Читать книгу Vanished Halls and Cathedrals of France - George Wharton Edwards - Страница 12

The old town was old, very old. There were of course some modern looking white houses of stucco in which we were told some rich people live, and there were large blank walled factories with tall chimneys, from which heavy black smoke poured the livelong day. There were plate glass windows here and there, too, in some of the shops, with articles de Paris exposed for sale, and there were occasionally smooth pavements to be found, but mainly there were quaint old corners, high old yellow fronted, narrow windowed houses, and old, old men and older women passing to and fro in the narrow by streets.

In one corner of the market place sat an ancient dame in a wonderful lace cap, who presided over a huge pile of pale green earthenware pots of various sizes and fine shapes, who all unconsciously made for me a picture in sunlight and shadow; brown wrinkled hands busy with knitting; brown wrinkled face and bright shrewd greeny blue eyes, twinkling below the flaps of her lace cap; all against a worn, old, rusty-hinged green door! I could not resist the opportunity. So in a convenient doorway I paused to make a note of it without attracting much attention from the passers-by.

Entering the wide "place" (there were two of these) one was confronted by an astonishing vista of quaintly gabled Flemish houses on either hand, all built mainly after one model but presenting some variations of minor detail. These led to the Hotel de Ville. The houses were furnished with arcades below supported by monolithic sandstone columns. The Hotel de Ville, built in the sixteenth century (not a vestige of which remains at this writing, April, 1917), was one of the most ornate in France. Its fine Gothic façade rose upon seven quaintly different arcades, in the elaborate Renaissance style, pierced by ornate windows with Gothic tracery in the best of taste and workmanship. Overhead rose the graceful Belfry, terminating in a gilded ducal crown at the height of some two hundred and fifty feet. The weekly market fair was in full progress, and the old Grand' Place was swarming with carts, animals, booths, and chattering peasants. Before the Revolution, the Chapelle des Ardents and the spire of La Sainte-Chapelle on the Petit' Place commemorated the deliverance of Arras in the twelfth century from the plague called the "mal des ardents," when the Virgin is believed to have given a candle to two fiddlers, declaring that "water into which a drop of its holy wax had fallen would save all who drank it." *

Behind the dominating tower of the Hotel de Ville was the modern Cathedral, formerly the abbey church of St. Vaast, with an unfinished tower of 1735.

We found in the Chapel of the Virgin the tomb of Cardinal de la Tour d' Auvergne-Lauraguais, and the twelfth century tombs of an abbot, of Philippe de Torcy, a governor of Arras, and his wife. The treasury is said to have contained the blood-stained "rochet" worn by Thomas à Becket when he was murdered, but the sacristan refused to show it unless he was first paid a fee of two francs, which we thought exorbitant.

* Hare's "Northeastern France."

Arras was the capital of the Gallic tribe "Atrebates," and even in the dim fourth century was famous for the manufacture of woolen cloth, dyed with the madder which grows luxuriously in the neighborhood. The wearing of tapestry hangings gave Arras a high reputation, and examples are preserved in the museums of France and England, where the name of the town is used to identify them. The art has long since ceased to exist, needless to say.

Briefly, the town followed the fortunes of the Pays d' Artois, of which it was the capital, passing by marriage from the house of France to Burgundy, Flanders, Burgundy again, Germany and Spain. After the battle of Agincourt, the English and French signed the treaty of peace at Arras. The town was finally incorporated with France in 1640.

According to legend one of the ancient gates, of which no trace now remains, bore the proud distich

"Quand les souris prendront les chats,

Le roi sera seigneur d'Arras."

which is said to have so enraged Louis of France that he expelled the whole population, abolishing even the name of Arras, which he changed to that of Franchise.

Here was born the great Robespierre, but we were unable to find the house, or even the street in which it was situated, nor could any of the ecclesiastics to whom we applied for information enlighten us in regard to the matter.

The Cathedral, a romanesque structure, at an angle of the abbey buildings, and approached by high stone steps broken by a platform, was built in 1755. Perhaps if we had not seen it after having feasted our eyes upon the exquisite details of the Hotel de Ville, it might have seemed more impressive and interesting. It contained some good pictures, including a "Descent from the Cross," and "The Entombment," attributed to Rubens and Van Dyck respectively.

The high altar enshrined a notable bas-relief in gilt bronze. The Abbatial buildings were occupied by the 'Evéche, Seminary, Library, and the Musée, the latter containing a lot of modern paintings, badly hung, and seemingly indifferent in quality.

In the cloisters, however, were rooms containing an archaeological collection of sculptures and architectural fragments, and a small collection of Flemish pictures by "Velvet" Breughel, Heemskerk, N. Maes and others, and upstairs, a fine model of an antique ship, "offered" by the States of Artois to the American Colonies in the War of Independence. One wonders why it was never sent.

At the end of a quiet street which crossed the busy and crowded Rue St. Aubert, we came upon the remains of a remarkable old town gate, and the remains, too, of the ancient fortified walls, and farther on, the dismantled citadel constructed by the great Vauban in 1670, and called "La Belle Inutile." Here in this region, called the "cockpit of Europe," for ages incessant wars have been waged, covering the land with such a network of evidences of bitterly fought rivalries as no other portion of the earth can show, and when no foreign foe had to be baffled or beaten off, then the internecine wars of clan against clan have flooded the fair land with gore and ruin.

But all was peaceful here about this old town this bright morning in July, 1910. There was no evidence of the red waves of the wars which had rolled over and eddied about this very spot, save the old dismantled Vauban tower and the remains of the ancient wall, in which we were only mildly interested. It was the present day's wanderings which interested us more; the lives of the peasants, their customs and their daily occupations. Time seemed to stand still here without any consciousness of backwardness. Nothing hurried at Arras, and change for the sake of change had no attraction for it. The ways of the fathers were good enough for the children.

