Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3

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The Regent d'Orleans, nephew of Louis XIV., received Peter the Great at
St. Cloud in 1717. In 1752 his grandson, Louis Philippe d'Orleans, gave at
St. Cloud one of the most magnificent fetes ever seen in France.

In 1785 the Due d'Orleans sold St. Cloud for six million francs to Queen
Marie Antoinette, who made great alterations in the internal arrangements
of the building, where she resided during the early days of the
Revolution.

It was at St. Cloud that the coup d'etat occurred which made Napoleon
first-consul. This led him to choose the palace of St. Cloud, which had
been the cradle of his power, as his principal residence, and, under the
first empire, it was customary to speak of "le cabinet de Saint-Cloud," as
previously of "le cabinet de Versailles," and afterward of "le cabinet des
Tuileries." Here, in 1805, Napoleon and Josephine assisted at the baptism
of the future Napoleon III....

It was also in the palace of St. Cloud that Napoleon I. was married to
Marie Louise, April 1, 1810. In this palace of many changes the allied
sovereigns met after the fall of the First Empire. Blucher, after his
fashion, slept booted and spurred in the bed of Napoleon; and the
capitulation of Paris was signed here July 3, 1815.

Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both lived much at St. Cloud, and added to it
considerably; but here, where Henry IV. had been recognized as King of
France and Navarre, Charles X. was forced by the will of the people to
abdicate, July 30, 1830. Two years after, Louis Philippe established
himself with his family at St. Cloud, and his daughter Clementine was
married to Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg in its chapel, April 28, 1843.
Like his uncle, Napoleon III. was devoted to St. Cloud, where--"with a
light heart"--the declaration of war with Prussia was signed in the
library, July, 17, 1870, a ceremony followed by a banquet, during which
the "Marseillaise" was played. The doom of St. Cloud was then sealed. On
the 13th of the following October the besieged Parisians beheld the
volumes of flame rising behind the Bois de Boulogne, which told that St.
Cloud, recently occupied by the Prussians, and frequently bombarded in
consequence from Mont-Valerien, had been fired by French bombs.

The steamer for St. Cloud descends the Seine, passing under the Pont de
Solferino, Pont de la Concorde, Pont des Invalides, and Pont d'Alma. Then
the Champ de Mars is seen on the left, the Palais du Trocadero on the
right. After the Pont du d'Iena, Passy is passed on the right, and the Ile
des Cygnes on the left. Then comes the Pont de Grenelle, after which
Auteuil is passed on the right and Javel on the left. After leaving the
Pont-viaduc du Point-du-Jour, the Ile de Billancourt is seen on the left.
After the Pont de Billancourt, the steamer passes between the Iles de
Billancourt and Seguin to Bas Meudon.

III

OLD PROVENCE

The Papal Palace at Avignon

By Charles Dickens

[Footnote: From "Pictures From Italy."]

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon,
and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-piecrust,
battlemented wall, that never will be brown, tho it bake for centuries.

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant
oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very
narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house to
house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of
carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and
staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very
quaint and lovely. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one
caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards,
having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like
one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed
Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the street
rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions--the man who
had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning--might have
opened it quite naturally.

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a
delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk
delightful, tho the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses,
were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably.

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral, where Mass was
performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several old
women, a baby, and a very self-possest dog, who had marked out for himself
a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and
ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk he trotted,
during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out
of doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly
defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly,
through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar
furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be.

Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which one
portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack; while gloomy
suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old state
and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there to
see state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, tho we dropt
some money into a prisoners' box outside, while the prisoners, themselves,
looked through the iron bars, high, up, and watched us eagerly. We went to
see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit.

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proof
that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, tho it had had
between sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the Barrack
Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands,
and marshaled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the way,
that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais apostolique), and
had been, for I don't know how many years; and how she had shown these
dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators;
and how she had resided in the palace from an infant--had been born there,
if I recollect right--I needn't relate.

But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never
beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent
in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the
purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into
attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: now
whispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if she
were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her
forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror--looking back
and walking stealthily and making horrible grimaces--that might alone have
qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the
exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.

Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned
off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and
locked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by
fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a
ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have
done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to
this courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another minute--in the
dismal tower of oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an
iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from the
sky which now looks down into it.

A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the
Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture,
without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before
they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in
there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close,
hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, as
of old.

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted
chamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy Office. The
place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been
removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having
been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was,
and may be traced there yet.

High up in the wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accused
were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the very
cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We
had trodden in their very footsteps.

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin
clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle
of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do
so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged room, with a funnel-
shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day, I ask her
what it is. She folds her arms,, leers hideously, and stares. I ask again.
She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down
upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend,
"La Salle de la Question!"

