A Book of the Riviera/Chapter 8

by Sabine Baring-Gould

Umbrella Pine, S. Raphael

CHAPTER VIII

S. RAPHAEL AND FRÉJUS

Rapid Rise—An exposed spot, unsuitable as a winter resort—Napoleon here embarks for Elba: his journey from Fontainebleau—The via Aurelia—Fréjus—Choking up of the harbour—Roman remains—The Cathedral—Agricola—Monuments—S. Hilary Sieyès; sans phrases—Désauguier—The Caveau—His Carnival Lay—Some of his jokes.

A FEW years ago S. Raphael was a fishing village about an old Templar church. There were in it but a couple of hundred poor folk. Then some speculators cast their eyes on the place, and calculating, not unreasonably, on the lack of intelligence of visitors from the North, resolved on making it into a winter sanatorium. They bought out the fisher families, and set to work to build hotels and lay out esplanades and gardens.

Now any person with a grain of sense in his head has but to look at the map to see that S. Raphael is the very last place on the coast suitable as a winter resort. It lies between two great humps of mountains, the Chaine des Maures and the Estérel. It has before it the ever-shallowing Gulf of Fréjus, that stretches back into alluvial deposit and pestiferous morasses—open to the north; and down this bare, unwholesome plain roars and rages the Mistral. It has blown the sea out of the Bay to the distance of two miles. It is enough, entering the ears, to drive the frail lungs out of the breast betwixt the teeth.

The Argens, which has flowed from west to east, receiving the drainage of the Montagnes des Maures, receives also the Parturby and the Endre from the limestone, and then turns about and runs almost due south, but with an incline to the east. It forms a wide basin, once a long arm of sea, but now filled up with deposit, and with festering lagoons sprinkled over its surface; the two great mountain chains from east and west contract, and force the winds that come down from the north, and the snows of the Alps, to concentrate their malice on S. Raphael. If you love a draught, then sit before a roaring fire, with an open window behind you. If you desire a draught on a still larger scale, go to S. Raphael.

Perhaps the speculators who invented this Station Hivernale thought that it was necessary to add something more, in order to attract patients to the place, and Valescure was established among pine woods. The aromatic scent of the terebinth, its sanatory properties, so highly estimated, so experimentally efficacious in pulmonary disorders, etc., etc. Valescure is just as certainly exposed to winds as is S. Raphael. As to pines and eucalyptus, they can be had elsewhere, in combination with shelter.

However, let me quote M. Leutheric, who has a good word to say for S. Raphael:—

"Few regions of Provence present conditions of landscape and climate (!!) more seductive. The little town of Saint Raphael is placed beyond the zone of infection from the marshes of Fréjus. It stretches gracefully along the shore at the foot of the savage chain "of the Estérel. On all sides pointed rocks of red porphyry pierce the sombre foliage of cork trees and pines. The coast is fringed by sandbanks,

S. Raphael, Le Lion De Terre

extending along under cliffs covered with ilexes. A little way out to sea, two tawny-coloured rocks, like fantastic beasts at rest, close the harbour, and receive over their long backs the foam of the breakers; the first is couched some cable lengths from the shore, the second five hundred metres beyond it. They bear the names of the Land and the Sea Lions."^[1]

It was here that Napoleon entered the vessel deporting him to Elba, attended by the Commissioners of the Allied Powers. He had left Fontainebleau upon April 20th, 1814. As he got south he was made to perceive that his popularity, if he ever had any in Provence, was gone. Near Valence he encountered Augereau, whom he had created Duke of Castiglione, and who was an underbred, coarse fellow. Napoleon and his Marshal met on the 24th. Napoleon took off his hat, but Augereau, with vulgar insolence, kept his on. "Where are you going?" asked the fallen Emperor, "to Court?"—"I care for the Bourbons as little as I do for you," answered Augereau: "all I care for is my country." Upon this, Napoleon turned his back on him, and reentered the carriage. Augereau would not even then remove his hat and bow, but saluted his former master with a contemptuous wave of the hand.

