In Troubadour Land by S. Baring Gould

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Now what is the origin of this extraordinary custom--a custom that is
childish, and yet is so curious that one would hardly wish to see it
abolished?

Several stories are told to explain it, none very satisfactory. According
to one, a Florentine knight was in the crusading host of Godfrey de
Bouillon, and was the first to climb the walls of Jerusalem, and plant
thereon the banner of the Cross. He at once sent tidings of the recovery of
the Holy Sepulchre back to his native town by a carrier pigeon, and thus
the Florentines received the glad tidings long before it reached any other
city in Europe. In token of their gladness at the news, they instituted the
ceremony of the white pigeon and the _carro_ on Easter Eve.

[Illustration: A Florentine torch holder.]

Another story is to the effect that this Florentine entered the city of
Jerusalem before the first crusade, broke off a large fragment of the Holy
Sepulchre, and carried it to Florence. He was pursued by the Saracens, but
escaped by shoeing his horse with reversed irons. Another version is that
he resolved to bring back to Florence the sacred flame that burnt in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Accordingly he lighted thereat a torch, and
rode back to Italy with the torch flaming. But to protect it from the wind,
he rode with his face to the tail of his steed, screening the torch with
his body. As he thus rode, folk who saw him shouted "Pazzi! Pazzi!"--Fool!
Fool! and this name was assumed by his family ever after. The Pazzis
of Florence every year paid all the expenses of the _carro_ till quite
recently, when the Municipality assumed the charge and now defray it from
the city chest. Clearly the origin of the custom is forgotten; nevertheless
it is not difficult to explain the meaning of the ceremony.

In the Eastern Church, and still, in many churches in the West, the lights
are extinguished on Good Friday, and formerly this was the case with all
fires, those of the domestic hearth as well as the lamps in church. On
Easter Day, fresh fire was struck with flint and steel by the bishop, and
all candles, lamps and hearths were rekindled from this new light. At the
present day one of the most solemn scenes in the Eastern Church is this
kindling of the Easter fire, and its communication from one to another in a
vast congregation assembled to receive it and carry it off to their homes.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the new fire kindled and
blessed by the patriarch, is cast down from the height of the dome.

In Florence, anciently, it was much the same. The archbishop struck the
Easter fire, and it was then distributed among the people; but there were
inconveniences, unseemly scuffles, accidents even, and the dove was devised
as a means of conveying the Easter fire outside the Duomo, and kindling
a great bonfire, whereat the people might light their torches without
desecrating the sacred building by scrambling and fighting therein for
the hallowed flame. At this bonfire all could obtain the fire without
inconvenience. By degrees the bonfire lost its significance, so did
the dove, and fables were invented to explain the custom. The bonfire,
moreover, degenerated into an exhibition of fireworks at mid-day.

One morning my Jew friend insisted on my reading a letter he had just
received from his daughter, aged fourteen. He was proud of the daughter,
and highly pleased with the letter.

It began thus: "Cher papa--nous sommes sauves. That picture of a Genoese
lady you bought for 200 francs, and doubted if you would be able to get rid
of, I sold before we left home for Provence to an American, as a genuine
Queen Elizabeth for 1,000 francs." Then followed three closely-written
pages of record of business transactions, all showing a balance to the
good, all showing a profit nowhere under thirty per cent. Finally, the
letter concluded: "Mamma's back is better. Louis and I went on Sunday
to see a farm. A cow, a stable, an old peasantess saying her rosary, a
daughter knitting--all real, not waxwork. Votre fille tres devouee, LEAH."

"That is a girl to be proud of," said my acquaintance. "And only fourteen!
But hein! here is another letter I have received, and it is awkward." He
told me that when he had been in London on business he had lodged in the
house of a couple who were not on the best of terms. The husband had been a
widower with one child, a daughter, and the stepmother could not abide the
child. Whilst M. Cohen, my friend, was there, the quarrels had been many,
and he had done his best to smooth matters between the parties. Then he
had invited them over to visit the Continent and stay at his house. They
had come, and he had again to exercise the office of mediator. "And now,"
lamented my good-hearted friend, "nebber one week but I get a letter
from de leddy. Here is dis, sent on to me. Read it." The letter ran as
follows:--

"Do write to me. I fear my last letter cannot have reached you, or you
would have answered it. I am miserable. My husband is so cross about that
little girl, because I cannot love the nasty little beast. Oh, Mr. Cohen,
do come to London, or let me come abroad and live in your house away from
my husband and that child. You were so sensible and so kind. I can't bear
to be longer here in the house with my husband and the spoiled child."

