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A Book of The Riviera

Год написания книги
2017
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The churches of Hyères are not without interest. That of S. Paul, on the height, has immense substructures. It is a curious jumble of parts and styles. It dates back to the eleventh or twelfth century, but the vaulting is later, and later windows were added. The great square tower is Romanesque.

The other church, outside the walls, that of S. Louis, is in much better preservation. It was the chapel of the Knights of the Temple, and is of the twelfth century, very severe, without sculptured capitals to the pillars, and without clerestory. It is a somewhat gloomy church, deriving nearly all its light from the west window. The preceptory of the Templars is within the old town, and is now the Hôtel de Ville.

The Iles de Hyères are a detached portion of the crystalline rocks of the Montagnes des Maures. Their climatic condition is very different from that of Hyères, as they are exposed to the sweep of every wind. They are bleak and uninviting. The only inhabitants are fishermen, Customs-officers, and the lighthouse men.

On L’Ile du Levant was a reformatory for young criminals, started by M. de Pourtalès, but it came to a disastrous end.

According to a law of 1850, such reformatories might be founded and conducted by private individuals, and in 1860 the Count de Pourtalès, as an act of humanity, established an agricultural colony on this island for young criminals, and placed over it an amiable, well-intentioned man named Fauvau.

In Corsica was another, but that was a State establishment. It had become a nest of such disorder and misconduct that it was broken up in 1866, and some of the young criminals from this Corsican reformatory were drafted into that on the Ile du Levant, to the number of sixty-five. These young fellows began at once to give trouble; they complained of their food, of their work, and they demanded meat at every meal, tobacco, coffee, and daily six hours in which to amuse themselves. On Tuesday, October 2nd, they broke out in mutiny, smashed the windows and the lamps, destroyed some of the cells, and drove away the warders. The leader in the movement was one Coudurier, a boy of sixteen. By his command the whole body now rushed to the lock-up, where were confined some of those who had misconducted themselves, broke it open, and led them forth. Then they descended to the cellar, and with axes and crowbars burst open the door, tapped the barrels of wine, and drank as much as they liked.

Coudurier now ordered the breaking into of the store-house. This was a building standing by itself; it had a strong door, and windows firmly barred with iron. The young ruffians succeeded in beating in the upper panels, but those below resisted all their efforts. They climbed over the solid portion and carried forth bacon, sausages, sugar, brandy, and what they could lay their hands on, and when well laden returned over the door to make way for others. Meantime Coudurier had chosen two lieutenants, Ferrendon and Allard, and, in council with them and some others of the worst miscreants, had resolved on putting to death several of their comrades whom they regarded as milksops and spies. By Coudurier’s orders only those were allowed to enter the store-house whose names he called forth, and thus he sent fourteen of the lads he regarded as sneaks into the magazine. Then he emptied a bottle of petroleum over some paper by the door, and stationed Ferrendon and Allard to prevent the egress of the lads who had been sent in. Ferrendon by his orders set the petroleum on fire, and he provided Allard with a long knife with which to drive back the victims into the fire when endeavouring to escape, and to prevent any attempt at rescue. “Ferrendon,” said he to a comrade, Lecocq, “is game for any mischief; and Allard is half-drunk.” In a few minutes the sole entrance to the store-house was a sheet of flame. One boy, Garibaldi, who was within, at once dashed through the fire and began to scramble over the broken door.

Allard stabbed him in the shoulder and breast, and then flung him down into the sheet of flaming petroleum. The scene now became inexpressibly horrible. The boys, seeing the fire rapidly spreading, got to the windows, put their arms between the bars, and screamed for help. They pulled at the gratings with desperation, but were unable to dislodge it. Two boys who ran forward to attempt to extinguish the fire were driven back by the knife of Ferrendon. Some of the young criminals did feel qualms, and a desire to free their comrades, but were overawed by Coudurier. The lighthouse man, who had come to the spot, got a blanket, dipped it in water and ran to the door, but was seized by the boys, taken off his legs, and flung into a pit twenty feet deep, and broke his ankle in the fall, so that he was unable to stir. A boy who snatched at the blanket and tried to extend it to some of those in a window, was also flung into the pit; but he happily came off better, and ran away. The poor wretches within, black against a background of fire, shrieked and wept; their clothes, their hair, caught fire, and one by one they fell back into the flames behind. The frightful end of their comrades sobered the drunken, mutinous crew; and some strove to drown their fears for the consequences by drinking themselves into total unconsciousness.

Next day the mutineers scattered over the island, doing what mischief they pleased. Not till October 4th did help arrive, when the fire was extinguished, the island was occupied by soldiery, and the youths were taken to prison on the mainland, and the ringleaders brought to trial.

