The house contained a great many small bedrooms, in each of which there was a dilapidated dusty bed, perhaps a chest of drawers, and sometimes a broken chair or two. The kitchen and larders were lordly—hung with pheasants, turkeys, rabbits and hares—presents from the churchwarden, so the old man said. But no one seemed to have thought of preparing all this game for the table: everything hung untouched in its far or feathers. On tables and window-sills there stood dirty plates and broken saucers, and upon these were pieces of bread and cake, thickly covered with dust. A rancid smell rose from all this decaying food.
At last we reached the drawing-room, furnished with rather florid French furniture dating from the 1890’s, the sofa and chairs looking as if they would break if anyone sat upon them. The walls were crowded with cabinets and shelves, upon which was a multitude of ornate Victorian china ornaments, all thickly coated with dirt. In the half-darkness of that gloomy afternoon, we seemed to have entered a house which had been abandoned thirty years before, by someone who could not endure the misery of living in it, and had suddenly left it, turning the lock behind him. Yet two people were still living there.
Only the dining-room seemed as if it might be inhabited by ordinary human beings, for here a fire was burning, a single place was laid and a bottle half-filled with whisky stood on the table. It was the only thing in the house which was not covered with dust.
We looked out of the windows: the view was infinitely appealing in its quiet beauty. We looked back into the room: it seemed that no one could ever again live within walls which had been so long haunted by that dingy horror.
When I drove through France a year or two ago with my nephew Tony, I was reminded of sightseeing with my father. For Tony too the enjoyable part of a journey is the actual travelling. He likes going from place to place, though he does not care much about places. Of course our actual means of transport could not be more unlike those of my father’s day. The sleepy wagonettes had been replaced by the roaring Ford V8. That journey was the most appalling one I ever took, for Tony’s favourite speed was eighty-seven miles an hour, and at this pace we rattled over pot-holes and ridges, and leapt the cassis which compose the surface of the celebrated French Routes Nationales, with their deceptive appearance of regularity. I was hurled about in all directions, and after a few days’ travel, I was black and blue all over; but Tony sat solid and immovable, pinned in beneath the wheel. We called ourselves the Pea and the Cauliflower.
At this breakneck pace we rattled through the valley of the Loire, briskly looking in at the Renaissance castles, walking through miles of underground caves, the walls of which were stacked with millions of bottles of champagne, and spending an occasional day in one of those old local capital towns with their many-windowed palaces standing sheer upon the streets.
On that tour we went to Les Baux. Legend says that when Mary Magdalene and her companions had completed their miraculous voyage from Palestine, their boat drifted over the then flooded land of the Camargue and was stranded at the foot of a hill upon which Les Baux stands. We reached the place late in the evening and left our car in the village. Then we climbed up a little pilgrim’s path which leads to the church. Here there is a tiny terrace, sheltered and still, from which one can look away over mile upon mile of quiet hill country. I turned from watching this great expanse and went towards the church behind me. The west door was open; and it was already dark inside. It was like looking into a cave, and I waited till my eyes should grow accustomed to the darkness. As I did so, a sudden light shone out in front of the altar, and above it there appeared what seemed to be a floating face. It had a quiet, still beauty. In form it was a rounded oval, and there was warm, red colour on the cheeks. The face was motionless, its dark eyes lowered and gazing on the light beneath them with an expression of tender care and watchfulness. My heart stood still, for my thoughts were fixed on St. Mary Magdalene. This must be her apparition. In a few seconds two hands gently raised the light and set it above the face. Then I knew that this woman was the Sacristan of the little church and that she had lowered the altar lamp, had re-lit it, and then had put it back into its place. She came down from the altar and knelt for a few minutes before the sanctuary before going to toll the bell. I realized that when I watched the Sacristan at her daily work, it had seemed to be the vision of a saint.
We were at Monaco on Good Friday, and there we saw the traditional religious procession which every year passes through the old town that night. It is