My friend looked disconsolately at me.

"What am I to do?" he asked. "She writes ebery week, and I don't answer.
And my wife sends on dese letters."

"Do?" said I. "Send this one at once to Madame Cohen, and ask her to answer
it for you. That London lady will never trouble you again."

The following circumstance I relate, not that it has the smallest
importance except as a characteristic sketch of Italian _dolce far niente_,
and as a lesson to travellers. The proper study of mankind is man, and a
little incident such as occurred to me, and which I will now relate, raises
the curtain and shows us a feature of humanity in Italy. When I hurried
from Rome, I sent off all my luggage by goods train to England, except such
articles as I could compress into a Gladstone bag; a change of raiment of
course was there. But mark the cruelty of fate. My foot slipped on a white
marble stair, and I rent a certain garment at the knee. I at once dived
into my Gladstone bag and produced another pair, but found with a shock
that they also had suffered--become threadbare, and needed attention from a
tailor. What was to be done? I had to leave Florence at noon. The discovery
was made the night before. I rose early, breakfasted early, and hung about
the shop door of a tailor at 8 A.M. till the door was opened, when I
entered, stated my case, and the obliging _sartore_ promised that the
trifling remedy should be applied and I should have my garment again in one
hour. "In one hour!" he said, holding up his hand in solemn asseveration.

Nine o'clock came; then ten, and my raiment had not returned. I flew to the
tailor's shop and asked for my garment. "It was all right," said he, "only
the thread being knotted. It should be sent to my inn." So I returned and
waited. I had my lunch, paid my bill, packed my bag, looked at my watch.
The omnibus was at the door. No garment. I ran to the tailor's. He listened
to my tale of distress with an amiable smile on his face, then volunteered
to come with me to my inn, and talk the matter over with the host.
Accordingly he locked up his shop and sauntered with me to Bonciani's.
Bonciani and he considered the circumstances at length, thrashed
the subject thoroughly. Then, as the horses were being put into the
omnibus--"Come," said the tailor, "I have a brother, a grocer, we will go
to him."

"But why?" asked I. "Do you see, the boxes are being put on the omnibus. I
want my--garment."

"You must come with me to my brother's," said the tailor. So to the
grocer's went we. Vainly did I trust that the journeyman who was engaged
on my article of apparel lodged there, and that, done or undone, I could
recover it thence. But no--not so. The whole story was related with
embellishments to the brother, the grocer, who listened, discussed,
commented on, the matter.

"There goes the 'bus!" I shouted, looking down the street. "Even now, if
you will let me have the article, I can run to the station and get off; I
have my ticket."

"Subito! subito!" said the tailor.

Then the grocer said that the thing in request might be sent by post.
"But," I replied, "I am going into France, to Nice, and clothes are
subjected to burdensome charges if carried across the frontier."

"Ten minutes!" I gasped. "Almost too late."

A moment later--

"Appunto!"

"The clock is striking. I am done for."

"Appunto!" and he lighted a cigarette.

So I had to travel by night, instead of by day.

CHAPTER II.

THE RIVIERA.

No ill without a counterbalancing advantage--An industry peculiar to
Italy--Italian honesty--Buffalo Bill at Naples--The Prince and the
straw-coloured gloves--The Riviera--A tapestry--Nice--Its flowers--Notre
Dame--The chateau--My gardener--A pension of ugly women--Horses and their
hats--Antibes--Meeting of Honore IV. and Napoleon--The Grimaldis--Lerins,
an Isle of Saints--A family jar--Healed.

That was not all. The dawdling of the tailor not only made me lose the
mid-day train, but delayed my arrival in Nice for twenty-four hours. I took
the night train to Pisa, where I purposed catching the express from Rome.
But the express came slouching along in a hands-in-the-pocket sort of way,
and was over half-an-hour late, and would not bestir itself to pick up the
misspent, lost moments between Pisa and Genoa, the consequence of which was
that the train for Nice had gone on without waiting, and accordingly those
who desired to prosecute their journey in that direction were obliged to
loiter about in the small hours of the morning between a restaurant, half
asleep, and a waiting-room where the electric light had gone out, till the
hour of seven.

