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Yet no church in Provence is richer in tradition, and in history more romantic than tradition. The foundation of this church goes back to the first Avignon, a small colony of river-fishermen which gave way before the Romans, who established a city, Avernio, on the great rocky hill two hundred feet above the Rhone.
For a long time past the real power had been in the hands of that valiant Austrasian family which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis with a new dynasty and a greater king than Clovis. Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, Vasconia, Narbonness, called Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone near its mouths, were not comprised in these partitions of the Frankish dominions.
He crossed it, and with his army entered the region called by Polybius "The Island," although the designation is an incorrect one, for while the Rhone flows along one side of the triangle and the Isere on the other, the base is formed not by a third river, but by a portion of the Alpine chain.
From Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon, Auxerre, Sells, and Fontainebleau the whole itinerary almost exactly anticipates that of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred and ten years later, except that on the outward journey Talfourd sailed down the Rhone.
But Elizabeth was prompt, decided, and firm in the rejection of this plan. England was her home, and to be Queen of England the end and aim of all her wishes and plans. She had rather continue a captive for the present in her native land, than to live in splendor as the consort of a sovereign duke beyond the Rhone. Mary then ordered Sir Thomas Beddingfield to take her to Woodstock.
Now these two lumps are the Bernese Oberland and the Pennine Alps, and between them runs a deep trench called the valley of the Rhone. Take Mont Blanc in the west and a peak called the Crystal Peak over the Val Bavona on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of one great wall, the Pennine Alps.
Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully developed: and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone, of far more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.
In the misty barbaric ages before history fairly began, and in the early times of the Roman domination, the Rhône was the sole highway into northern Gaul from the Mediterrænean; later, when the Gallic system of Roman roads had been constructed, it held its own fairly well against the two roads which paralleled it that on the east bank throughout almost its entire length, and that on the west bank from Lyons southward to a point about opposite to the present Montélimar; in the semi-barbarous Middle Ages when the excitements of travel were increased by the presence of a robber-count at every ford and in every mountain-pass it became again more important than the parallel highways on land; and in our own day the conditions of Roman times, relatively speaking, are restored once more by steamboats on the river and railways on the lines of the ancient roads.
Immediately by his directions all the boats belonging to the numerous navigators of the Rhone in the neighbourhood were bought up at any price, and the deficiency of boats was supplied by rafts made from felled trees; and in fact the whole numerous army could be conveyed over in one day.
From the nature of the climate, however, the streets are necessarily clean. A hot drying sun, and frequent driving winds, remove or consume all the ordinary rubbish; or if anything be left, the winter torrent of the Rhone, rising above its bed, sweeps it all before it. Avignon, therefore, is naturally a clean city.
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