第76章

Fortunately,it did not rain every day (though Ibelieve it was raining everywhere else in the department);otherwise I should not have been able to go to Villeneuve and to Vaucluse.The afternoon,indeed,was lovely when I walked over the interminable bridge that spans the two arms of the Rhone,divided here by a considerable island,and directed my course,like a solitary horseman on foot,to the lonely tower which forms one of the outworks of VilleneuvelesAvignon.The picturesque,halfdeserted little town lies a couple of miles further up the river.The immense round towers of its old citadel and the long stretches of ruined wall covering the slope on which it lies,are the most striking features of the nearer view,as you look from Avignon across the Rhone.Ispent a couple of hours in visiting these objects,and there was a kind of pictorial sweetness in the episode;but I have not many details to relate.The isolated tower I just mentioned has much in common with the detached donjon of Montmajour,which I had looked at in going to Les Baux,and to which I paid my respects in speaking of that excursion.Also the work of Philippe le Bel (built in 1307),it is amazingly big and stubborn,and formed the opposite limit of the broken bridge,whose first arches (on the side of Avignon)alone remain to give a measure of the occasional volume of the Rhone.Half an hour's walk brought me to Villeneuve,which lies away from the river,looking like a big village,half depopulated,and occupied for the most part by dogs and cats,old women and small children;these last,in general,remarkably pretty,in the manner of the children of Provence.You pass through the place,which seems in a singular degree vague and unconscious,and come to the rounded hill on which the ruined abbey lifts its yellow walls,the Benedictine abbey of SaintAndre,at once a church,a monastery,and a fortress.

A large part of the crumbling enceinte disposes itself over the hill;but for the rest,all that has preserved any traceable cohesion is a considerable portion,of the citadel.The defence of the place appears to have been intrusted largely to the huge round towers that flank the old gate;one of which,the more complete,the ancient warden (having first inducted me into his own dusky little apartment,and presented me with a great bunch of lavender)enabled me to examine in detail.I would almost have dispensed with the privilege,for I think I have already mentioned that an acquaintance with many feudal interiors has wrought a sad confusion in my mind.The image of the outside always remains distinct;I keep it apart from other images of the same sort;it makes a picture sufficiently ineffaceable.But the guardrooms,winding staircases,loopholes,prisons,repeat themselves and intermingle;they have a wearisome family likeness.There are always black passages and corners,and walls twenty feet thick;and there is always some high place to climb up to for the sake of a "magnificent"view.

The views,too,are apt to get muddled.These dense gatetowers of Philippe le Bel struck me,however,as peculiarly wicked and grim.Their capacity is of the largest,and they contain over so many devilish little dungeons,lighted by the narrowest slit in the prodigious wall,where it comes over one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror that wretched human beings ever lay there rotting in the dark.The dungeons of Villeneuve made a particular impression on me,greater than any,except those of Loches,which must surely be the most grewsome in Europe.