Before leaving Italy, I may mention an industry which I found cultivated
there, original, and I believe unique. When I procured postage stamps at
the post-offices, I was surprised, if I took them home with me, to find
that their adhesive power had failed. I also received indignant letters
from correspondents in England remonstrating with me for posting my
communications to them unstamped. This surprised me, and at Rome, where I
had been accustomed to purchase _franco-bolli_ at the head office, I took
them home and regummed them. But the remarkable phenomenon was, that such
stamps as were purchased at tobacconists' shops had gum on them--only
those acquired at the post-offices were without. I learned that the same
peculiarity existed at Florence, and indeed elsewhere in Italy, and finally
the explanation was vouchsafed to me. The functionary at the post-office
passes a wet sponge over the back of the sheets of _franco-bolli_ supplied
to him, thus removing the adhesive matter. When he sells stamps at the
window, he hopes that those who purchase will proceed at once to apply them
to their letters, without perceiving their deficiencies. As soon as the
stamp becomes dry it falls off, and quite a collection of stamps of sundry
values can thus be gathered at every clearing of the box, and the postal
clerk reaps thence a daily harvest that goes a long way towards the eking
out the small pittance paid him by Government. It is interesting to see the
directions taken by human enterprise.

Whilst I was in Rome, Buffalo Bill was in Naples exhibiting his troupe of
horses and gang of Indians. The Italian papers informed the public of a
remarkable exploit achieved by the Neapolitans. They had done Buffalo Bill
out of two thousand francs. It had been effected in this wise. His reserved
seats were charged five francs. Four hundred forged five-franc notes
were passed at the door of his show by well-dressed Neapolitans, indeed,
the _elite_ of Neapolitan society; and the trick played on him was not
discovered till too late. Now consider what this implies. It implies that
some hundreds of the best people, princes, counts, marquesses at Naples
lent themselves to see Buffalo Bill's exhibition by a fraud. They wanted to
see and be seen there, but not to pay five francs for a seat. There must
have been combination, and that among the members of the aristocracy of
Naples. The Italian papers did not mention this in a tone of disgust, but
rather in one of surprise that Italians should have been able to overreach
a Yankee. But I do not believe such a fraud would have been perpetrated at
Rome, Florence, or Milan. It was considered quite in its place at Naples.

A lady of my acquaintance was staying in a pension at Naples. There resided
at the time, in the same pension, a prince--Neapolitan, be it understood.
One day, just before she left, she brought in a packet of kid gloves she
had purchased, among them one pair, straw-coloured. She laid them on the
table, went out for two minutes, leaving the prince in the room with the
gloves. On her return, the prince and the straw-coloured gloves were gone.
She made inquiries of the landlady, who, when told that the prince had been
in the room, laughed and said: "But of course he has them. You should never
leave anything in the room unguarded where there is a prince." Two days
after the departure of this lady, the straw-coloured gloves were produced
by his highness and presented by him to a young lady whom he admired, then
in the same pension.

No evil comes without a counterbalancing good. The day I was detained in
Florence by that tailor, and the loss of the night train at Genoa were not
immense evils. A furious gale broke over the coast, and when at seven in
the morning we steamed out of Genoa, the Mediterranean was sullen, the
rain poured down, and the mountains were enveloped in vapour. But as we
proceeded along the coast the weather improved, and before long every cloud
was gone, the sky became blue as a gentian, and the oranges flamed in the
sunshine as we swept between the orchards. Had I gone by the noon train
from Florence I should have travelled this road by night, had I caught the
3.27 A.M. train I should have seen nothing for storm and cloud. And--what
a glorious, what an unrivalled road that is! It was like passing through a
gallery hung with Renaissance tapestry, all in freshness of colour. The sea
deep blue and green like a peacock's neck, the mountains pale yellow, as
shown in tapestry, with blue shadows; the silvery-grey olives, the glossy
orange trees with their fruit--exactly as in tapestry. Surely the old
weavers of those wondrous webs studied this coast and copied it in their
looms.

I have said that the sea was like a peacock's neck; but it had a brilliancy
above even that. As I have mentioned tapestry I may say that it resembled
a sort of tapestry that is very rare and costly, of which I have seen a
sample in a private collection at Frankfort, and another in the Palazzo
Bardini at Florence. It consists of the threads being drawn over plates of
gold and silver. In the piece at Florence the effect of the sun shining
through a tree is thus produced by gold leaf under the broidery of
tree-leaves. Silver leaf is employed for water, with blue silk drawn in
lines over it. So with the sea. There seemed to be silver burnished to its
greatest polish below, over which the water was drawn as a blue lacquer.