The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the
victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in
silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out
again.... A cold air, with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of
Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall.
Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep,
dark lofty tower; very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of
the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung
those who were past all further torturing, down here. "But look! does
Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance, over his shoulder,
at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would without the aid of the
directing-key--where they are. "What are they?" "Blood!"

In October, 1791, when Revolution was at its height here, sixty persons;
men and women ("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"); were murdered, and
hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity
of quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens of
the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone of the strong building
in which the deed was done, remains upon another, there they will lie in
the memories of men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon
the wall is now.... Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again,
into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the
flooring. Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts
at the brave courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap
on the hat with the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us
all, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round as grave.

"Voila!" she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a
crash, in her goblin energy, tho it is no light weight. "Voila les
oubliettes! Voila les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black!
Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!"

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where
these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside--of
wives, friends, children, brothers--starved to death, and made the stones
ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the
accurst wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining in
through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph.

I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these degenerate
times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! The
light in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in,
on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon! It can
not look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to a
traveler who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down the darkness
of that Infernal Well.

Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was struck.
She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her arms
a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.

When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outer
gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building. Her
cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick
wall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little
counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its household
implements are scraps of dress against the wall; and a sober looking woman
(she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin) knitting at the door--
looked exactly like a picture by Ostade.

I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yet
with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which the light,
down in the vaults, had given, me the assurance. The immense thickness and
giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers,
the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning
aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.

The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, a
luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of the
Inquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting,
religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful
interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. I could think of
little, however, then, or long afterward, but the sun in the dungeons.

The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and
being forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have their
garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some reduction of its
state, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky
for the roof of its chambers of cruelty--that was its desolation and
defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have
felt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns,
could waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber and its
prisons.

The Building of the Great Palace

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

It will now be convenient briefly to trace the growth of that remarkable
edifice, at once a castle and a cloister, a palace and a prison, which
constitutes the chief attraction of Avignon to-day, and which, altho
defaced by time and by modern restorers, remains in its massive grandeur a
fitting memorial of the great line of pontiffs who have made that little
city famous in the annals of Christendom.

We have seen that Pope John XXII., having allotted a piece of land to his
nephew, Arnaud de Via, for the erection of a new episcopal palace, was
content to modify and enlarge the old one for pontifical uses, and that
Benedict XII., with characteristic straightforwardness, purchased the new
fabric from Arnaud's heirs and, having handed it over to the diocesan
authorities, proceeded to transform the old building into a stately and
spacious apostolic palace for the head of Christendom.

He was moved to this purchase after mature reflection, for it was a matter
of urgent importance that the pontiff of the church of Rome should possess
a palace of his own at Avignon as long as it might be necessary for him to
remain there. The relation between Curia and Episcopate being thus clearly
defined, Benedict appointed a compatriot, Pierre Poisson de Mirepoix,
master of the works, and, since about two-thirds of the existing palace
dates from Benedict's reign, Pierre Poisson may be regarded as its first
architect.

More, probably, is known of the construction of the papal palace of
Avignon than of any other relic of medieval architecture. Thanks to the
researches of Father Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, and other
scholars, the sums paid to the contractors, their names, the estimates of
quantities, the wages of the chief workmen, and the price of materials,
are before us, and we can trace day by day and month by month the progress
of the great pile. The whole of the craftsmen, with the exception of the
later master painters from Italy and some northern sculptors, were either
Avignonais, Gascons or Provencals.

The first work undertaken by Pierre was the enlargement of the papal
chapel of John XXII. This was doubled in length, and the lavish
decorations executed by John's master painter, Friar Pierre Dupuy, were
continued on the walls of the added portion; payments for white, green,
indigo, vermilion, carmine and other pigments, and for colored tiles,
testify to the brilliancy of its interior.

Meanwhile work was proceeding on the massy new tower, the Turris Magna,
now known as the Tour des Anges, the best preserved of all the old towers.
The foundations were laid on April 3, 1335, and it was roofed with lead on
March 18, 1337. The basement formed the papal wine-cellar; the ground
floor was the treasury, or strong room, where the specie, the jewels, the
precious vessels of gold and silver and other valuables were stored; many
payments are recorded for locks and bars and bolts for their safe-keeping
within the ten-feet-thick walls of the tower.

The next great work put in hand was the east wing, which was raised on a
space left by John's demolished, or partially demolished, structure. On
November 20, 1337, two masons (lapiscidarios), Pierre Folcaud and Jean
Chapelier, and a carpenter, Jacques Beyran, all of Avignon, contracted to
carry out the plans of a new architect, Bernard Canello, for the
completion of Benedict's private apartments, and on the same day Lambert
Fabre and Martin Guinaud, housewreckers, were paid eighty-three gold
florins on account, for the demolition of the old buildings. This wing,
since wholly remodeled by the legates and the modern corps of engineers,
comprised the papal Garde Robe, the Garde Meuble, the private kitchen and
offices and, on the floor above, the papal dining-room, study and private
oratory. The walls were, of course, embattlemented, and in 1337 the most
exposed portions of the new buildings were defended by a stout rampart....

