As You Stand Before The Papal Palace, And Espe-
Cially As You Enter It, You Are Struck With Its Being A
Very Dull Monument.
History enough was enacted
here:
The great schism lasted from 1305 to 1370, dur-
ing which seven Popes, all Frenchmen, carried on the
court of Avignon on principles that have not com-
mended themselves to the esteem of posterity. But
history has been whitewashed away, and the scandals
of that period have mingled with the dust of dilapi-
dations and repairs. The building has for many years
been occupied as a barrack for regiments of the line,
and the main characteristics of a barrack - an extreme
nudity and a very queer smell - prevail throughout its
endless compartments. Nothing could have been more
cruelly dismal than the appearance it presented at the
time of this third visit of mine. A regiment, changing
quarters, had departed the day before, and another
was expected to arrive (from Algeria) on the morrow.
The place had been left in the befouled and belittered
condition which marks the passage of the military after
they have broken carnp, and it would offer but a me-
lancholy welcome to the regiment that was about to
take possession. Enormous windows had been left
carelessly open all over the building, and the rain and
wind were beating into empty rooms and passages;
making draughts which purified, perhaps, but which
scarcely cheered. For an arrival, it was horrible. A
handful of soldiers had remained behind. In one of
the big vaulted rooms several of them were lying on
their wretched beds, in the dim light, in the cold, in
the damp, with the bleak, bare walls before them, and
their overcoats, spread over them, pulled up to their
noses. I pitied them immensely, though they may
have felt less wretched than they looked. I thought
not of the old profligacies and crimes, not of the
funnel-shaped torture-chamber (which, after exciting
the shudder of generations, has been ascertained now,
I believe, to have been a mediaeval bakehouse), not of
the tower of the _glaciere_ and the horrors perpetrated
here in the Revolution, but of the military burden of
young France. One wonders how young France en-
dures it, and one is forced to believe that the French
conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humor,
greater toughness than is commonly supposed by those
who consider only the more relaxing influences of
French civilization. I hope he finds occasional com-
pensation for such moments as I saw those damp
young peasants passing on the mattresses of their
hideous barrack, without anything around to remind
them that they were in the most civilized of countries.
The only traces of former splendor now visible in
the Papal pile are the walls and vaults of two small
chapels, painted in fresco, so battered and effaced as
to be scarcely distinguishable, by Simone Memmi. It
offers, of course, a peculiarly good field for restoration,
and I believe the government intend to take it in
hand.
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