It may be wondered where was Fauvau, the Director, all this while. He and the chaplain had got into a boat and escaped to shore. What had become of the warders we are not told, but they seem also to have effected their escape.

On January 3rd, 1867, sixteen of the young criminals were tried at Draguignan. Ferrendon was a boy little over thirteen, a lad with a soft expressive face. Allard was aged thirteen, with a hangdog, evil look. One of the accused was a lad from Paris, refined in appearance and with large, beautiful eyes. One was aged twenty. Coudurier, Fouché, Laurent, and Bérond were found guilty by the jury, not of murder, but of homicide, with extenuating circumstances, and were sentenced to life-long hard labour. Allard was condemned to be sent to a reformatory for ten years. Ferrendon was discharged as innocent! Guenau was also declared innocent. “Where, then, am I to sleep to-night?” he asked; whereupon the audience made up a handsome sum for him.

This was not the end of the matter. In prison one of these culprits murdered another of his fellow boy-convicts because he thought the latter had given evidence against him. It is hard to say which came out worst in this affair, the Director, Chaplain, and warders, or the jury at Draguignan.

Although M. de Pourtalès was willing to renew the experiment, the establishment was not restored, and of the reformatory only the ruins remain.

CHAPTER VII

LES MONTAGNES DES MAURES

Exceptional character of the Maures – Warm quarters in the Southern nooks of the chain – A future for them – The cork tree – The carob – The mulberry – The Saracens take possession of the chain – King Hugh makes terms with them: his history – Marozia – S. Majolus – William of Provence – Le Grand Fraxinet – Grimaud – S. Tropez – The Bravade

A HUNCH of granite heaved up, and carrying on its back the beds of schist and gneiss that had overlain it, stands up between the Gapeau and the Argens. Its nearest geological relations, not connexions, are the Cevennes and Corsica, all pertaining to the same period of upheaval. Only to the east does the granite assert itself above the overlying formations. This mass of mountain is of no great elevation, never rising above 1,200 feet, and extending over a superficies of 200,000 acres.

“It forms by itself,” says Elisée Reclus, “an orographic system sharply limited. Its mass of granite, gneiss, and schist is separated from the surrounding limestone mountains by profound and wide valleys, those of the Aille, the Argens, and the Gapeau. In fact, it constitutes an ensemble as distinct from the rest of Provence as if it were an island separated from the continent.”

The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast.

I know a farm kitchen where a pair of curved settees are drawn about the fire, and the gap between the settees is closed in the evening by a green baize curtain. The family sits on a winter night in this cosy enclosure, the men with their pipes and jugs of cider, the women knitting and sewing; all chattering, singing, laughing.

Now the southern face of the Maures is precisely such a snuggery formed by Nature. The mountains curve about to focus the sun’s rays; and the cork woods, evergreen, kill all glare. Here the date trees ripen their fruit; here the icy blasts do not shrivel up the eucalyptus, and smite down the oranges.

The pity is, there are as yet no well-established winter resorts at Lavandou, Cavalière, and, above all, Cavalaire – places more adapted to delicate lungs than Hyères, exposed to the currents of wind over the Crau; than that blow-hole S. Raphael, planted between the cheeks of the Maures and l’Estérel; than Cannes, where the winds come down from the snows over the plains of the Siagne; than Nice, with the Paillon on one side and the Var on the other.

But for the English visitor in these suntraps three things are lacking – a lawn-tennis ground, a lending library, and an English chapel. Inevitably the Bay of Cavalaire will, in the future, become a great refuge for invalids. But that this may become so, above all, what is needed is a bunch of thorns applied to the tail of the engine that runs the train along the line from Hyères to S. Raphael by the coast. From Hyères to that place is just fifty miles, and the quick trains do it in four, the slow in five hours.

The mountains are mantled in cork wood, save the bald heads of some, and the making of corks is the main industry of the scattered villages.

The cork tree (Quercus suber) retains its leaves for two years. It has two envelopes of bark, which are quite distinct. The inner cannot be removed without destroying the life of the tree.

Virgin cork is not of much value; it is employed only for nets, and has no elasticity.

Only after the third harvest is the cork in perfect condition. The tree is then about forty years old. It is first skinned (démasclée) when the tree is aged twenty or five-and-twenty. The second peeling takes place when it is aged thirty or five-and-thirty. The third and best is collected when the tree is between forty and forty-five years old. The cork is taken off the trunk from above the ground to a height of about six feet, leaving the under surface of a coffee colour.

The cork bark is plunged into a cauldron of boiling water, and is left in it for half an hour. Then it is cut into strips, next into squares. It is again boiled for a quarter of an hour, and then allowed slowly to dry, and is not touched again for six months, after which it is cut into shape. The best corks are made out of strips that have been kept for three years. To whiten the corks they are subjected to sulphur fumes.