The whole ground floor, 110 feet by 33, was occupied by a great reception
hall (Camera Paramenti), where distinguished visitors were accorded a
first welcome before being admitted to a private audience, or accorded a
solemn state reception in consistory, as the import of their embassy
demanded. The popes were also used to receive the cardinals there, and two
doorkeepers were appointed who must be faithful, virtuous and honest men
and sleep in the hall; their office being one of great trust, was highly
paid, and they were generally laymen. It was probably in this hall that
St. Catherine was received by Clement VI. The Avignon conclaves were held
there, for on December 31, 1352, four hundred and fifteen days' and
nights' labor were employed in breaking down the walls between the dining-
hall and the Camera Paramenti, clearing away the stones and making secret
chambers for the lord cardinals, in which chambers were twenty-eight
cells....

On September 5, 1339, John's old belfry was pulled down and Jean Mauser de
Carnot, who asserted he had excavated 11,300 basketfuls of rubbish, was
paid at the rate of twelve deniers the hundred for the work. Evidently
these were good times for the basket makers as well as builders. December
22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond Durand and Jacques
Gasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed new tower, with its
barbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was on the site and which
retained the appellation of the Tour de la Campane, or Bell Tower. The
embattlemented and machicolated summit, but not the chastelet, of this
mighty tower has recently been restored; its walls are nearly twelve feet
thick....

Benedict's last undertaking was the erection of the Tour de Trouillas,
next the Tour des Latrines, and on April 20, 1341, sixteen rubbish baskets
were bought for the "Saracens that excavated the foundations of the turris
nova." The Tour de Trouillas, tallest and stoutest of the keeps of the
mighty fortress, is 175 feet high as compared with the 150 feet of the
Tour de la Campane, and its walls fifteen feet thick as compared with
twelve feet. It should be noted, however, that the latter tower appears
the taller owing to the elevated ground whereon, it stands....

Having bought, by private agreement or by arbitration, all the houses
adjacent to the palace on the south side, Clement next proceeded to
demolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful wing
of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the great
new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August
9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock above
the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons had
raised their beautiful building.

On that day, by order of our lord the pope, one hundred florins were
handed over by the papal chamber to Master John of Loubieres to distribute
among the masters to celebrate the placing of the keystone in the vaulting
of the new chapel of the palace and the completion of the said chapel. On
All Saints' Day of that same year Clement recited (a month before his
death) the first solemn mass in his great new chapel and preached a most
eloquent sermon, praising God for the completion of his life's work. The
lower hall, most famous of judicial chambers in Christendom and final
Court of Appeal in all questions of international and ecclesiastical law,
was later in opening.

Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely gardens
on the east, with their clipt hedges, avenues of trees, flower-beds and
covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by channels of water.
John maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild and strange beasts;
stately peacocks swept proudly along the green swards, for the inventory
of 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some old and some young, whereof six
were white.

* * * * *

But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass of
architecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable walls and
towers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains briefly to be
touched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement left it, some
analogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in that it stood
outwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine of exquisite and
luxurious art.

The austere Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of the
consistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorial
decorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate; but
with the elevation of the luxurious and art-loving Clement VI., a new
spirit breathes over the fabric. The stern simplicity and noble strength
of his predecessor's work assume an internal vesture of richness and
beauty; the walls glow with azure and gold; a legion of Gallic sculptors
and Italian painters lavish their art on the embellishment of the
palace....

Such, in brief outline, was the progress of the mighty fabric and its
internal decoration which the great popes of Avignon raised to be their
dwelling-place, their fortress, and the ecclesiastical center of
Christendom. Tho shorn of all its pristine beauty and robbed of much of
its symmetry, it stands to-day in bulk and majesty, much as it stood at
the end of Clement VI.'s reign, when a contemporary writer describes it as
a quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers and
constructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to look
upon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the Audientia, the
Capella major, and the terraces: and these were so admirably planned and
contrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found in
the whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the great
chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a staging
of stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was unparalleled for range
and beauty.

The glowing splendor of frescoed walls was enhanced by gorgeous hangings
and tapestries and by the magnificent robes and jewels of popes and
cardinals. Crowds of goldsmiths--forty were employed at the papal court--
embroiderers and silk mercers, made Avignon famous thoughout Europe. In
1337, 318 florins were paid for eight Paris carpets; in 1343 Clement VI.
paid 213 florins for green silk hangings, and 254 florins for carpets
adorned with roses; in 1348, 400 gold and silver vessels turned the scales
at 862 marks, 5 ounces; in the inventory of 1369, despite the fact that
the most precious had been sent to Rome, the gold vessels were weighed out
at 1,434 marks, 1 ounce; the silver at 5,525 marks 7 ounces.

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