At Valence, Napoleon saw, for the first time, French soldiers wearing the white cockade. At Orange the air rang with cries of "Vive le Roy!"

On arrival at Orgon the populace yelled, "Down with the Corsican! Death to the tyrant! Vive le Roy!"Portraits of Bonaparte were burnt before his eyes; an effigy of himself was fluttered before the carriage window, with the breast pierced, and dripping with blood. A crowd of furious women screamed, "What have you done with our children?" The Commissioners were obliged to stand about the carriage to protect him; and it was with difficulty that a way could be made through the mob for the carriages to proceed. At Saint Cannat the crowd broke the windows of his coach. Then, for his protection, he assumed a cap and a greatcoat of Austrian uniform, and instead of pursuing his way in the coach, entered a cabriolet. The carriages did not overtake the Emperor till they reached La Calade. The escort found him standing by the fire in the kitchen of the inn, talking with the hostess. She had asked him whether the tyrant was soon to pass that way. "Ah, sir," she said, "it is all nonsense to assert that we are rid of him. I have always said that we never shall be sure of being quit of him till he is thrown to the bottom of a well and it is then filled in with stones. I only wish that well were mine in the yard. Why, the Directory sent him to Egypt to get rid of him, and he returned." Here the woman, having finished skimming her pot, looked up, and perceived that all the party was standing uncovered, except the person whom she was addressing. She was confounded, and her embarrassment amused the ex-Emperor and dispelled his annoyance.

The sous-préfet of Aix closed the gates of the town to prevent the people from issuing forth. At a château near Napoleon met his sister Pauline, who was ill, or pretended to be ill, and was staying there. When he entered to embrace her, she started back. "Oh, Napoleon, why this uniform?"

"Pauline," replied he, "do you wish that I were dead?"

The princess, looking at him steadfastly, replied, "I cannot kiss you in that Austrian dress. Oh, Napoleon, what have you done?"

The ex-Emperor at once retired, and having substituted a greatcoat of his Old Guard for the Austrian suit, entered the chamber of his sister, who ran to him and embraced him tenderly. Then, going to the window, he saw a crowd in the court in a very uncertain temper. He descended at once, and noticing among them an old man with a gash across his nose and a red ribbon in his button-hole, he went up to him at once, and asked, "Are you not Jacques Dumont?"

"Yes, yes, Sire!" And the old soldier drew himself up and saluted.

"You were wounded, but it seems to me that it was long ago."

"Sire, at the battle of Tebia, with General Suchet. I was unable to serve longer. But even now, whenever the drum beats, I feel like a deserter. Under your ensign, Sire, I could still serve whenever your Majesty would command." The old man shed tears as he said, "My name! To recollect that after fifteen years! " All hesitation among the crowd as to how they would receive Napoleon was at an end. He had won every heart.

Napoleon, as it happens, had a very bad memory for names. What is probable is, that Pauline pointed the old soldier out to her brother from the window, and named him, before Napoleon descended.

The English frigate, the Undaunted, was lying in the Gulf of Fréjus. The fallen Emperor manifested considerable reluctance to go on board. However, on April 28th he sailed from S. Raphael, and after a rough passage disembarked at Porto Ferrajo, the capital of Elba, on the 4th of May.

The great Roman road, the Via Aurelia, left the capital of the world by the Janiculan Gate, made for Pisa, Lucca, followed the coast the whole way, passed above where is now Monaco, over a spur of the Maritime Alps by Nice, Antibes, Cannes, came to a little town in the lap of the Gulf of Fréjus, and thence turned abruptly away from the coast and made direct for Aix and Aries. Thence roads radiated: one, leading up the left bank of the Rhone, took troops and commerce to the Rhine. Thence also the Domitian Way conveyed both by Narbonne into Spain.