The great enemy to the cork tree is the Coroebus bifascatus, an insect that bores a gallery, not in the bark, but in the wood of the tree. It attacks the branches, and its presence can be detected by the sickly look of the leaves. When this indication shows that it is burrowing, the branches affected are cut off above the point to which it has bored, and are burnt.

At one time it was supposed that the cork tree required no culture. But of late years great pains have been taken with it, and it readily responds to them. A self-sown tree growing up in the midst of heather and cistus is not likely to attain to a great size. It is cut down to the root; then, when it sends up fresh shoots, one is kept, the rest removed. This operation has to be repeated, and the ground about the root to be well dressed. After six years the tree will take care of itself.

The great danger, above all, to which the cork woods are exposed, is fire; whole tracts have been devastated in this way, and the proprietors ruined. Consequently, precautions are insisted on. Smokers are specially warned not to throw about their unextinguished matches.

The carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) is another that is met with, and which attracts the attention of the visitor from the north. The pods, called locust beans, are supposed to have been those on which S. John the Baptist fed when in the wilderness. These beans grow in shape like a horn, which has given its name to the tree. They contain a sweet nutritious pulp, enclosing yellow seeds. The fruit is used extensively for feeding animals, and is eaten by children, who, indeed, will eat anything. When the phylloxera was ravaging the vineyards of France, a company started a distillery at Cette to manufacture cognac out of the fruit of the carob. But it failed, as the brandy so made retained a peculiar and disagreeable flavour that could not be got out of it.

The carob is an evergreen, vigorous and beautiful. It grows in most stony, arid spots, where is hardly a particle of soil. Such a tree cannot live only on what it derives from its roots; it must live in a great measure by its leaves, as, indeed, to a large extent, do all evergreens. The scanty soil will in many places not feed trees that drop their leaves in autumn, and supply them afresh every spring. Such renewal exacts from the poor soil more than it can furnish. Consequently, Nature spreads evergreens over the rocky surfaces that contain but slight nutritive elements. Thus it is that in Provence the vegetation is nearly all of an evergreen character.

Beside the manufacture of corks, the inhabitants of the Maures breed silkworms, and so grow mulberry trees for their sustenance.

King Réné is credited with having introduced the mulberry into Provence from Sicily; but it is more probable that it is indigenous. What Réné did was to suggest its utilisation for the feeding of the silkworm. This branch of production was greatly encouraged by Henry IV., but wars and intestine troubles, the ravaging of the country by rival factions, by the Savoyards and by the French, caused the cultivation of the silkworm to decline. Of late years, however, it has been on the increase, and the number of mulberry trees planted has accordingly also, greatly increased. The Chain des Maures takes its name from the Saracens, who occupied it, and made it their stronghold, whence they descended to burn and destroy.

By the infusion of new elements, forms of government, new religious ideas, conceptions of individual and political rights, the old world of Gaul was in process of transformation; it was gradually organising itself on a broad basis, when in the midst of this society in reconstruction appeared a new element, quite unknown, and on whose advent no reckoning had been made. It came from the coasts of Africa, and was Mohammedan. Some called these people Hagarenes, as descendants of Hagar, but they themselves regarded their descent as from Sarah, and so called themselves Saracens.

Their first appearance on the Provençal coast was in 730, when they sacked Nice and other towns, and the inhabitants fled to the mountains to save their lives.

They harassed the littoral incessantly, not in large forces at a time, attempting a conquest, but arriving in a few vessels, unexpectedly, to pillage, murder, and carry away captives. As soon as ever the forces of the Counts arrived, they escaped to their ships and fled, to recommence their devastations at another point.

In 846 the Saracens carried ruin and desolation over the whole plain of Aix, and made themselves masters of all vantage points along the coast. The population sunk in despair, no longer offered effective resistance, and the nobles, quarrelling among themselves, invoked the aid of the infidels against their neighbours of whom they were jealous. About this time it happened that a Moorish pirate was wrecked in the bay of S. Tropez. He soon saw the strategic value of the chain of granite and schist mountains, and returning to Africa collected a large band, crossed the sea, and took possession of the whole mountainous block. At this time, moreover, Mussulman Spain was a prey to a bloody schism. The dynasty of the Abassides was succeeded by that of the Ommiades, and the vicissitudes of parties continually augmented the number of those who were conquered and proscribed. These, flying from Spain, sought refuge in this corner of Provence, which by such means was converted into a little Mussulman realm. On every height was built a rebath, a fort that the Christians called a fraxinet, whence a sharp watch was kept over the sea, and should a merchant vessel be descried, at once a flotilla of pirate boats started out of the harbour of S. Tropez, and fell on the unfortunate merchantmen.

