Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/230

212 Hot is that Southern Provençal blood: alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will! To much that went on there, History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpellier, Arles; to Aristocrat Camp of Jalès, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the imagination mainly);—ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally'! All this was a tragical deadly combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day; but a dark combustion not luminous, not noticed; which now, however, one cannot help noticing.

Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifulest Town, with its purple vines and gold-orange groves; why must foolish old rhyming RénéRené [sic], the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband? For good and for evil! Popes, Antipopes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream: there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This was in the old days.

And now in these new days such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by some foolish rhyming Réné, after centuries,—this is what we have: Jourdan Coupe-tête, leading to siege and warfare an Army, from three to fifteen thousand strong, called the Brigands of Avignon; which title they themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, 'The brave Brigands of Avignon!' It is even so. Jourdan the