This bay was the last harbour on the Mediterranean for troops that were to march into the heart of Gaul, to Britain, or to the Rhine. Hitherto the road, hugging the coast, offered innumerable facilities for provisioning soldiery and supplying them with munitions of war. But from the Bay of Fréjus this advantage ceased. Julius Cæsar saw the great strategical importance of the harbour, and he resolved to make of it an important haven, a naval station, and an emporium for stores. Marseilles he did not choose. It was a commercial town, a Greek town, and he was out of temper with it for having sided with Pompey against him. Accordingly he settled here some veterans of his favourite Tenth Legion, to become the nucleus of a colony. But Caesar overlooked what was a most important point—his port Forum Julii was planted at the mouth of the Argens, and the river brought down a vast amount of fluviatile deposit, mud and sand, and inevitably in a few years would silt up his port. It had a further disadvantage—it was a fever trap. To the south the town had a wide tract of fetid marsh, breeding malaria and mosquitoes. He would have done well to have swallowed his resentment against Marseilles and to have taken the opinion of so observant a man as Vitruvius, or even to have studied the conditions himself more closely. Now all the harbour is buried in silt, and grass grows where galleys floated. The lap of the bay, which was once at Fréjus, begins now at S. Raphael and extends to Cap S. Aigous. In time S. Raphael also will be inland, and the Lion de Mer will become, like its fellow, a Lion de Terre.

Michel de l'Hôpital, who lived in the sixteenth century, in one of his letters wrote:—

"We arrived at Fréjus, which is nothing more now but a poor little town. Here are grand ruins of an ancient theatre, foundered arcades, baths, aqueduct, and scattered remains of quays and basins. The port has disappeared under sand, and is now nothing but a field and a beach."

If S. Raphael be devoid of antiquities and of history, at a little distance is Fréjus, that has both in abundance.

The ruins are many, but not beautiful; everything was built in a hurry, and badly built. The aqueduct was no sooner completed than it gave way and had to be patched up. The triumphal arch on the old quays is a shabby affair. The amphitheatre is half cut out of the natural rock. There was plenty of granite and porphyry accessible, but the builders did not trouble themselves to obtain large and solid blocks; they built of brick and small stones, without skill and impatiently. The work was probably executed by corvées of labourers impressed from the country round. There were two enormous citadels; one to the north, the other to the south of the port. The latter, the Butte S. Antoine, was, however, mainly a huge accumulation of store chambers, magazines for whatever was needed for the soldiers, and attached to it was the lighthouse. Beyond, some way on the ancient mole, is the most perfect monument of Roman times extant in Fréjus. It goes by the name of La Lantern; but it was not a lighthouse at all, but the lodge of a harbour-master, who gave directions with a flag to vessels how to enter the harbour and avoid the shoals.

The railway now runs close to it across the ancient basin, the port made by Agrippa. To the north of this, where stands now the chapel of S. Roch, was the Port of Cæsar. Poplars now stand where was formerly a forest of masts.

The amphitheatre is cut through its entire length by a road. The old wall of the town reached to it, included it, and then drew back to where is now the railway station. The remains of the theatre are to the north of the modern town, and those of the baths to the southwest; they may be reached by taking a road in that direction from the Butte S. Antoine.

Although Julius Caesar has the credit of having made the place and called it after his own name, it is certainly more than a guess that there was a Græco-Phœnician settlement here before that time, occupying the bunch of high ground rising above the marshes of the Argens. Indeed, monuments have been found that imply as much, though later in date than the making of the place into a naval station by Caesar. One of these is bi-lingual—Latin and Greek. It begins in Latin:—

"To Caius Vilius Ligur, this is dedicated by his mother Maxima."

Then comes Greek:—

"This tomb had been constructed for those much older; but Destiny, under the influence of the country and climate, has smitten a child of seven years. His parents, his father and mother, have buried him whom they brought up. Vain are the hopes of men here below."

