ROMéE DE VILLENEUVE.—There is a somewhat picturesque story in the old chronicles relating to one Romée de Villeneuve, seneschal of Grasse and the premier ministre of the Count of Provence.[18] The count with whom the story deals was Raymond Berenger IV, who came into power in 1209 and died in 1245. This Raymond was the husband of the beautiful Beatrix of Savoy—the same Beatrix who inspired the passionate verses of the troubadour of Eze. Raymond the count when walking one day through the streets of Grasse came upon a pilgrim. The pious man was dressed in the robe of his brotherhood. In his hand was a long staff; upon his feet were sandals and in his hat the cockleshell. The count was struck by his carriage and by the nobility of his appearance. He stopped him and questioned him as to his pilgrimage, as to the things that he had seen and learned in his journey through many countries and by way of many roads. The answers that the pilgrim gave pleased him. He was impressed by his intelligence, by the gentleness of his manner and the graceful sentiment that accompanied his talk. It was agreeable to converse with a man who had seen strange cities and who had gleaned such curious grains of wisdom in his tramp through valley and wood, by stony paths and smooth.
 
GRASSE: RUE DE L’EVêCHé.
The count talked longer with the pilgrim than the courtiers liked. They frowned and fidgeted, scuffled with their feet, assumed attitudes of weariness and talked among themselves rather audibly about “this fellow.” Finally the count asked the pilgrim if he would come into his service and the worthy man, after some hesitation and with proper expressions of respect, consented.
Romée had not been long under the castle roof before Raymond recognised his ability and his absolute uprightness. The count and the pilgrim became more than master and servant; they became friends. Many a time the two would sit in a corner of the terrace when the heat of the day was over and Romée would tell of the wonders of the Eternal City, of the street fighting he had seen in Florence between the Amidei and the Buondelmonte, of the new church of San Giovanni at Pistoia, of the wonderful bell tower they were building at Pisa, and of the ruins of the palace of Theodoric the Great that he had wandered among at Ravenna. He would talk too of strange things, of the savage, mist-enveloped island of England where the cliffs were white, of the flight of birds, of wondrous flowers that bloomed among the snow, of the hiving of bees, of the curious ways of women.
Year by year the pilgrim rose in power; year by year he took a wider part in the affairs of state; and year by year the affection that bound the two men together deepened and gained in strength. Romée became the count’s most trusted counsellor and confidant, and, in due course, was raised to the position of premier ministre and seneschal of Grasse.
This was a terrible blow to the courtiers, the last straw that broke the back of their restraint. They had always been jealous of this interloper and hated him heartily and openly. To see the most dignified office that the Court of Provence could grant bestowed upon a stranger, a man stumbled upon in the street, was beyond endurance. The count was bewitched and befooled, they said, and must be awakened from his evil dream.
The courtiers took the matter of the enlightenment of their prince in hand. They began to hint at things, to sow suspicions, to raise subjects for inquiry. Did the count know anything of this man, anything of his parentage or antecedents? The count knew only that Romée was a man noble in heart and mind, his trusted counsellor and esteemed friend.
No seed grows so quickly as the seed of doubt. No hint but gains strength by repetition. Those about the Court, judging that the count’s confidence must be shaken by their efforts, ventured to go beyond hinting and whispering and the shrugging of shoulders. They came one day boldly before him and said that Romée was taking money from the treasury, was in fact robbing the State. The count was furious that so disgraceful a charge should be made against his favourite, told the informers that they lied and demanded instant grounds for their base charges. The spokesman of the party replied that the minister kept, in his private room, a coffer which he allowed no one to touch and which no one had ever seen open. From sounds heard at night by listeners outside the door there was little doubt that in this chest Romée was hoarding money pilfered from the treasury.
The speaker, with a bow, humbly suggested that his lordship should come with them at once to the minister’s room and request him to open the coffer. The count stamped and swore. He would never subject his friend to such an indignity. De Villeneuve was as far above suspicion as himself. The proposal was monstrous. Some soft-voiced officer then hinted that the minister would be glad to put an end to these unfortunate but persistent rumours by simply opening the box. This seemed reasonable to the count, but someone, more wily still, whispered in his ear, “Would he be so glad?” The seed of doubt, long sown in the prince’s mind, was beginning to break into baneful blossom. He cried, “No more of this! Come with me, and we will bring this foul matter to an issue.”
They all made for the minister’s room. Romée was sitting alone. He rose with extreme surprise to see the count, flushed and hard of face, enter with this company of solemn men—enemies all—who eyed him like a pack of wolves. The count, avoiding the gaze of his favourite, pointed at once to the coffer and said, “I beg you to open that chest.” To this Romée replied, “My lord, I would prefer, by your grace, not to open it.” “Why?” demanded the prince. “Because it contains a treasure of mine that is dear to me and to no one else.” The courtiers began to whisper, to laugh, to jeer under their breath. The count, stung by their scoffing murmurs, lost his head, and turning to his minister said with some sternness, “I bid you to open that chest.” Romée, looking with sadness into his master’s eyes, said gently, “My lord, since you no longer trust me, I will open the box.” He withdrew a key from his gown, undid the lock, and threw wide the lid. The chest was empty but for a few sorry things—a dusty, tattered pilgrim’s frock, two worn sandals, a coarse shirt and a weather-stained hat with a cockleshell in it. These were the things he wore when Raymond Berenger met him in the street. After a moment of dreadful silence the count, turning to his courtiers, said in a voice of thunder, “Leave my presence, you scoundrels too mean to live.”
