The persecution of the Albigenses broke up the whole delicate edifice of what one may call the troubadour civilisation and plunged the country once more into chaos.
The luckless Count of Toulouse found himself obliged to lay siege to his own castle of Beaucaire, where de Montfort was installed with a powerful garrison.
It is a dream of peace and beauty now, as we approach it up a hill-side through pine-trees and irises, a wonderful sight surely in the season of blossoming.
An old Provençal poem gives an account of the siege: a sharp battering-ram injured the wall, but the besieged ingeniously made loops of cord attached to a beam, and noosed the head of the too-lively ram and held it imprisoned and harmless. Then, after the fashion of the day, they let down sulphur and boiling pitch upon the enemy by means of a chain, the materials being wrapped in sackcloth. Finally de Montfort--perhaps for the first time in his life--is defeated, after a fierce struggle, for the Powers of Darkness had deserted their faithful servant, who shortly afterwards ended his atrocious career at the siege of Toulouse, which had revolted against him.
After passing through the grove of pines and irises, we emerge upon a sunlit plateau high above the town, and the ruins of the castle are before us.
These and a fine little Romanesque chapel in which St. Louis said Mass before starting for the Crusades, give character to the scene--a beautiful background to the famous old story of Aucassin and Nicolette.
"The adventures of the lovers," says Pater, "seem to be chosen for the happy occasion they afford of keeping the eye of the fancy, perhaps the outward eye, fixed on pleasant objects, a garden, a ruined tower, the little hut of flowers which Nicolette constructs in the forest.... All through it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much leisure and great refinement.... There is a languid Eastern deliciousness in the very scenery of the story, the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in some mysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned, the cool brown marble, the almost nameless colours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers. Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, and is the best illustration of the quality I mean--the beautiful, weird, foreign girl, whom the shepherds take for a fay...."