It is noticeable that this child bore the name of Ligur, living and dying among the Ligurians of the coast. Possibly the family had this native blood in their veins and were not ashamed of it. Another tomb is all in Latin:—

"Agrippina Pia to the Memory of her Friend Baricbal. He lived forty years. She who was his heiress has constructed this monument for him and herself."

And underneath are a pair of clasped hands.

What was the story? The name Baricbal is Barac Baal, the Blessed of Baal, the name of a Phœnician. The young heiress undertakes to be buried in the same tomb with him later. But she was an heiress, and she was young. I doubt if her resolution held out, and she did not clasp hands after a year or two with some one else.

The cathedral is not particularly interesting; it is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The baptistery is earlier, and sustained by eight Corinthian columns of granite taken from a Roman building. The cloisters are good, the arches resting on pairs of columns. Fréjus has produced some remarkable men. First of all comes Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, who wrote his life. From that biography we see what an honourable, true, and in every way upright man an old Roman could be. Agricola was born in AD, 37 and died in 93. His life is of special interest to us, as he spent so much of his time in Britain, carried the Roman arms into Scotland, and sent an expedition round the coast and established the fact that Britain was an island. He was moved to this by the following circumstance. A body of Germans had been levied on the Rhine and were sent over to serve under Agricola. But after having murdered a centurion and some soldiers who were drilling them, they seized on three light vessels and compelled the captains to go on board with them. One of these, however, escaped to shore, whereupon these Germans murdered the other two, put to sea, and sailed away without one of them having any acquaintance with the sea and the management of ships. They were carried north by winds and waves, and landed occasionally to obtain water and food and to plunder the natives. They circumnavigated the north of Scotland, and then were carried out to sea and suffered terrible privations. They were driven by starvation to kill and eat the weakest of their number and to drink their blood. At length they were wrecked on the North German coast, where they were seized on as pirates, and sold as slaves to the Romans on the left bank of the Rhine. Here they talked and yarned of their adventures, and the news reached Agricola; so he fitted out his expedition and proved the fact that Britain actually was an island. Finally, owing to his success, he fell under suspicion to the jealous tyrant Domitian and was recalled to Rome, where he died; whether poisoned by the Emperor or died a natural death is uncertain. Tacitus himself does not venture to pass an opinion.

Another great native of Fréjus was S. Hilary of Arles. He was born of noble parents in the year 401, and was a relative of Honoratus, abbot of Lerins. Honoratus left his retirement to seek his kinsman Hilary and draw him to embrace the monastic life; but all his persuasion was at first in vain. "What floods of tears," says Hilary, "did this true friend shed to soften my hard heart! How often did he embrace me with the most tender and compassionate affection, to wring from me a resolve that I would consider the salvation of my soul. Yet I resisted."

"Well, then," said Honoratus, "I will obtain from God what you refuse." And he left him. Three days later Hilary had changed his mind, and went to Lerins to place himself under the discipline of Honoratus. In 428 S. Hilary was elected Archbishop of Arles. He was a man of a very impetuous and wilful character, and got sadly embroiled with Pope Leo the Great, whom he defied on behalf of the liberties of the Gallican Church, speaking out to him, as his contemporary biographer asserts, "words that no layman would dare to utter, no ecclesiastic would endure to hear." He had after this to escape from Rome, where assassination was to be feared—by knife or poison—and hurried back to Arles. Leo retorted by writing a letter to the bishops of the province of Vienne denouncing the audacity of Hilary in daring to set himself up against his authority, and releasing them from all allegiance to the see of Arles.

Soon after this a fresh quarrel broke out. A bishop Projectus complained that when he was ill, Hilary had rushed into his diocese without inquiring whether he were yet dead, and Without calling on the clergy and people to elect a successor, had consecrated another bishop in his room. This was the best possible medicine for Projectus. He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and in a screaming rage wrote a letter to the Pope. Thereupon Leo wrote sharply to Hilary to bid him mind his own business in future, and not meddle out of his diocese. And then the Pope wrung from the feeble Emperor Valentinian an edict denouncing the contumacy of Hilary against the apostolic throne, and requiring him and all the bishops of Gaul to submit as docile children to the bishop of the Eternal City. Hilary died in 449, comparatively young.