When the two were alone the prince, placing his hands upon Romée’s shoulders, said, “Dear friend! I am humbled to the dust. I am more sorry than any words of mine can tell. Can you ever forgive me?” To which the one-time pilgrim replied, “My lord, I forgive you a thousand times over; but you have broken my heart, and now, in God’s name, leave me and let me be alone.”
There and then Romée de Villeneuve took off his robes of office and, having donned the pilgrim’s dress in which he had arrived at the castle, made his way out of the gate into the open road. Raymond Berenger never saw him again. Where the pilgrim wandered no one knows. All that the chronicle relates is that he died in the castle of Vence and that his will was dated 1250—five years after the death of the count, his master.
Many a time in the days that followed Romée’s disappearance Count Raymond would be found standing alone in a certain deserted room gazing at an empty coffer.
Queen Jeanne.—As has been said in the previous chapter, there was in the Place aux Aires at Grasse a palace of Queen Jeanne, who died in 1382. When Jeanne took refuge in Provence with her second husband—after the murder of her first—she caused this palace to be built. All that is left of it, at the present day, is the kitchen stair and a few mouldings, but, writes Miss Dempster, “there is not a bare-foot child but can tell you that those steps belonged to the palace of Queen Jeanne.”[19]
There is no evidence that this meteoric lady ever lived in this house that she had built, although she was Countess of Provence as well as Queen of Naples. It was from no indisposition to travel on her part, for she was never quiet and never in one place long, not even when she was in prison. Flitting about from Provence to Naples took up no little of her time, and when she was not occupied on these journeys she was either pursuing her enemies or being, in turn, pursued by them.
In the language of the history book she “flourished” in the fourteenth century. The expression is ineffective, for she “blazed” rather than flourished. She was the political fidget of her time. A beautiful and passionate woman, she traversed the shores of the Mediterranean like a whirlwind. Her adventures would occupy the longest film of the most sensational picture theatre. Tragedy and violent domestic scenes became her most; but wherever she went there circled around her the makings of a drama of some kind. All the materials for a moving story were present. The scene was laid in feudal times when the license of the great was unrestrained. The heroine was a pretty woman who fascinated everyone who came in her path. She was, moreover, a wayward lady of ability and wide ambitions who was quite unscrupulous, who felt herself never called upon to keep her word and who was determined to get whatever she wanted.
She had a somewhat immoderate taste for matrimony, since she was a widow four times and would probably have married a fifth husband had not a friend of her youth strangled her when she was in prison. Her selection of husbands was catholic, as the list of men she chose will show. They were, in the order in which they died, Andrew of Hungary, Louis of Tarentum, James of Majorca, and Otto of Brunswick.
She was charged with having murdered her first husband. The charge was pressed by popular clamour and she was tried, in great state, in her own town of Avignon, in Provence, in the year 1348. The Pope himself presided. At the trial she is said to have made a deep impression on the court. She startled this august assembly of solemn men. They saw in her a woman full of the tenderest charm. They were moved by her grace, by her ease of manner, by the sweetness of her voice, by her pathos-stirring eloquence, and—strangest of all—by her remarkable knowledge of Latin. She was acquitted and then publicly blessed by the Pope.
Her loyal subjects at Naples were not satisfied with this tribunal. They wanted their queen tried over again. They were rather proud of her and they liked revelations of palace life. Probably too they knew a little more than had “come out” at Avignon. Anyhow, the Pope was compelled again to proclaim her innocent, and, being a man of the world and anxious to put himself in the right, he added that even if she had murdered her husband she had been the victim of witchcraft and sorcery and so was not responsible for her actions.
Queen Jeanne the Unquiet was one of the most obstinate women that ever lived. The only way to influence her was to put her in prison and her experience of prisons was large. At one time she was disposed to hand over Provence, or some part of it, to the King of France or other neighbouring potentate. To stop this recklessness she was arrested by the barons of Les Baux and of adjacent Proven?al towns and locked up. Having promised never to alienate Provence or any part of it, she was let out of jail; but she had not long been free before she sold Avignon, the chief town of Provence, to the Pope for 80,000 gold florins. As an excuse she said, with a smile, that she was rather short of money.
The obstinacy of this irrepressible lady led to her dramatic ending. She took a very decided part in the controversy known as the Great Schism of the West. Her determined attitude led to many and varied troubles. Finally she was besieged in Castel Nuovo and there had to surrender to her kinsman and one time friend, Charles of Durazzo. He attempted to make her renounce the errors—or reputed errors—to which she clung. He failed, and “finding that nothing could bend her indomitable spirit, he strangled her in prison on May 12th, 1382.”[20]
Louise de Cabris.—On a certain day, in the year 1769, there was great commotion in and around the mansion of the Marquis de Cabris in the Rue du Cours. The young marquis was bringing home his bride. The de Cabris represented the pinnacle of society in Grasse. They were the great people of the town. To know them was in itself a distinction. The bride belonged to a family even more eminent, for she was the daughter of the Marquis de Mirabeau, of Mirabeau, near Aix en Provence. She was a mere girl, being only seventeen years of age.
The nice, worthy people of Grasse received her with effusive kindness. They were sorry for her, because they knew the husband. He was young, weak and vicious and came from a stock deeply............