“The physicians sent to Marseilles by the Government,” says Méry, “on arriving found in the place over 20,000 dead and nine to ten thousand sick or dying. The frightful spectacle so affected them that they could hardly eat. In traversing the town, in places they could hardly step without encountering heaps of corpses. The plague-stricken felt a flicker of hope on seeing doctors approach, but this soon died out. Fathers and mothers dragged their children into the streets, and abandoned them after placing a jug of water at their side. Children exhibited a revolting lack of feeling. All generous sentiments had been paralysed by the hand of death. The mortality was so great and rapid in its march that the corpses piled up before the houses, and in the church porches, indeed everywhere, empested the air. In the heat, the bodies rapidly putrified and dissolved, falling apart in strips. All were naked; the sick were covered by a few rags. Women half-clothed appealed for a drop of water, pointing to the fetid rill that trickled down the gutter; and as no one attended to them, they used their failing powers to crawl to it, often with their babes at their breasts, to dip their lips in the foul stream. Death was preceded by frightful spasms. The number of deaths increased to such an extent that it was not possible to bury the dead. Bewilderment took possession of men. Those of the inhabitants who had not been infected wandered about, not knowing whither to go, but avoiding one another. Others converted their houses into fortresses, as though disposed to maintain a siege; others fled to their country villas; others went on board ship; but the plague pursued them everywhere.
“In these days of calamity, the heart of man was shown in all its nakedness, and revealed all its baseness, ignoble inclinations, as well as its virtues and devotion. Those especially belonging to the lowest social beds, who live in fear of the laws, gave themselves up to frightful excesses. The galley slaves, to whom was entrusted the burial of the dead, drew the tumbrils heaped with corpses with a mocking callousness; murdering the sick so as to rob them; flinging those ill along with those dead together, indifferently, into the pits dug to receive the bodies. The civic functionaries, the employés, even priests, deserted their posts, and the monks of S. Victor enclosed themselves within their fortress. But there were others, who presented a striking contrast to these men. Priests came hurrying to the empested town from all parts to shut themselves in within this circle of death. Their zeal was stimulated by the sublime self-devotion of Belzunce, bishop of Marseilles. The fear of death never chilled his charity. He hurried through the street, seated himself by the dying, bowed over them to hear their confessions, and the plague spared him as he executed these acts of humanity.”
Pope referred to this bishop in the lines:
“Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,
When nature sicken’d and each gale was death?”
The pestilence, which had broken out in the spring, continued to rage till September, but abated after a violent storm, and disappeared in November. At the Revolution the merchant aristocracy did not relish the movement, fearing an attack on property; but the lower classes were maddened with enthusiasm for the “rights of man,” which meant the right to chop off the head of every one of whom they were envious, and of appropriating to themselves the savings of the industrious. Marseilles furnished, from the dregs of its population, the bands of assassins which marched to Paris, screaming forth Rouget de l’Isle’s hymn, which thenceforth took the name of the Marseillaise; and these bands were foremost in the September massacres in Paris.
The Reign of Terror at Marseilles itself, under the infamous Fréron and Barras, saw four hundred heads fall upon the scaffold, to the shouts of the mob, “Ça ira! Plus la République coupe de têtes, plus la République s’affermit.”
At Marseilles, Joseph Bonaparte, when acting there as War Commissioner, met the sisters Clary. At his very first visit he had been billeted on the soap-boiler, and now, when again in the place, he lost his heart to one of the girls. Both were destined to be queens. Julie (Marie) was born in 1777, and married Joseph in 1794. In 1797 Joseph was sent as ambassador to Rome, and he took with him his wife and her sister Eugenie Désirée; she was engaged to be married to General Duphot, who was with Joseph in Rome. On the eve of their wedding a disturbance took place in the streets of the Eternal City, caused by a rising of the revolutionary party. Duphot ran among them, whether to encourage them or dissuade them from violence is uncertain; but he was shot by the Papal soldiery in the tumult. Six months later Eugenie Désirée dried her tears in her bridal veil, when she married the saddler’s son Bernadotte, who was destined to wear the crown of Sweden.
Joseph became King of Naples and then of Spain. Madame de Genlis, who knew both the young women, has a good word to say for them. Of Julie, the wife of Joseph, she says: —
“She always reminded me of the princesses of the Old Court, and she had all the bearing and carriage of the last princess of Conti. If Heaven had chosen to cause her to be born on a throne it could not have rendered her more suitable, with her graciousness, a great quality, which should characterise all princes, and which with her was perfected by being united to the most sincere piety, and hatred of all ostentation.”
Of Eugenie, who became Queen of Norway and Sweden, she says: —
“I had the honour to make the acquaintance of Madame Bernadotte, sister of the Queen of Spain, who then had all the charms of a graceful figure, and the most agreeable manners. I was struck with the harmony that existed between her amiable face, her conversation, and her mind.”
Addison, who sailed from Marseilles on December 12th, 1699 (Macaulay says the date should be 1700), and skirted the Ligurian coast to Genoa, was surprised and delighted to see
“the mountains cover’d with green Olive-trees, or laid out in beautiful gardens, which gave us a great Variety of pleasing Prospects, even in the Depth of Winter. The most uncultivated of them produce abundance of sweet Plants, as Wild-Thyme, Lavender, Rosemary, Balm and Myrtle.”
In his “Letter from Italy” he writes: —
“See how the golden groves around me smile,
That shun the coast of Britain’s stormy isle,
Or when transplanted and preserv’d with care,
Curse the cold clime, and starve in Northern air.
Here kindly warmth their mounting juice ferments,
To nobler tastes, and more exalted scents:
Ev’n the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom,
And trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.”
CHAPTER IV
AIX
AIX is perhaps the most dejected of cities. At one time the life blood of the empire poured through it. The great road that left the Flaminian gate of Rome, passed along the coast of the Ligurian Gulf, crossed the shoulder of the Alps at La Turbie, and then, going through Nice and by Cannes, reached Fréjus. At that point it turned inland, left the sea behind, and made direct for Aix. Thence it stretched away to Arles, and from that city radiated the routes to Spain, throughout Gaul, and to the Rhine. Through the market passed all the trade of the West; through it tramped the legions for the conquest of Britain, and the defence of the Rhenish frontier; through it travelled the treasure for the pay of the soldiery; through it streamed the lines of captives for the slave market at Rome.
But now, Aix is on no artery of communication. To reach it, one most go in a loitering and roundabout fashion by branch lines, on which run no express trains, in company with oxen in pens and