Having Ordered Our Coach To Be Refitted, And Provided With Fresh
Horses, As Well As With Another Postilion, In Consequence
Of
which improvements, I payed at the rate of a loui'dore per diem
to Lyons and back again, we departed
From Aix, and the second day
of our journey passing the Durance in a boat, lay at Avignon.
This river, the Druentia of the antients, is a considerable
stream, extremely rapid, which descends from the mountains, and
discharges itself in the Rhone. After violent rains it extends
its channel, so as to be impassable, and often overflows the
country to a great extent. In the middle of a plain, betwixt
Orgon and this river, we met the coach in which we had travelled
eighteen months before, from Lyons to Montpellier, conducted by
our old driver Joseph, who no sooner recognized my servant at a
distance, by his musquetoon, than he came running towards our
carriage, and seizing my hand, even shed tears of joy. Joseph had
been travelling through Spain, and was so imbrowned by the sun,
that he might have passed for an Iroquois. I was much pleased
with the marks of gratitude which the poor fellow expressed
towards his benefactors. He had some private conversation with
our voiturier, whose name was Claude, to whom he gave such a
favourable character of us, as in all probability induced him to
be wonderfully obliging during the whole journey.
You know Avignon is a large city belonging to the pope. It was
the Avenio Cavarum of the antients, and changed masters several
times, belonging successively to the Romans, Burgundians, Franks,
the kingdom of Arles, the counts of Provence, and the sovereigns
of Naples. It was sold in the fourteenth century, by queen Jane
I. of Naples, to Pope Clement VI. for the sum of eighty thousand
florins, and since that period has continued under the dominion
of the see of Rome. Not but that when the duc de Crequi, the
French ambassador, was insulted at Rome in the year 1662, the
parliament of Provence passed an arret, declaring the city of
Avignon, and the county Venaiss in part of the ancient domain of
Provence; and therefore reunited it to the crown of France, which
accordingly took possession; though it was afterwards restored to
the Roman see at the peace of Pisa. The pope, however, holds it
by a precarious title, at the mercy of the French king, who may
one day be induced to resume it, upon payment of the original
purchase-money. As a succession of popes resided here for the
space of seventy years, the city could not fail to be adorned
with a great number of magnificent churches and convents, which
are richly embellished with painting, sculpture, shrines,
reliques, and tombs. Among the last, is that of the celebrated
Laura, whom Petrarch has immortalized by his poetry, and for whom
Francis I. of France took the trouble to write an epitaph.
Avignon is governed by a vice-legate from the pope, and the
police of the city is regulated by the consuls.
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