Sieyès was born at Fréjus in 1748, and was trained for orders at S. Sulpice. In 1788 he was sent as member for the clerical order to the Provincial Assembly at Orléans. He saw what was the trend of opinion and what must inevitably happen, and he wrote his trenchant pamphlets, Essai sur les Privilèges and Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état, 1789, that acted as firebrands through France. He was elected by Paris as representative at the General Assembly that met at Versailles. There, looking at the nobles in their sumptuous attire, the curés in their soutannes) and the representatives of the Third Estate in their humble cloth, he said, "One people!—We are three nations," and he it was who, on July 2Oth, on entering the Assembly, exclaimed, "It is time now to cut the cords," and sent an imperious message to the other two Houses to enter and sit along with the Tiers État.

He strove hard against the abolition of tithe without some compensation to the clergy, but was overborne. The general feeling was against this. As he saw that anarchy was resulting from the conduct of the Assembly he withdrew from taking any further active part; but he was elected by the Department of Sarthe to sit as deputy in the Convention.

At the trial of Louis XIV. he voted for his death "La mort—sans phrases." When in 1798 he was commissioned by the Directory as Ambassador to Berlin, he sent an invitation to a German prince to dine with him. The prince wrote across it, "Non—sans phrases." He was elected into the Council of the Five Hundred. At this time it was that the half-crazy fanatical Cordelier Poule attempted to shoot him. Sieyes struck the pistol aside, but was wounded in the hand and shoulder. Poule was sentenced for this for twenty years to the galleys, and died on them. Sièyes was a member of the Directory. He was a great man for drawing up schemes for a Constitution. The Directory had lost all credit; France was sick of its constituent Assemblies, Legislative Assemblies, Conventions, and Directory. This latter, at one moment feeble, at the next violent, seemed to be able to govern only by successive coups d'état, always a token of weakness. It had brought France to the verge of bankruptcy. In its foreign policy it had committed gross imprudences, and now a new coalition had been formed against France, and the armies had met with reverses in Italy and Germany. At this juncture Napoleon landed at S. Raphael. As he travelled to Paris he was everywhere greeted with enthusiasm as the expected saviour of the country. But on reaching Paris he behaved with caution; he seemed only to live for his sister, and for his wife, Josephine, and for his colleagues of the Institut. But he was watching events. Everyone was then conspiring; Sieyès in the Directory, Fouché and Talleyrand in the ministry, a hundred others in the Conseils, Sieyès said, "What is wanting for France is a head," tapping his own brow, "and a sword," looking significantly at Napoleon. He was to learn very soon that head and sword would go together.

The 18th Brumaire was contrived by Sieyès; but he was in his coach, outside S. Cloud, when Napoleon entered to dissolve the Council of the Five Hundred. In face of the tumult within Bonaparte lost his confidence and was thrust forth by the Deputies. He found Sieyès in his carriage, to which were harnessed six horses, ready to start at full gallop should the coup fail. "Do they seek to outlaw you?" asked Sieyès. "Man, outlaw them yourself." Napoleon recovered himself and re-entered the hall at the head of his soldiery. The situation was saved.

Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducros were nominated Consuls. The Revolution had abdicated into the hands of the military. That same evening Sieyès said to his intimates, "We have given ourselves a master."

Afterwards, Bonaparte, as first Consul, took him into the Senate, and granted to him the domains of Crosne. Later, it was said—

 
"Bonaparte à Sieyès a fait présent de Crosne,
 Sieyès à Bonaparte a fait présent de trône."

Under the empire Sieyès was created a count.