Thus established here, masters also of the Balearic Isles, of Sardinia and Sicily, as well as of the African coast, they completely paralysed the trade of the Mediterranean, and exposed the inhabitants of the seaboard, that was Christian, to daily peril of being carried off to be sold in the slave markets of Tunis and Morocco.

In Spain, the Mussulman conquerors had developed a high state of civilization. They had become architects of great skill. They cultivated science and literature.

In Provence they were not constructive. They did nothing for civilization, everything to waste, set back, and to destroy. They have left behind them in the country not a trace, save a few names, of their strongholds. The condition of affairs had became intolerable. The Moors of the Grand Fraxinet, their principal fortress in the Montagnes des Maures, started on a pillaging expedition, crossed Lower Provence, and entered the Alps. As they turned north they met with great resistance. They ascended the river Roja, they pushed over the Col de Tende, and descended into the plains of Lombardy. They took the monastery of S. Dalmas de Pedene, and although most of the monks had fled, they caught and killed forty of them, and either massacred or took prisoners all the peasants about.

Another pillaging excursion crossed the great S. Bernard to attack the monastery of S. Maurice, where the Archbishop of Embrun, and some of the Provençal prelates had stored the treasures of their churches. A third party from the Fraxinet, aided by a fleet from Africa, had taken Genoa, and put all the inhabitants to the edge of the sword.

Hugh, Count of Provence and King of Italy, was appealed to for aid. Having no naval force to oppose to that of the Moors, he solicited help from the Emperor of the East, and a fleet from Constantinople entered the Gulf of S. Tropez, and burnt that of the Saracens. Hugh, in the meantime, invaded the mountains and reached the Fraxinet.

But whilst thus engaged, he heard that Berengarius, Marquess of Ivrea, had taken advantage of his absence to fall on his possessions in Italy. Hugh thereupon dismissed the Greek fleet, and made an alliance with the Saracens, to whom he committed the passages of the Alps.

About this same Hugh of Provence, one of the biggest scoundrels who ever breathed, it will be as well to say something.

Hugh was the son of Theobald, Count of Provence, and of Bertha, daughter of Lothair, King of Burgundy. The House of Provence had acquired great possessions during the reign of Louis III., King of Arles and Emperor (d. 915), the uncle of Hugh. But Hugh was not content. He raised pretensions to the kingdom of Italy, then held by Rudolf, King of Transjuran Burgundy. Hugh was seconded by his half-brothers Guido and Lambert, Dukes of Tuscany and Spoleto, and by his sister, Ermengarde, widow of the Marquess of Ivrea. Pope John X., Lambert, Archbishop of Milan, and nearly all the Lombard nobles, supported his claim, and he disembarked at Pisa in 926, and was crowned at Pavia. The crafty Hugh, fully estimating the influence of the clergy in the politics of Italy, affected the most profound zeal for religion, and flattered the clergy. John X., in Rome, was in a difficult position. Rome at the time was ruled by the infamous Marozia. John had been the favourite of Marozia’s equally infamous mother Theodora. He had, in fact, been her paramour, and it was she who had advanced him from one bishopric to another, and had finally placed the tiara on his head. On the death of his mistress, John found himself engaged in a fierce contest for the mastery of Rome with Marozia and her lover, or husband, the Marquess Alberic, by whom she had a son of the same name, and another, by Pope Sergius it was rumoured, whom she afterwards elevated to the Papacy.

John managed to drive the Marquess out of Rome, and he was assassinated in 925; whereupon Marozia married Guido, Duke of Tuscany, half-brother of Hugh of Provence. The Pope hoped, notwithstanding this connexion, by offering the prize of the Imperial crown, to secure Hugh’s protection against his domestic tyrants. But he was disappointed. Marozia seized on the Pope, the former lover of her mother. His brother Peter was killed before his face, and John was thrown into prison, where, some months after, he died, either of anguish or, as was rumoured, smothered with a pillow.

Marozia did not venture at once to place her son on the Papal throne. A Leo VI. was Pope for some months, and a Stephen VII. for two years and one month. The son was still a mere boy, too young for the shameless woman to advance him to the Chair of S. Peter. But on the death of Stephen, Marozia again ruled alone in Rome; Guido, her husband, was dead, and she made her son Pope under the title of John XI.

But Marozia was not satisfied with having been the wife, first of a Marquess, then of a Duke; the mistress of Pope Sergius, the mother of Pope John XI. She sent to offer her hand to Hugh of Provence, the new King of Italy. Hugh was not scrupulous in his amours, but there was an impediment in the way. She had been the wife of his half-brother. But the youthful Pope, the son of the wretched woman, was ready with a dispensation, and the marriage was celebrated in Rome.
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