a swimming pool, he said – probably of Roman times. Whatever had stood there had doubtless fallen into obliterated ruin by the time the papal palace was begun.

A survey of the court interior showed that a vast scheme of restoration was going on. The old fortress had suffered from siege more than once, and time had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the French have in their monuments, and with a munificence which would seem to be limitless, they were reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and would spend at least two million dollars, we were told, to make the labor complete. Battered corners of towers had been carefully rebuilt, tumbled parapets replaced. We stood facing an exquisite mullioned window whose carved stone outlines were entirely new, yet delicately and finely cut, certainly at a cost of many thousand francs. The French do not seem to consider expense in a work of that sort. Concrete imitations will not do. Whatever is replaced must be as it was in the beginning.

Inside we found ourselves in the stately audience room, measuring some fifty by one hundred and eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by massive Gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. Each missing piece or portion has been replaced. It was scarcely more perfect when the first papal audience was held there and when Queen Jeanne of Naples came to plead for absolution, nearly six centuries ago. It was of overpowering size and interest, and in one of the upper corners was a picture I shall not soon forget. It was not a painting or tapestry, but it might have been either of these things and less beautiful. It was a living human being, a stone carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in his faded blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. But he had the face and beard and, somehow, the figure of a saint. He turned to regard us with a mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and dress completing the harmony with the gray wall behind him, the embodied spirit of restoration.

We ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in size and appearance to the room below. We passed to other gigantic apartments, some of them rudely and elaborately decorated by the military that in later years made this a garrison. We were taken to the vast refectory, where once there was a great central table, the proportions of which were plainly marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the feet of feasting churchmen. Then we went to the kitchen, still more impressive in its suggestion of the stouter needs of piety. Its chimney is simply a gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the four walls, goes towering and tapering toward the stars. I judge the cooks built their fires in the center of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows for air and draught. Those old popes and legates were no weaklings, to have a kitchen like that. Their appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a robust and militant sort.

I dare say it would require a week to go through all this palace, so the visitor is shown only samples of it. We ascended to one of the towers and looked down, far down, on the roofs of Avignon – an expanse of brown tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise not greatly different from what the popes saw when this tower and these housetops were new. Beyond are the blue hills which have not changed. Somewhere out there Petrarch's Laura was buried, but the grave has vanished utterly, the church is a mere remnant.

As we stood in the window a cold breath of wind suddenly blew in – almost piercing for the season. "The mistral," our conductor said, and, though he did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile that he felt in it the presence of the poet of the south.

Then he told us that Mistral had appointed him as one of those who were commissioned to preserve in its purity the Provençal tongue. That he was very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that wind blow on him as a sort of benediction. It is said, however, that the mistral wind is not always agreeable in Avignon. It blows away disease, but it is likely to overdo its work. "Windy Avignon, liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at least as old as this palace.

We got a generous example of it when we at last descended to the street. There it swirled and raced and grabbed at us until we had to button everything tightly and hold fast to our hats. We took refuge in the old cathedral of Notre Dame des Dômes, where John XXII, who brought this glory to Avignon, lies in his Gothic tomb. All the popes of Avignon were crowned here; it was the foremost church of Christendom for the better part of a century. We could see but little of the interior, for, with the now clouded sky, the place was too dark. In the small chapel where the tomb stands it was dim and still. It is the holy place of Avignon.

A park adjoins the church and we went into it, but the mistral wind was tearing through the trees and we crossed and descended by a long flight to the narrow streets. Everywhere about us the lower foundations of the papal palace joined the living rock, its towers seeming to climb upward to the sky. It was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible, eternal, itself a rock of ages.

We are always saying how small the world is, and we had it suddenly brought home to us as we stood there under the shadow of those overtopping heights. We had turned to thank our newly made friends and to say good-by. One of them said, "You are from America; perhaps you might happen to know a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we did know very well indeed – one, in fact, whose house we had visited only a few months before. How strange it seemed to hear that name from two women of Florence there in the ancient city, under those everlasting walls.