And Nice. What shall I say of that bright and laughing city--with its
shops of flowers, its avenues of trees through which run the streets, its
gardens, its pines and cactus and aloe walks? Only one blemish can I pick
out in Nice, and that is a hideous modern Gothic church, Notre Dame, filled
with detestable garish glass, so utterly faulty in design, so full of
blemish of every sort, that the best wish one could make for the good
people of Nice is that the next earthquake that visits the Riviera may
shake this wretched structure to pieces, so as to give them an opportunity
of erecting another in its place which is not a monstrosity.

The Avenue de la Gare is planted with the eucalyptus, that has attained
a considerable size. It is not a beautiful tree, its leaves are ever on
the droop, as though the tree were unhealthy or unhappy, sulky at being
transplanted to Europe, dissatisfied with the climate, displeased with the
soil, discontented with its associates. It struck me as very much like a
good number of excellent and very useful souls with whom I am acquainted,
who never take a cheerful view of life, are always fault-finding,
hole-picking, worry-discovering, eminently good in their place as
febrifuges, but not calculated to brighten their neighbourhood.

What a delightful walk is that on the cliff of the chateau! The day I was
at Nice was the 9th of April. The crags were rich with colour, the cytisus
waving its golden hair, the pelargonium blazing scarlet, beds of white
stock wafting fragrance, violets scrambling over every soft bank of deep
earth exhaling fragrance; roses, not many in flower, but their young leaves
in masses of claret-red; wherever a ledge allowed it, there pansies of
velvety blue and black and brown had been planted. In a hot sun I climbed
the chateau cliff to where the water, conveyed to the summit, dribbled and
dropped, or squirted and splashed, nourishing countless fronds of fern and
beds of moss, and many a bog plant. The cedars and umbrella pines in the
spring sun exhaled their aromatic breath, and the flowering birch rained
down its yellow dust over one from its swaying catkins.

I see I have spoken of the cytisus. I may be excused mentioning an anecdote
that the sight of this plant provokes in my mind every spring. I had a
gardener--a queer, cantankerous creature, who never saw a joke, even when
he made one. "Please, sir," he said to me with a solemn face, "I've been
rearing a lot o' young citizens for you."

"Have you?" said I, with a sigh. "I fancy I'm rearing a middling lot of
them myself."

"Please, sir," said he to me on another occasion, "that there lumbago be
terrible trying to know what to do with it."

"Oh!" said I with alacrity, "nothing equals hartshorn and oil applied to
the small of the back with a flannel. You have a wife--"

"Yes, sir." He looked at me vacantly. "And yet, it's a beautiful thing."

"Well--yes, when it attacks one's deadly enemy."

"I've cut it down, and trimmed it out, and tied it up," said the gardener.
He meant the _Plumbago capense!_

That man never would allow that he was beaten. My eldest boy one day held
some pansies over the fumes of ammonia, turned them green, and showed them
as a _lusus naturae_ to the gardener. He smiled contemptuously. "Them's the
colour of biled cabbage," said he; "I grew them verdigris green--beds of
'em, when I was with Squire Cross."

One day he said to me: "The nurserymen call them plants big onias just to
sell them, I call them little onias; you shall just see them I grow, them
be the true big onias, as large as the palm of your hand."

I tumbled, by hazard, at Nice into a pension, where I believe I saw at
_table d'hote_ a score of the ugliest women I have ever had the trial of
sitting over against in my long career. I found out, in conversation with a
porter at the station afterwards, that this pension was notorious for the
ugly women who put up there, and it is a joke among the porters when they
see one very ill-favoured arrive by the train, that she is going to be an
inmate of the Hotel ----. The name I will not give, lest any of my fair
readers, in that spirit of delightful perversity that characterises the
sex, should go there and spoil the credit of the pension. I could not
endure the _table d'hote_ there for many days. An ugly woman is, or may be,
restful for the eye when her face is in repose--not when she is chewing
tough beef or munching an apple. Besides, Lent was passed.

When I was in Rome there appeared in a comic paper at the beginning of Lent
the picture of a very stout lady, who thus addressed her spouse. "Hubby,
dear! you haven't kissed me." "Can't, love," he replies, "_fat_ is
forbidden in Lent." Ugliness was uncongenial to me in radiantly beautiful
Nice, and in sparkling Easter--so I packed my Gladstone bag and went
further.

The snow still lying on the crests of the Maritime Alps and the
intermediate ranges broken into fantastic forms, the lovely range of red
porphyry Esterel to the south, with the intensely blue sea drawing a
thread of silver about its base, together made a picture of incomparable
loveliness.

