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The Palace of its prelates, which is opposite, is now a farm-house where hay-ricks stand in the front yard, and windows have been walled up because Provençal winds are cold and glass is dear. Looking at this residence, one would think that the last Bishops of Senez were insignificant priests, steeped in country wine and country stagnancy. But such a supposition is very far from true.
In spite of this dignified rank and the tenacity of an ancient foundation, it lies so far from modern ken that even worthies who live fifty miles away could only say that "Senez is not much of a place, but it doubtless may be found ten perhaps fifteen or even twenty kilometres behind the railroad." "If Monsieur alighted at Barrême, probably the mail for Senez would be left there too.
Then the dusk comes on, as it is coming now; the night blots Senez from my sight as fate has blotted out its record from history, and I realise that our human memory is in vain." The old Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur at Aix is not one of those rarely beautiful churches where a complete and restful homogeneity delights the eye, nor is it a church of crude and shocking transitions.
It looks a mere sleepy hamlet, and when the traveller left the train he had already decided to push his journey onward. "To Senez?" A man stepped up in answer to his inquiry. "Certainly there was a way to get there, the mail-coach started in an hour. And a hotel? A very good hotel not Parisian perhaps, but hot food, a bottle of good wine, and a clean bed. Could one desire more on this earth?"
The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started on its scheduled run. "Houp-l
In quiet Senez there must always have been time for reflection, and one can imagine the bitter struggle of this brave man as he walked the rooms of the Palace, as he crossed and re-crossed the small square to the Cathedral. One can imagine his wrestling with God and his conscience every time that he celebrated a Mass for the people before the Cathedral's altar.
A little wagon in whose interior six thin persons might have crowded, old windows shaking in their frames, the remains of a coat of yellow paint, and in front a seat which a projecting bit of roof protected from the sun, this was the mail-coach of Senez, drawn by a dejected, small brown mule, ragged with age, and a gaunt white horse who towered above him.
One can understand the bitter fight between two high ideals, irreconcilable in his life, that of work in God's vineyard or of doctrinal purity as he saw it. He had to choose between them, this Bishop of Senez, and when he left the town to answer the summons of the Council at Embrun, his heart must have been sore within him, he must have said farewell to many things.
This was the reflection which cheered the traveller when he began to search for Senez, an ancient city of the Romans which was christianised in the early centuries and enjoyed the rank of Bishopric until the Revolution of '89.
He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone. One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did not permit him any other equipage.
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