There was a newspaper here, of course, but yet the town crier held his own,—a strange looking old man in a long crinkly blue blouse, balloon like trousers of velveteen corduroy, wooden shoes and a broad brimmed felt hat. A drum hung suspended from his shoulder by a leather strap. He was followed by a small procession of boys and girls. He stopped and beat a vigorous tattoo on the drum; windows above and doors below were filled with heads as if by magic. He produced a folded paper from his pocket, glanced about him proudly conscious of the importance of the occasion, and read in a loud voice some local news of interest, and then announced the loss of something or other, with notice to hand whatever it was to the commissaire de Police, and then marched off down the street to repeat the performance at the next corner. The heads vanished from the windows like the cuckoos of German clocks, and the street was quiet again. Who could have believed that such a custom could have survived in the days of telegraph and telephone, and in a city of, say, thirty thousand inhabitants?

The old streets and highways about the town were indescribably attractive, and beyond in the country, the shaded ways beneath large trees offered charming vistas, and shelter from the sun. The people seemed to have an intuitive feeling for harmony, and little or nothing in or about the cottages, save an occasional odoriferous pig sty, offended one.

Colors melted into half tones in the most seductive fashion, and there was, too, an insistent harmony in the costumes of the peasants, the stain of time on the buildings or the grayish greens of the landscape.

But of all this the peasant was most certainly unconscious. The glories of nature and her marvelous harmonies were no more to him than to the beast of the field. He was hard of heart, brutal of tongue and mean of habit. Balzac has well described him in his "Sons of the Soil." Money was his god, and greed his pursuit. Yet all about him nature bloomed and fructified, while he toiled and schemed, his eyes ever bent earthwards. The peasant had no sentiment. It was best therefore to view him superficially, and as part of the picturesqueness of the country, like the roofs and gables of the old town, say, without seeking out secrets of the "menage" behind the walls.

We were interested in the various occupations of these semi-Flemish peasants, and the cries of the vendors in the streets in the early morning. Most of these cries were unintelligible to us because of the mixed patois, but it amused us to identify the cry of the vendor of eels, which was most lugubrious—a veritable wail of distress, seemingly. And when we saw her in the street below our windows, laden with two heavy baskets containing her commodity, her fat rosy face lifted to the sky, her appearance so belied the agonizing wail that we laughed aloud—and then—she heard us! What vituperation did she not address to us? Such a vocabulary, too! although we did not understand more than a few words she made it very plain that she regarded us as most contemptible beings.

"Miserable espece de Mathieux" she called up to us again and again. Whatever that meant, whatever depths of infamy it denoted, we did not know, nor did we ever find out. We were much more careful thereafter, and kept away from the window, for setting down her baskets she planted herself on the curb opposite and there presiding over the curious group of market people whom she had collected about her, she raged and stormed with uplifted fat red arms gesticulating at our windows, until the crowd, wearying of her eloquence, gradually melted away. We never saw her again.

There was also the seller of snails, whose cry was a series of ludicrous barks and cackles. I don't know how else to describe the extraordinary sounds he made. They quite fascinated us, for he varied them from time to time, taking seemingly much enjoyment in the ingenuity of his performance. His baskets, which hung by brass chains from a green painted yoke on his shoulders, contained a collection of very large snails, all, as he said, freshly boiled, and each shell being closed by a seal of fresh yellow butter, sprinkled, I think, with parsley (I never tasted them), and prettily reposing upon a bed of crisp pale green lettuce leaves. These seem to be highly esteemed by the people.

Our chief search in Arras, after valuing the ancient halls and the limited treasures of the museum, was for some examples of the wonderful tapestries known far and near by the name of "Arras." In vain we sought a specimen; there was none in the museum, nor in the town hall either. Those whom we thought might be able to assist us in our search professed ignorance of any such article, and the priest whom we met in the cathedral, directed us to the local furniture shop for what he called "belle tapis" So we gave it up, most reluctantly, however.

It is strange that not one example could be found in the town of this most renowned tapestry, for this ancient town enjoyed a reputation second to none in the low countries for art work of the loom. Cloth and all manner of woolen stuffs were the principal articles of Flemish production, but it was chiefly from England that Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw material of her industry, and England was her great market as early as the middle of the twelfth century. There was a great guild established in London called the Flemish "Hanse," to which the merchants sent their manufacture. It was governed by a burgher of Bruges who was styled "Count of the Hanse."

"The merchants of Arras became so prosperous and powerful, that (says a chronicler), Marguerite II, called The Black, countess of Flanders and Hainault, 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich, not only in lands but furniture, jewels, and money; and, as is not customary with women, she was right liberal and right sumptuous, not alone in her largesses, but in her entertainments and whole manner of living; insomuch that she kept up the state of a queen rather than a countess." (Kervyn de Lettenhove, Histoire d' Flandre, t, ii. p. 300.)

To Arras, in common with the neighboring towns, came for exchange the produce of the North and the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages to Novogorod, and those brought over by caravans from Samarcand and Bagdad,—the pitch of Norway and oils of Andalusia, the furs of Russia and dates from the Atlas, the metals from Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco and the spices from Egypt: "Whereby" says the ancient manuscript, "no land is to be compared in merchandise to this land."

And so, even if the guide books do dismiss Arras at the end of a few curt details with the words "The Town is now given over to various manufactures, and its few attractions may be exhausted between trains," Arras certainly did offer to the curious tourist many quaint vistas, a Town Hall of great architectural individuality, and in her two picturesque squares, the "Grand' Place" and the "Petit' Place," a picture of antiquity not surpassed by any other town in Northern France.