The sun was so hot that the horses had already assumed their summer hats.
"A good man is merciful to his beast," and the good-hearted peasants of
the Riviera and Provence, thinking that their horses must suffer from the
burning heat of the sun, provide, them with straw hats, very much the same
sort of hats as girls wear, adorned also with ribbons and rosettes, but to
suit the peculiarity of formation of the horse's head, two holes are cut in
the hat through which the ears are drawn. The effect is comical when you
are being driven in a carriage with a pair of horses before you wearing
straw hats, and their ears protruding, one on each side, like the horns in
the helmets of mediaeval German knights. One lovely glimpse of the sea I got
that I shall never forget. The blue sea was in the background gleaming;
against it stood a belt of sombre cypresses; before the cypresses the
silvery, smoke-grey tufts of olive, in a grove; and before the olive, in
mid-distance, a field of roses in young claret-red foliage--a landscape of
belts of colour right marvellous.

[Illustration: A Horse in a Hat.]

Then Antibes--a blue bay with castle on one horn, on the other the little
town, its lighthouse, and a couple of bold towers.

It was at Cannes that Prince Honore IV. of Monaco encountered Napoleon in
1815, as he was returning from Paris in his carriage to take possession of
his principality, that had been restored to him by the Treaty of Paris in
1814.

The Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard stopped his carriage, made the prince
descend, and conducted him before a little man with clean-cut features,
whom he at once knew as the Emperor--returned from Elba.

"Ou allez-vous, Monaco?" asked Napoleon bluntly.

"Sire," replied Honore IV., "je vais a la decouverte de mon royaume."

The Emperor smiled.

"Voila une singuliere rencontre, monsieur," said Napoleon. "Deux majestes
sans place; mais ce n'est peut-etre pas la peine de vous deranger. Avant
huit jours je serai a Paris, et je me verrai force de vous renverser du
trone, mon cousin. Revenez plutot avec moi, je vous nommerai sous-prefet de
Monaco, si vous y tenez beaucoup."

"Merci de vos bontes, sire," replied the prince in some confusion; "mais je
tiendrais encore plus a faire une restauration, ne dut-elle durer que trois
jours."

"Allons! faites la durer trois mois, mon cousin, je vous garderai votre
place de chancellier, et vous viendriez me rejoindre aux Tuileries."

The two monarchs separated after having shaken hands amicably. The story
would be spoiled by translation.

The Grimaldis anciently possessed much more extensive territories than at
present. At Cagnes, near Vence, is their ancient chateau, now converted
into a hospital and barrack, and they owned considerable property, manors
and lordships near Cannes and Vence. We shall meet them again as Princes of
Les Baux.

The present reigning family are not properly Grimaldis. The last
representative was a daughter, married to the Count of Thorigny in 1715,
who, on the extinction of the male line in 1731, assumed the name of
Grimaldi, and succeeded to the principality.

[Illustration: Lerins.]

Everywhere, for the mere delight of the eye, not from thought of any gain
gotten out of it, is the Judas tree covered with pink flowers, standing
among the cool grey olives. Here and there is a mulberry bursting into
fresh, green, vivid leaf; in every garden the palms are rustling their
leaves in the pleasant air, and are glistening in the sun. Out at sea
lies the low, dull island of Lerins; but, though low and dull, full of
interest, as taking the place to Provence occupied by Iona to Scotland and
Lindisfarne to Northumberland, a cradle of Christianity, a cradle rocked
by the waves. I cannot do better than quote Montalembert's words on this
topic. "The sailor, the soldier, or the traveller who proceeds from the
roadstead of Toulon to sail towards Italy and the East, passes among two
or three islands, rocky and arid, surmounted here and there by a slender
cluster of pines. He looks at them with indifference, and avoids them.
However, one of these islands has been for the soul, for the mind, for the
moral progress of humanity, a centre purer and more fertile than any famous
isle of the Hellenic Archipelago. It is Lerins, formerly occupied by a
city, which was already ruined in the time of Pliny, and where, at the
commencement of the fifth century, nothing more was to be seen than a
desert coast. In 410, a man landed and remained there; he was called
Honoratus. Descended from a consular race, educated and eloquent, but
devoted from his youth to great piety, he desired to be made a monk. His
father charged his eldest brother, a gay and impetuous young man, to turn
him from his purpose; but, on the contrary, it was he who won over his
brother. Disciples gathered round them. The face of the isle was changed,
the desert became a garden. Honoratus, whose fine face is described to us
as radiant with a sweet and attractive majesty, opened here an asylum and a
school for all such as loved Christ."

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