During the Hundred Days, Sieyès took his place in the Chamber of Peers, but at the second restoration he was banished as one of the regicides. He went to Brussels, but after the Revolution of 1830 returned to Paris, where he died in 1836.

To finish with one more worthy, of a character very different from the rest; Marc Antoine Désaugiers. Born at Féjus in 1772, he died in 1827. He was the soul of the Caveau Moderne.

The old Caveau had been founded by Piron, Collé, and others. They met twice a month at the wine-shop of Landelle, where they produced songs, stories, and epigrams they had composed, dined and drank together. This reunion began in 1737, and lasted over ten years.

After the 9th Thermidor, and the fall of Robespierre, the Terror was at an end. Men began to breathe freely, lift up their heads, and look about for amusements to indemnify themselves for the reign of horrors they had passed through. Then some choice spirits renewed the reminiscences of the old Caveau, and met near the Theatre of the Vaudeville, opened in 1792. The songs that were sung, the stories there told, flew about. The public desired to share in the merriment, and in Vendémiaire of the year V. (September, 1796) appeared the first number of the Caveau Moderne. The tavern at which the company met was " Le Rocher de Cancalle." A complete edition of the songs was published in 1807. The tunes to which the songs were set were either well-known folk-melodies, or opera-house airs.

Désaugiers was a large contributor.

As a specimen of his style I give some stanzas of his "Carnaval."

"Momus agite ses grelots,
 Comus allume ses fourneaux,
 Bacchus s'enivre sur sa tonne,
     Palas déraisonne, Apollon détonne,
 Trouble divin, bruit infernal—
 V’là c'que c'est que 1'Carnaval.

 
"Un char pompeusement orné
 Présente à notre œil étonné
 Quinze poissardes qu'avec peine
     Une rosse traine: Jupiter les mène;
 Un Cul-de-jatte est à cheval;
 V’là c'que c'est que l'Carnaval.

"Arlequin courtise Junon,
 Columbine poursuit Pluton,
 Mars Madame Angot qu'il embrasse,
      Crispin une Grace, Venus un Paillasse;
 Ciel, terre, enfers, tout est égal;
 V’là c'que c'est que l'Carnaval.

"Mercure veut rosser Jeannot,
 On crie à la garde aussitôt;
 Et chacun voit de 1'aventure
      Le pauvre Mercure à la préfecture,
Couché,—sur un procès verbal;
V’là c'que c'est que l’Carnaval.

"Profitant aussi des jours gras,
 Le traiteur déguise ses plats,
 Nous offre vinaigre en bouteille,
     Ragût de la vieille, Daube encore plus vieille:
 Nous payons bien, nous soupons mal;
 V’là c'que c'est que 1'Carnaval.

"Carosses pleins sont par milliers
 Regorgeant dans tous les quartiers;
 Dedans, dessus, devout, dernière,
     Jusqu'à la portière, quelle fourmilière!
 Des fous on croit voire l'hôpital;
 V’là c'que c'est que l'Carnaval.

"Quand on a bien ri, bien couru,
 Bien chanté, bien mangé et bu,
 Mars d'un frippier reprend l’enseigne,
     Pluton son empeigne, Jupiter son peigne:
 Tout rentre en place; et, bien ou mal,
 V’là c'que c'est que l'Carnaval,"

Désaugiers was one day invited to preside at the annual dinner of the pork butchers. After the table was cleared he rose, and all expected the oration or song of the evening. Looking round with a twinkle in his eye, he began—

"Des Cochons, des Cochons."

The pork butchers bridled up, grew red with wrath, thinking that this was intended as an insult, when Désaugiers proceeded with his song—

"Décochons les traits de la satire."

A French author has said of him:—

"Désaugiers is song personified;—all gaiety, fun, laughter. He has in him something of the spirit of Rabelais. His inherent wit breaks out like the effervescence of champagne. Thought and rhyme are born in him along with song. Every refrain in his compositions is full of joyous sparkle."

1. La Province Maritime, 1897, p. 356.